Networking
23 free questions with worked answers, and 635 more in the full bank.
Free questions
What device is commonly used to connect multiple computers within a LAN?
1 mark · Easy
Which cable type is most commonly used for Ethernet connections?
1 mark · Easy
What is the purpose of DNS?
1 mark · Easy
Which of the following tools is used to diagnose network connectivity issues?
1 mark · Easy
What does VPN stand for?
1 mark · Easy
What is the primary function of a router?
4 marks · Hard
What protocol is used to send email?
4 marks · Hard
A user reports that they are unable to access the hospital management system due to a firewall blocking the connection. What should you do to resolve this issue?
4 marks · Hard
A junior admin is looking at a packet capture and notices MAC addresses are being used to forward frames. Which OSI layer is responsible for this activity?
1 mark · Easy
While investigating a slow application, you observe TCP window size zero messages in Wireshark. At what layer of the OSI model does this flow control issue reside?
3 marks · Medium
Users report that their web browsers are failing to negotiate TLS encryption with a newly deployed internal server. Which OSI layer is failing to establish this secure connection?
4 marks · Hard
An engineer connects a spectrum analyzer to a coax cable to check for electromagnetic interference. What OSI layer is being analyzed?
1 mark · Easy
A routing loop has caused TTL values to expire, dropping IP packets. In which OSI layer does the TTL field exist?
3 marks · Medium
During a network outage, a technician finds that a fiber optic cable was accidentally severed. Which layer of the OSI model is directly impacted by this physical break?
1 mark · Easy
An application requires persistent connections and checkpointing during a large file transfer so it can resume if interrupted. Which OSI layer provides these dialog control features?
4 marks · Hard
You are troubleshooting an IPsec VPN tunnel where ESP packets are being dropped by an intermediary firewall. Which OSI layer protocols are being blocked?
3 marks · Medium
A user complains that they cannot access a specific internal webpage, receiving an HTTP 500 error. At what OSI layer is this error generated?
1 mark · Easy
A switch receives a frame with a destination MAC address of FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF. Which OSI layer is responsible for flooding this frame out all ports?
3 marks · Medium
A small office connects all their computers to a single central switch. What physical topology is in use?
1 mark · Easy
An enterprise connects its 5 branch offices directly to every other branch office using point-to-point links for maximum redundancy. What topology does this represent?
3 marks · Medium
A legacy industrial control system uses a single coaxial cable that loops through each machine on the factory floor. If a break occurs, the entire segment fails. What topology is described?
4 marks · Hard
A campus network consists of several star-topology building networks connected together via a high-speed fiber backbone ring. Which term best describes this overall design?
1 mark · Easy
To save costs, a regional ISP connects its routers in a circle, where each router only links to its two nearest neighbors. What topology is deployed?
3 marks · Medium
More Networking questions (page 1 of 11)
Answers and explanations are in the full bank.
- A wireless mesh network spans a large warehouse. If one access point fails, data is automatically rerouted through another path. This self-healing nature is characteristic of what topology? · 4 marks
- You are tasked with connecting two office buildings across a city spanning 15 miles. Which network type best fits this deployment? · 1 mark
- A hospital requires dedicated high-speed fiber channels to connect its database servers directly to storage arrays. What network type is being utilized? · 3 marks
- An employee pairs their Bluetooth headphones to their smartphone. What type of network does this pairing establish? · 1 mark
- A university interconnects multiple LANs across its academic buildings using a unified administration domain. This best describes a... · 3 marks
- Your company leases a dedicated MPLS circuit from an ISP to connect headquarters in New York to a branch in Tokyo. What network type is this? · 4 marks
- A system administrator needs to allocate IP addresses for a subnet that requires 14 hosts. Which CIDR notation provides exactly enough addresses without excessive waste? · 1 mark
- An engineer configures a branch router with IP 10.10.10.130/26. What is the broadcast address for this specific subnet? · 3 marks
- A network designer uses VLSM to conserve addresses. They allocate a /30 to a point-to-point serial link. How many usable IP addresses are created? · 4 marks
- A ticket states a host with IP 192.168.1.55/28 cannot reach the gateway at 192.168.1.1. Why is this occurring? · 3 marks
- A technician types "ipconfig" and sees an address of 169.254.10.5. What does this indicate? · 1 mark
- You must subnet 172.16.0.0/16 to create at least 500 subnets. Which new subnet mask should be applied? · 3 marks
- A network analyst observes traffic from an IPv6 address beginning with fe80::. What kind of address is this? · 1 mark
- A technician is setting up IPv6 stateless auto-configuration. Which process modifies the MAC address to create a unique interface ID? · 3 marks
- An enterprise needs routable IPv6 addresses across the internet. Which prefix format will they typically be assigned by an ISP? · 4 marks
- A router sends a packet to all nodes on the local network using IPv6. Which address does it target? · 1 mark
- You ping ::1 on a local machine. What is the purpose of this test? · 3 marks
- A firewall administrator is asked to block insecure remote command-line access while allowing secure access. Which port should be blocked? · 1 mark
- An email client cannot pull new messages from the server, but it can send them. Which port is likely blocked by the corporate firewall? · 3 marks
- A network monitoring tool cannot retrieve device statistics from a newly deployed router. The SNMP community string is correct. Which port must be opened on the ACL? · 4 marks
- Users complain that websites load over HTTP but timeout when forcing secure connections. What port needs to be permitted? · 1 mark
