ICS 432 Reading Assignment

Chapter 24:

  1. What is the relationship between a client and server?
  2. How does a server handle more than one client at a time?
  3. What is the difference between concurrent and iterative servers?
  4. What is an ephemeral port?
  5. What do you mean by a socket?
  6. What is the difference between stream, datagram and raw sockets?
  7. Discuss the steps involved in connection-oriented concurrent server and connectionless iterative server.

Chapter 25:

  1. What is the use of DNS?
  2. Why do we need hierarchical name space?
  3. What is the difference between fully qualified and partially qualified domain name?
  4. What is the relation between zones and domains?
  5. What do you mean by primary and secondary DNS servers?
  6. Why do you need inverse domains and how do they work?
  7. Discuss about iterative and recursive resolution.
  8. How does caching helps in DNS? What are its short-comings?
  9. What is the structure of query and response messages in DNS?
  10. Why does DNS use TCP as well as UDP? Explain.

Chapter 26:

  1. What is the use of user agent?
  2. Why do you need MIME along with SMTP?
  3. What is the use of each header fields in MIME?
  4. What is the need to have multipart in MIME?
  5. What are the various data encoding techniques available? Compare and contrast among them.
  6. Does SMTP use TCP? If yes, how is this connection done in the email transfer?
  7. What are the various stages of message delivery?
  8. What are the various mail access protocols? What are the salient features in them?
  9. FTP uses two ports. What are they? Why are they needed?
  10. Discuss the data format and data structure used for data transfer in FTP.
  11. Know the needs for various ftp commands.

Chapter 27:

  1. What are the various request methods available in HTTP?
  2. What is the relationship between request and response messages of HTTP?
  3. What is the difference between persistent and non-persistent communications?
  4. What is the use of proxy server?
  5. Differentiate between static, dynamic and active web documents.

Chapter 3:

  1. What is the relationship between frequency and period?
  2. What is the relationship between radians and degrees?
  3. How do we link change in signal to frequency?
  4. How can a composite signal be represented?
  5. Does having different frequencies in a signal impact the bandwidth? Justify.
  6. Why do we say the digital signals are aperiodic in nature?
  7. What does bit interval and bit rate mean in the case of digital signal?
  8. Which is preferable for digital signal, low-pass or band-pass? Why?
  9. Referring to both Nyquist and Shannon theorems, what is the relationship [in bit rate] between noisy and noiseless channels?
  10. What do you mean by distortion?
  11. Why do we represent signals in decibels?

Chapter 4:

  1. How does a bit interval of the sender and receiver impact on the clock synchronization?
  2. What is the use of middle transition?
  3. In AMI, which data [0 or 1] is represented using two levels?
  4. Apply various line encoding techniques [NRZ-I, Manchester, Differential Manchester, AMI] to the data: 01001110
  5. What are the various stages of block coding? Write about 4B/5B encoding.
  6. What are the steps involved in converting an analog signal into a PCM digital code?
  7. What is the relationship between highest frequency and sampling rate, according to Nyquist theorem?
  8. When do we need start and stop bits?
  9. Do we need gaps between bit streams in asynchronous transmission? Justify.
  10. How does synchronous transmission differ from asynchronous transmission?

Chapter 6:

  1. What are steps involved FDM? What is the use of carrier frequency?
  2. What do you mean by guard band? What is the use of this?
  3. How does interleaving impact on TDM?
  4. A multiplexer combines four 100-Kbps channels using a time slot of 2 bits. Show the output with four arbitrary inputs. What is the frame rate? What is the frame duration? What is the bit rate? What is the bit duration?
  5. What is the use of framing bits?
  6. What does a T line mean? How is it related to E line?

Chapter 7:

  1. How does twisted pair handle crosstalk?
  2. Among UTP and STP, which one is better, under specified conditions?
  3. How about the densities between the cladding and the core of a fiber? Does this relation have an impact on the signal?
  4. What is the difference between multimode [step-index and graded-index] and single-mode fibers?
  5. What are the different kinds of connectors used in fiber optics?
  6. What is the benefit of radio waves being omnidirectional?
  7. How is an infrared signal differing from radio waves?

Chapter 8:

  1. What is the use of crossbar switch?
  2. What is the use of circuit switching?
  3. What is the major role played by time-slot interchange in time-division switch? Does TSI posses RAM in them? If yes, what is the need of it?
  4. What do you mean by TDM bus?
  5. What is the benefit of combining time division and space division switching?

