General Networking Interview Questions

Describe 802.3 standards

• IEEE 802 — LAN/MAN
• IEEE 802.1- Standards for LAN/MAN bridging and management and remote media access control bridging.
• IEEE 802.2 — Standards for Logical Link Control (LLC) standards for connectivity.
• IEEE 802.3 — Ethernet Standards for Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD).
• IEEE 802.4 — Standards for token passing bus access.
• IEEE 802.5 — Standards for token ring access and for communications between LANs and MANs
• IEEE 802.6 — Standards for information exchange between systems.
• IEEE 802.7 — Standards for broadband LAN cabling.
• IEEE 802.8 — Fiber optic connection.
• IEEE 802.9 — Standards for integrated services, like voice and data.
• IEEE 802.10 — Standards for LAN/MAN security implementations.
• IEEE 802.11 — Wireless Networking – "WiFi".
• IEEE 802.12 — Standards for demand priority access method.
• IEEE 802.14 — Standards for cable television broadband communications.
• IEEE 802.15.1 — Bluetooth
• IEEE 802.15.4 — Wireless Sensor/Control Networks – "ZigBee"
• IEEE 802.16 — Wireless Networking – "WiMAX"

Describe Various Network Type

Local Area Networks Local area networks (LANs) are used to connect networking devices that are in a very close geographic area, such as a floor of a building, a building itself, or a campus environment.

Wide Area Networks Wide area networks (WANs) are used to connect LANs together. Typically, WANs are used when the LANs that must be connected are separated by a large distance.

Metropolitan Area Networks A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a hybrid between a LAN and a WAN.

Content Networks Content networks (CNs) were developed to ease users’ access to Internet resources. Companies deploy basically two types of CNs: 
1.Caching downloaded Internet information 
2.Distributing Internet traffic loads across multiple servers

Storage Area Networks Storage area networks (SANs) provide a high-speed infrastructure to move data between storage devices and file servers. 
Advantage 
Performance is fast. 
Availability is high because of the redundancy features available. 
Distances can span up to 10 kilometers. 
Management is easy because of the centralization of data resources. 
Overhead is low (uses a thin protocol). 
Disadvantage of SANs is their cost.

Intranet An intranet is basically a network that is local to a company. In other words, users from within this company can find all of their resources without having to go outside of the company. An intranet can include LANs, private WANs and MANs,

Extranet An extranet is an extended intranet, where certain internal services are made available to known external users or external business partners at remote locations.

Internet An internet is used when unknown external users need to access internal resources in your network. In other words, your company might have a web site that sells various products, and you want any external user to be able to access this service.

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) is a special type of secured network. A VPN is used to provide a secure connection across a public network, such as an internet. Extranets typically use a VPN to provide a secure connection between a company and its known external users or offices. Authentication is provided to validate the identities of the two peers. Confidentiality provides encryption of the data to keep it private from prying eyes. Integrity is used to ensure that the data sent between the two devices or sites has not been tampered with.