- A systems admin configures a domain controller to synchronize time from an external server. Which port must be allowed outbound? · 3 marks
- An enterprise SIP trunk fails to register with the provider. You suspect a firewall issue. Which port should you investigate first? · 4 marks
- A technician is attempting to resolve an issue where clients cannot resolve hostnames to IP addresses. Which port should be checked on the server? · 1 mark
- A data center requires 10 Gigabit speeds over twisted-pair copper cable. Which Ethernet standard specifies this? · 1 mark
- You must install a fiber optic link between two switches located 400 meters apart in the same building. Which standard is most appropriate? · 3 marks
- A long-haul connection spanning 5 kilometers needs to be established between two regional hubs at 1 Gbps. Which standard is required? · 4 marks
- An older office building is wired entirely with Cat5e cable. What is the maximum Ethernet standard speed supported on these 100-meter runs? · 1 mark
- A router learns about a destination network via both OSPF and an internal EIGRP route. Which route will be installed in the routing table by default? · 1 mark
- An admin needs to ensure traffic from a specific server always takes a predetermined path, regardless of dynamic routing updates. What should be used? · 3 marks
- Two ISPs are peering with each other to exchange massive internet routing tables. Which protocol is strictly designed for this purpose? · 4 marks
- A network engineer types a command and sees a route tagged with a metric based strictly on hop count. Which protocol is in use? · 1 mark
- You want a dynamic routing protocol that builds a complete topology map of the network and uses cost based on bandwidth. Which fits best? · 3 marks
- An administrator notices an issue where a router prefers a RIP route over a static route. What configuration mistake causes this? · 4 marks
- A technician wants to group HR computers logically so their broadcast traffic is isolated from the Sales computers on the same physical switch. What should they create? · 1 mark
- An uplink between two switches needs to carry traffic for VLAN 10, 20, and 30 simultaneously. How must this port be configured? · 3 marks
- To prevent bridging loops, a switch blocks a redundant port. However, you want host ports to transition to forwarding immediately upon plug-in. What feature enables this? · 4 marks
- A network loop crashes the entire Layer 2 switching environment after a user plugs both ends of a cable into the wall. What protocol was likely disabled? · 1 mark
- While inspecting a Wireshark capture of an Ethernet frame on a trunk link, an engineer notices a 4-byte tag inserted. What standard defines this tag? · 3 marks
- You have enabled PortFast on an access port. To protect this port from someone plugging in a rogue switch and causing a loop, what additional feature should be enabled? · 4 marks
- An internal web server at 10.0.0.5 needs to be accessible from the internet on a single, dedicated public IP of 203.0.113.10. Which type of NAT is required? · 1 mark
- Fifty employees at a small office browse the internet simultaneously using just one public IP address assigned to their router. What technology makes this possible? · 3 marks
- A company has a pool of 5 public IP addresses and 100 internal hosts. They configure NAT so that when a host goes online, it temporarily grabs one of the 5 IPs until the pool is exhausted. What is this called? · 4 marks
- A teleworker uses their existing copper telephone line to receive high-speed internet, but speeds degrade the further they live from the central office. What technology is this? · 1 mark
- An enterprise is moving away from expensive MPLS circuits and adopting a technology that dynamically routes traffic over multiple connections (like broadband and LTE) based on real-time link quality. What is this called? · 3 marks
- A service provider uses short path labels instead of long network addresses to forward packets efficiently across its backbone. What WAN technology is in use? · 4 marks
- A customer connects to an ISP via a DSL modem and must enter a username and password to establish the Layer 2 session. What protocol handles this authentication? · 3 marks
- A wireless engineer is deploying access points in a dense office. To minimize co-channel interference on the 2.4 GHz band, which three non-overlapping channels should they use? · 1 mark
- A home user buys a new router advertising "Wi-Fi 6" capabilities. Which IEEE 802.11 standard does this refer to? · 3 marks
- Before transmitting, a wireless client listens to the channel. If the channel is idle, it sends data; if busy, it waits a random backoff time. What media access method is this? · 4 marks
- Users are searching for the corporate wireless network on their phones, but the name is not appearing. What needs to be broadcast by the Access Point? · 1 mark
- A security administrator mandates that all new wireless deployments use Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE) to prevent dictionary attacks. Which standard enforces this? · 3 marks
- A user can access local network shares but cannot reach the internet. A technician successfully pings 8.8.8.8 from the user's PC. What is the most likely failure? · 1 mark
- A technician runs a traceroute to a remote server and the output shows: 1. 192.168.1.1 (1ms) ... 2. 10.0.0.1 (2ms) ... 3. * * * ... 4. * * *. What does this indicate? · 3 marks
- Users report that large file downloads are failing over a VPN tunnel, while small web pages load fine. The network admin suspects packet fragmentation issues. What setting should be investigated? · 4 marks
- A web administrator needs to map the hostname "www.company.com" to the IPv4 address 198.51.100.5. Which DNS record type should they create? · 1 mark
- An organization changed its mail server provider. To ensure incoming emails route to the new provider, which DNS record must be updated? · 3 marks
- A security analyst is investigating an IP address and wants to perform a reverse lookup to find the associated hostname. Which DNS record type fulfills this request? · 4 marks
- The primary DNS server goes down, and you want secondary servers to know how long to cache the zone data. Which record dictates this TTL information? · 3 marks
- You want "shop.company.com" to be an alias that points directly to the existing "ecommerce.hosting.com" record. Which DNS record should be used? · 1 mark