Computer Networks Exam ­2nd term ­ ETSIAp – July, 9th 2008 

SOLUTIONS

1. In TCP/IP, what IP stands for?

Internet Protocol

2. What is fragmentation?

When a datagram is too big to be transmitted over a network it is slitted into a

sequence of fragments

3. What are the two key functions for the network layer?

Routing and forwarding

3. What is the MTU of a network?

The Maximum Transmission Unit (largest datagram the network can handle)

4. How many bits long are IPv6 addresses? And Ipv4?

128 bits(v6), 32 bits(v4)

5. What is the minimum size of an IP header? (do use units!)

20 bytes

6. What is the contents of the first byte of an IPv4 datagram? (use hexadecimal
notation)

0x45

7. What ICMP stands for?

Internet Control Message Protocol

8. Which IP header field limits the number of times a datagram is forwarded?

TTL (time to live)

9. What is the header size of an ICMP datagram?

8 bytes

10.What is the largest IP datagram on a network if MTU=512?

 512 bytes (total datagram length including headers)

11.What is the largest IP fragment if MTU=1000?

996 bytes

12.Which network devices can do fragmentation?

Routers and [sending] host

13.Which network devices can do reassembly?

Only destination host

14.Name two routing protocols used on the Internet.

RIP and OSPF

15.What type of messages does traceroute command use?

ICMP Time exceeded and ICMP Port unreachable (UDP data too).

16.What are the two networks obtained by splitting in half the network
158.42.0.0/16?

158.42.0.0/17 and 158.42.128.0/17

17.Does ARP traffic use IP protocol? Why?

No. ARP it is a link layer protocol (it'd be a catch22 otherwise).

18.We are given a computer with two network connections (i.e: eth0 and eth1).
How can it be determined which one can reach www.upv.es?

ping www.upv.es and disconnect eth0. If ping answers are stopped then it is
eth0 otherwise it is eth1.

19.List the values you need to configure your computer's TCP/IP network
interface?

own IP address, network mask, gateway IP address and DNS server IP

address.

20.How can you know your Window's computer IP address? And when it is a
Linux system?

IPCONFIG (windows) and ifconfig (Linux)

21.What operation is done by a broadband router when it serves several

computers with a single public IP address?
 Network Address and Port Translation (NATP).

22.Why would you want to clone a computer's MAC address on the router's
MAC?

The change not be detected by the ISP (and maybe to obtain the same IP
address as the cloned computer when using DHCP).

23.How can you have a web sever behind a broadband router?

Forwarding port 80 (aka Virtual Server).

24.Which nodes distance vector routing algorithm messages are exchanged

with?

Neighbors

25.What type of routing is used for link state routing algorithm messages?

Flooding (broadcast)

26.When an IP datagram is fragmented ... are the fragments transmitted in a

certain sequence? Why?

Not defined. It depends on the protocol stack implementation on the OS (we

saw two different cases in the lab).

27.Why do you need to use 'sudo' with wireshark (former ethereal) application?

Because putting the NIC into promiscuos mode needs root permits.

28.What filter do you use in wireshark to capture all web traffic only?

tcp and port 80

29.When a telnet login is sniffed with wireshark the username appears with
double characters. Why?

telnet server echoes back each received username character

30.List three tasks performed by the Link Layer.

Framing, error control, flow control

31.What the term NIC stands for?

Network Interface Card

32.What is the purpose of a Multiple Access protocol?

To regulate shared media access among a set of stations

33.How does CSMA protocol work?

Stations listen before transmitting, if channel is busy the station defers to try
again later, if channel is clear transmission starts inmediately

34.Our network is made of four nodes connected as follows: A<--->B<--->C<---

>D. Periodic distance vector messages are exchanged every five minutes.
How long will it take till node A learns about node D?

15 minutes (3 exchanges)

35.What is the purpose of ARP protocol?

To discover the MAC address of a certain system whose IP address is known.

Only within the same LAN (link layer).

36.What is the MAC destination address of an ARP request?

Broadcast (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff)

37.What is the MAC destination address of an ARP response?

requester's MAC address

38.How many bits does an Ethernet MAC address have?

48 bits

39.What the "type" field of an Ethernet frame is for?

To identify the frame's payload (i.e. ARP, IP, XNS, etc)

40.What does the NIC if a frame contains a CRC error?

Frame is dropped silently.

41.What is CRC? What for?

Cyclic Redundancy Check. It's used for error detection.

42.What is the purpose of Ethernet's Binary Exponential Back-off.

To make the probability of a consecutive collision less likely.

43.How do you encode a "1" bit using Manchester encoding?

A a falling edge in the original design (rising edge in IEEE/Ethernet) in the

middle of the bit cell.

44.Why 802.11 does not use CSMA/CD?

 Wireless transceivers cannot receive and transmit at the same time.

45.What type of program is nmap?

It's a network (or port) mapper.

46.How many address fields does an 802.11 frame contain?

4 addresses

47.What is the main problem of secret key encryption?

Key management: how key is distributed (and kept secret).

48.Secret key encryption algorithms are based on the use of two basic
techniques. Name them.

substitution and transposition

49.Who creates a digital certificate?

A Certification Authority (CA)

50.What are digital certificates for?

To bind an identity with a certain public key. It can be used to authenticate

servers and clients.