Networking Concepts

A global company operates authoritative DNS servers in data centers on three continents. They want clients worldwide to automatically reach the topologically nearest DNS server using a single shared IP address, with traffic rerouting to another site if one goes offline. Which traffic type should be used to achieve this?

A technician is called to a workstation that cannot reach any network resources or the internet. Running ipconfig shows the machine has an IPv4 address of 169.254.14.72 with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 and no default gateway listed. Other devices on the same LAN are working normally. What is the MOST likely cause?

A network technician must connect a new access switch to a workgroup switch located 90 meters away in the same building. The link needs to support 10 Gbps throughput, and management wants to reuse the existing structured copper cabling infrastructure rather than install fiber. Which transmission medium should the technician select to reliably meet these requirements?

A media streaming company hosts its website and video library on servers located in a single data center in New York. Users in Europe and Asia complain about slow page loads and buffering when watching videos, while North American users report acceptable performance. The company wants to improve the experience for its global audience without relocating or duplicating its primary application servers. Which solution best addresses this problem?

A network technician is configuring firewall rules on a Layer 3 switch to allow client devices to obtain IP addresses dynamically from a centralized DHCP server located on a different subnet. Which ports and transport protocol must the technician permit for this traffic to succeed?

A network administrator is configuring a secondary DNS server to replicate all zone records from the primary DNS server. During testing, standard name resolution queries work correctly, but the full zone transfer between the two servers fails. Which port and transport protocol combination must the administrator ensure is permitted through the firewall to allow the zone transfer to succeed?

A network technician is troubleshooting connectivity between two hosts on different subnets. Using a protocol analyzer, they capture a packet leaving the sending host and notice that the destination MAC address in the frame belongs to the default gateway, while the destination IP address belongs to the remote server. At which OSI layer is the MAC address being used to make this forwarding decision?

A network engineer is analyzing how data is processed as it moves down the OSI stack on a sending host. An application generates data, which is passed to the Transport layer where a TCP header containing source and destination port numbers is added. What is the correct term for this Transport layer PDU, and what is added at the very next layer down?

A network engineer is documenting the OSI layers at which each security appliance operates. She needs to identify the device that inspects traffic based on the state of active connections, tracking whether a packet is part of an established session before permitting it. At which OSI layer does a traditional stateful firewall primarily make these filtering decisions?

A network architect is designing a WAN that connects 6 branch offices. The design requires that every office have a direct, dedicated point-to-point link to every other office to ensure maximum redundancy with no single point of failure. How many links are required to build this full mesh topology?

A retail company runs its core inventory application on an on-premises private data center. During seasonal sales events, demand spikes far beyond their local capacity, so they want to temporarily offload the extra workload to a public cloud provider while keeping sensitive data in-house. Which cloud deployment model best describes this arrangement?

A company wants to migrate its on-premises application servers to the cloud. The development team requires full control over the operating system, the ability to install custom middleware, and the freedom to patch the OS on their own schedule. However, they do NOT want to manage any physical hardware or the hypervisor. Which cloud service model best fits these requirements?

A security team wants a network appliance that not only detects malicious traffic patterns but also actively drops the offending packets in real time before they reach internal servers. The device must be placed directly in the traffic path so it can take action automatically. Which appliance best meets these requirements?

A network administrator is documenting an IP allocation and records a subnet as 10.20.30.0/26. A junior technician needs to configure a device that requires the subnet mask entered in dotted-decimal notation. Which subnet mask corresponds to a /26 prefix?

A network technician runs an interface configuration command on a newly connected Linux server and sees an IPv6 address of fe80::1a2b:3c4d:5e6f:7a8b assigned to the NIC before any DHCPv6 or SLAAC global address appears. The technician needs to document what kind of address this is. Which type of IPv6 address is the technician looking at?

A network technician is documenting how a Layer 2 switch handles a frame whose destination MAC address is not yet in the switch's MAC address table. Which action will the switch take with that frame?

A network administrator is documenting the OSI layer where each protocol operates for a compliance audit. She needs to identify which protocol functions at the Application layer (Layer 7) so it can be grouped with the other user-facing services. Which protocol should she list under Layer 7?

A company's e-commerce website runs on four identical web servers. During peak shopping periods, users complain about slow response times, even though each individual server has spare capacity when checked separately. The network team wants to ensure incoming HTTPS requests are spread evenly across all four servers and that traffic is automatically redirected if one server fails. Which appliance should they deploy?

A media company streams a live internal training video to roughly 200 employees simultaneously. The network team wants the server to send only a single stream that is delivered only to the workstations that have subscribed to the feed, without flooding every host on the LAN. Which traffic type best meets this requirement?

A network technician is cabling connections between top-of-rack switches within the same data center. The runs are all under 100 meters, and the organization wants to minimize transceiver and cabling costs while supporting 10 Gbps speeds. Which transmission medium is the most appropriate choice?