Chapter 10:

  1. What are two sub-layers of data link layer? Why do we need sub-layers?
  2. Adding extra bits in two-dimensional parity provides some extra features compared to single parity bit. Justify.
  3. Discuss the steps in CRC. What is the number of bits in the remainder?
  4. How is the CRC polynomial selected?
  5. Discuss the steps involved in Checksum.
  6. Discuss about hamming code.
  7. How is the number of parity bits selected?
  8. How is the position of parity bits selected?
  9. What is the impact of each parity bit on data bits?
  10. How do we deduct errors using hamming code?

Chapter 11:

  1. In stop-and-wait:
  2. What is the difference between packet lost and ack lost?
  3. Is there a chance of out-of-order arrival of packets? Justify with an example.
  4. What happens if the ack arrives later than the time-out?
  5. Go back N ARQ
  6. What is the window size at the sender and receiver?
  7. What is the case when the receiver will wrongly accept a frame?
  8. Is the time-out related to each frame or towards all the frames in a single window?
  9. What is the use of ACK being cumulative?
  10. What is the relation between the number of bits allocated for sequence number and window size?
  11. Selective repeat
  12. What is Negative ACK?
  13. What is the relationship between the window size of the sender and the receiver?
  14. How does the window size of the go-back-N and selective repeat differ?
  15. HDLC
  16. Define: I-Frame, S-Frame and U-Frame.
  17. When is the Reject used? Does it have an impact on I-Frame?
  18. What is bit stuffing? What is the use of flags in HDLC frame? Should flags be bit stuffed, justify.
  19. Is there any sequence in the case of S-frame? Justify your answer.

Chapter 12:

  1. Why do we need PPP in dedicated connections?
  2. What are the main functions of PPP?
  3. Why is it that the address of PPP protocol a broadcast? Does the client have an IP address? If yes, can’t we use that one as the destination address?
  4. What are the various states of PPP?
  5. When do you use LCP? What are the options available in LCP packets?
  6. What is the difference between PAP and CHAP?
  7. How does CHAP handle authentication without actually transmitting the password?
  8. How is encapsulation of network traffic handled in PPP?

Chapter 13:

  1. What is the need for random access in shared medium?
  2. Is there a chance of collision in CSMA? Justify your answer.
  3. What is the difference between persistent and non-persistent strategies?
  4. What is the use of jam signal in CSMA/CD algorithm?
  5. How does CSMA/CA avoid collisions?
  6. Discuss the process of select and poll in controlled access?
  7. Is there a chance of collision in token-passing techniques?

Chapter 14:

  1. What is the use of transceiver?
  2. Explain the difference between type and length fields in 802.3 frames.
  3. What is the use of preamble in 802.3 frames?
  4. What is the need for maximum and minimum data length in 802.3 frames?
  5. What is the use of MAC address and how is it represented?
  6. How is collision handled in bridges?
  7. How is sharing of network bandwidth handling in hubs and switches?
  8. Why don’t we need CSMA/CD in switched Ethernet?

Chapter 15:

  1. What do you mean by adhoc architecture?
  2. Discuss the steps involved CSMA/CA algorithm and why CSMA/CD algorithm is not suitable.
  3. What is the use of backoff algorithm and NAV?
  4. What is the difference between piconet and scatternet?

Chapter 16:

  1. What is the job of repeater?
  2. Can a repeater connect LANs with different protocols? Justify your answer.
  3. Why is there a length limitation in 10Base5? How does a repeater help to overcome this problem?
  4. What are the differences between a repeater and bridge?
  5. What do you mean by learning or transparent bridge? How does a bridge learn about the location of the PCs?
  6. Given a network of switches with loops, is there a problem? Why? How do you solve this problem?
  7. What is a VLAN? What is the use of it? How do you configure VLANs on switches?
  8. Can PCs that belong to different VLANs communicate with each other via a switch?

