Top 10 networking interview questions and answers

Top 10 networking interview questions and answers | FAQs

This page covers networking questionnaire set prepared by experienced specialists in networking domain. These top 10 networking interview questions and answers help engineers seeking networking job to crack the interview with ease.These questions are also asked in college viva also. This networking FAQs are useful for various networking related jobs such as network administrator,network engineer etc.

Question -1: What is the difference between OSI stack and TCPIP stack?
Answer -1: OSI stack has 7 layers while TCPIP has 5 layers. Presentation and session do not exist in TCPIP stack. The idea here is to derive the knowledge of functions of each of these layers. Let me brief the main functions of each of these layers.
Layer-1(Physical layer): Takes care of providing reliable wired or wireless connection, wired one will have voltage and current specifications. wireless one will have forward error connection, modulation techniques.
Layer-2(Data link or MAC layer): Takes care of providing peer to peer reliable connection using addition of checksum or CRC. Also takes care of incorporating ethernet or MAC header with destination and source addresses as well as length of the packet. Takes care of re-transmission of erroneous packets.
Layer-3(IP layer): Takes care of routing the packet using ip address.
Layer-4(TCP or UDP layer): Takes care of multiplexing and demultiplexing of multiple applications. TCP is used for connection oriented and UDP for connectionless system. Takes care of sequencing of received dis-ordered packets.
Layer-5(session layer): Establishes, maintains and terminates the connection. Helps in billing.
Layer-6(presentation layer): Used to communicate having systems with two different syntax, such as EBCDIC and ASCII.
Layer-7(Application layer): Used to provide service to more than one applications with the help of assigning unique port address of size 16 bits. For example FTP has been assigned 23 and HTTP has been assigned 8080. Read More➤

Question -2: Explain protocol fields present in the ethernet header and IP header parts.
Answer -2: Ethernet Header = {source ethernet address, destination ethernet address, type} IP header = {source ip address, destination ip address, .... }
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Question -3: Explain the difference between Hub and Switch.
Answer -3: Hub works at layer-1 while Switch works at layer-2 or layer-3.
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Question -4: What is the difference between wired LAN and Wireless LAN?
Answer -4: Wired LAN uses wired ethernet devices such as hub, switch, router while Wireless LAN uses wireless devices (WLAN router, mifi router) etc. WLAN devices follow IEEE 802.11 based protocols.
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Question -5: What is the difference between router and gateway?
Answer -5: Both router and gateway works at layer-3 i.e. networking layer of OSI stack. Gateway interfaces two different set of protocols while router interfaces same set of protocols.
Refer networking gateway and what is router for more information.

Question -6: What is the function of TCP and UDP in the IP packets?
Answer -6: As mentioned above TCP is the short form of Transmission Control Protocol and is connection oriented protocol. UDP is the short form of User Datagram Protocol and is connectionless protocol. Protocol field in IP header is set to 6 for TCP and 17(decimal) for UDP.
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Question -7: Explain the difference between RIP and OSPF routing protocols.
Answer -7: Both of these are routing protocols,
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Question -8: What is IP address and Ethernet Address and what is the size of them?
Answer -8: IP address is logical address and ethernet address is MAC address or physical address.
There will be only one ethernet address which will be fixed. Any IP address can be assigned to system as per IPV4 or IPV6. For IPV4, IP address is 32 bits in size while for IPV6 it is 128 bits in size. Ethernet address is 48 bits in size and is manufacturer specific. Refer IP Address➤ and MAC Address➤ for more.

Question -9: What are the functions of ARP and RARP?
Answer -9: ARP Protocol➤ {does conversion of IP address to physical address}
RARP Protocol➤ {does conversion of physical address to the IP address}
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Question -10: What is the difference between internet and intranet?
Answer -10: The interconnection of computers in the organization is known as intranet. The interconnection of computers through out the world is known as internet.
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Question-11: What is networking?
Answer -11: Networking is very vast field. It is basically connection of people or things using networks known as internet. All the devices should have IP address to communicate with the peers in the network. People use various social networking tools and applications to communicate with one another over internet using smart IP devices.
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Question-12: How to setup cisco router or any other router?
Answer -12: It is very easy to install any router. As installation vary based on routers from different manufacturers, one has to follow manual provided by the supplier or manufacturer in order to set up the router.
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Question-13: What is the difference between NAT and PAT?
Answer -13: The full form of NAT is Network Address Translation and full form of PAT is Port Address Translation.
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Question-14: What is the difference between FTP and HTTP?
Answer -14: FTP is used as file transfer protocol. With this file can be send or receive. HTTP is used for internet browsing. They have unique port number assigned.
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Question-15: How many hosts are accommodated in IPV4? What is the difference between IPV4 and IPV6?
Answer -15: In class-C IPV4, there are 8 bits reserved for hosts and hence there will be 2⁸ = 256 -2 =254 hosts can be assigned unique IP addresses. We have substracted 2 as one is reserved for broadcast address(all 1's) and the other one(all 0's) for loop back testing.
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Networking is very vast field where in many types of jobs are available across the world. Following are the few of the networking related job positions.
• Network Administrator • Network Engineer • Network Analyst • Networking technician • Information System Administrator • Web master • Systems Analyst • network security specialist • computer programmer • computer repair specialist

These top 10 networking FAQs are very useful for all the above networking job positions. There will be questions on following topics also which we have not covered.
• operating systems(windows, unix, linux)
• security aspects(such as firewall etc.)
• backup or system recovery
• Wireless networking such as WLAN

Networking related links for further study

Circuit Switching vs Packet switching LAN vs WAN vs MAN Basics of OSI and TCP-IP Layers What is Hub What is Switch ARP Protocol format Gigabit Ethernet What is Bridge Firewall basics

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