Chapter 19:

  1. What are the main duties of network layer?
  2. You already have an IP address, why do you need a MAC address?
  3. Differentiate between the network layer jobs at the source, router and the destination.
  4. Differentiate between circuit switching, packet switching and virtual circuits.
  5. Given any IP address, identify the following:
  6. Whether it is a valid IP or not.
  7. Its class.
  8. Its default subnet mask.
  9. Its network address.
  10. Indicate whether the given IP is a private or public IP.
  11. Given the needs [number of subnets and number of hosts per subnet] of a network, do the following:
  12. Indicate the possible class of IP address we should use.
  13. Indicate the number of bits needed for the subnet part and the host part.
  14. Indicate the subnet mask.
  15. Indicate the network address, broadcast address and range of IP addresses for each valid subnet.
  16. Discuss the following about DHCP:
  17. The steps needed for a client IP to acquire an IP address from a DHCP server.
  18. What is the use of lease time?
  19. When does the client contact the server to renew the IP?
  20. What happens if the client did not receive any OFFER message from the server?
  21. What is the use of NAT? When do you use it?
  22. When do you use static or dynamic routing?
  23. When do you need a default route?
  24. What are the entries in the routing table?

Chapter 20:

  1. What is the use of static mapping of IP to MAC address?
  2. Is ARP request a broadcast, why?
  3. What about ARP reply? Is it a broadcast or unicast? Why?
  4. How about the MAC addresses [source and destination] in a packet when the packet travels from a PC in one network to a PC in another network?
  5. Why is it that the IP packets are called as datagram?
  6. What is the use of Protocol field in the IP packet?
  7. How do you calculate header checksum in IP datagram?
  8. While fragmenting packets, how to recognize the following:
  9. First fragment.
  10. Last fragment.
  11. Whether the receiver has received all the fragments or not.
  12. Why do we need ICMP packets? To whom does an ICMP packet sent to?
  13. When is the following ICMP messages generated?
  14. Destination unreachable
  15. Source Quench
  16. Time exceeded
  17. Parameter Problem
  18. Redirection
  19. Echo request and echo reply.
  20. Router solicitation
  21. Why do we need to go for IPv6?
  22. What do you mean by tunneling in IPv6?

Chapter 21:

  1. What is the use of metric in routing protocols?
  2. What is the difference between distance vector and link state routing protocols?
  3. If there is a chance in routing information, does distance vector send an update?
  4. Why distance vector is called as ‘routing by rumor’?
  5. What are the steps involved in routing updates in RIP?
  6. What is the need of OSPF to divide an autonomous system into many areas?
  7. What do you mean by internal routers, backbone routers, area border routers and autonomous system boundary routers?
  8. What is backbone area? How do you determine a backbone area? What is the use of virtual link?
  9. Why do you need to have designated router in transient links? Why don’t we have the same in the case of RIP?
  10. What is the use of various LSAs [router link, network link, summary link, external link] available?
  11. Why it is that distance vector or link state is not suitable for inter-autonomous system routing protocols?
  12. What do you mean by policy routing?
  13. How does path vector in the routing information help to avoid looping of routing packets?
  14. Describe about the different type of attributes.
  15. What is the use of keep-alive messages in the case of BGP?
  16. What are the two major protocols involved in multicasting? Which class of IP address is used for multicasting?
  17. Why do we have two query types in ICMP?
  18. What is the need of maximum response time in IGMP packets?
  19. What is the groupid in the IGMP packet for IGMP Query packets? Justify your answer.
  20. Why is it that IGMP acts locally?
  21. When is a leave report generated?
  22. What is the need for multicasting membership in multicasts?
  23. Without delayed response in multicasts, we will have multiple replies for a single query. Justify your answer.
  24. How do we handle the problem of duplicate copies in RPF?
  25. Define pruning and grafting.
  26. Discuss the problems and solutions for MOSPF.
  27. Discuss the difference between DVMRP, MOSPF and CBT.
  28. What is the use of rendezvous router?
  29. What is the difference between PIM-Dense mode and PIM-Sparse mode?

Chapter 22:

  1. Discuss about port numbers in transport layer.
  2. What are the steps involved in connection creation and termination?
  3. Data link layer provides flow control and error control. Why do you need to do the same thing at the transport layer?
  4. What is the use of sequence number and acknowledgement number in TCP?
  5. Discuss the use of various control fields [URG, ACK, PSH, RST, SYN, FIN] in TCP.
  6. How do you handling sender window size in sliding window protocol?
  7. What causes silly window syndrome?
  8. How is silly window syndrome handled at the sender and receiver?
  9. How do you calculate retransmission timer? Discuss Karn’s algorithm.
  10. Discuss: Persistent timer, keep-alive timer, time-waited timer.

Chapter 23:

  1. Define the following:
  2. Constant bit rate
  3. Variable bit rate
  4. Bursty traffic
  5. Peak data rate
  6. Average data rate
  7. Maximum burst size
  8. Jitter
  9. How does a router handle the packets?
  10. Discuss the methods through which we can prevent and handle congestion.
  11. Write about slow start, additive increase, and multiplicative decrease.
  12. Discuss about BECN and FECN.
  13. Compare among the following:
  14. FIFO, Weight pair and priority queueing
  15. Leaky bucket and token bucket
  16. How are Path and Resv messages used in RSVP?

Chapter 29:

  1. What is ciphertext and plaintext?
  2. Discuss about symmetric and asymmetric key cryptography.
  3. What is the difference between monoalphabetic, polyalphabetic, and transpositional ciphers?
  4. Discuss the components of Block cipher.
  5. Why do we need a product block?
  6. Discuss the various blocks in DES algorithm.
  7. Various operation modes of DES:
  8. Electronic code block (ECB)
  9. Cipher block chaining (CBC)
  10. Cipher feedback mode (CFM)
  11. Cipher stream mode (CSM)
  12. Discuss the steps involved in RSA Algorithm.

Chapter 30:

  1. Define the following:
  2. Privacy
  3. Message Authentication
  4. Integrity
  5. Non-repudiation
  6. What is the need for digest in Digital Signature?
  7. Discuss the steps involved in Digital Signature. How does Digital Signature provide all the necessary security measures?
  8. How does digital signature provide the integrity of the message using the signed digest?
  9. How is authentication provided using symmetric key? What is the use of nonce here? What is Bidirectional authentication?
  10. How can we distribute keys among various communication entities?
  11. How does man-in-the-middle affect security?
  12. What is the use of key distribution center?
  13. How do you confirm the identity of the public key?
  14. What is the use of hierarchy structure in CA?
  15. What is Kerberos? How does it handle authentication and key distribution?

Chapter 31:

  1. How does IPSec operate?
  2. What is the difference between ESP and AH?
  3. What is the sequence number restriction in AH?
  4. Why is AH unable to provide privacy?
  5. How do you preserve the protocol information of IP layer if we use AH or ESP approach?
  6. What is the use of handshake protocol in TLS?
  7. How does packet-filter firewall operate?
  8. What is the use of VPN?
  9. How does addressing in VPN work?
  10. What do you mean by hybrid networks?

Extra Questions:

How many usable hosts are available given a Class C IP address with the default subnet mask?
254
255
256
510
511
512
Which subnet mask would be assigned to the network address of 192.168.32.0 to provide 254 useable host addresses per subnetwork?
255.255.0.0
255.255.255.0
255.255.254.0
255.255.248.0
Which statement accurately describes public IP addresses?
Public addresses cannot be used within a private network.
Public IP addresses must be unique across the entire Internet.
Public addresses can be duplicated only within a local network.
Public IP addresses are only required to be unique within the local network.
Network administrators are free to select any public addresses to use for network devices that access the Internet.
When a host has an empty ARP cache, what is the next step the host will take to find the destination MAC address of a remote host?
sends an ARP request as a unicast to the server
sends an ARP request as a unicast to the destination
sends an ARP request as a broadcast to all hosts in the local network
sends an ARP request as a unicast to the default gateway
Which two statements correctly describe the IP address 127.0.0.1? (Choose two.)
It belongs to the Class A range of addresses.
It belongs to the Class B range of addresses.
It belongs to the Class C range of addresses.
It is reserved for loopback testing.
It is reserved for multicast group testing.
It is reserved for unicast testing.

Refer to the exhibit. The small office LAN shown in the exhibit may eventually be connected to the Internet. According to Cisco best practice, which IP network addresses should be used?
12.0.0.0
172.0.0.0
172.168.0.0
192.32.17.0
192.168.67.0
225.1.5.0
What are two facts about how ARP resolves an IP address to a MAC address? (Choose two.)
The originating host dynamically issues an arp –a command to obtain the destination MAC address.
The originating host broadcasts an ARP request packet and each host in a local network receives this packet.
The originating host dynamically issues an icmp echo request command to obtain the destination MAC address.
The host with the specified destination IP address sends an ARP reply packet containing its MAC address back to the originating host.
The host with the specified destination IP address sends an icmp echo reply packet to the originating host with its MAC address.
What is the network broadcast address for a Class C address of 192.168.32.0 with the default subnet mask?
192.168.0.0
192.168.0.255
192.168.32.0
192.168.32.254
192.168.32.255


Refer to the exhibit. After host 2 is connected to the switch on the LAN, host 2 is unable to communicate with host 1. What is the cause of this problem?