What Is Fabric Networking?
The networking industry came up with the term 'Fabric' to describe networking technologies that allow switches to connect in a way to achieve a mesh topology. More ...
IPv6 Payload Length Field and Jumbograms
The IPv6 Payload Length field is a 16-bit field that indicates the length in bytes of just the payload following the main IPv6 header, it does not include the main IPv6 header. If the IPv6 packet has one or more extension headers, they are included in the number of bytes contained in the Payload Length field. More ...
PoE (Power Over Ethernet)
Say you want to mount a wireless access point (AP) on the ceiling. Although no electrical outlet is available, a switch feature called Power over Ethernet (PoE) IEEE 802.3at standard offers as much as 32.4W of power over a UTP cable. More ...
Link Aggregation
If all ports on a switch are operating at the same speed, the ports most likely to experience congestion are ports connecting to another switch or router. To help alleviate congested links between switches, you can logically combine multiple physical connections into a single logical connection. More ...
Routing Information Protocol (RIP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), and Routing Convergence
A routing protocol advertises route information between routers. Dynamic routing protocols are available that allow a router's routing table to be updated as network conditions change. More ...
Free eBook: Introduction to 802.11 Wireless
The growth of wireless mobile devices is incredible. If you're an IT professional you'll need to understand wireless technology. This free ebook by Aaron Balchunas explains everything from radio frequency to wireless authentication protocols. More ...
IPv6 Multicast Addresses
An IPv6 multicast address defines a group of devices known as a multicast group. Unlike IPv4, there is no broadcast address in IPv6. Instead, IPv6 uses multicast. A packet sent to a multicast group always has a unicast source address. More ...
Wireless Standards - 802.11a 802.11b 802.11g 802.11n 802.11i Explained
The IEEE 802.11 family of standards which provides for Wireless Ethernet or (Wi-Fi) has evolved over the years. This article explains the differences between 802.11a 802.11b 802.11g 802.11n and 802.11i. More ...
Active Directory : How Objects Are Stored and Identified
Data stored in Active Directory is presented to the user in a hierarchical fashion. There are two types of objects: containers and non-containers. The most common type of container in Active Directory is an OU (Organizational Unit). Non-container objects are also known as leaf nodes. More ...
Networking Protocols, Ports, Standards, and Organizations What Does it All Mean?
A protocol is a set of rules that devices agree to. A port is specific electronic connection, or software interface a protocol uses. A standard is a specification that the characteristics of the protocol's signal and the design of the interface. Networking standards are developed by networking standards organizations. More ...
RIP (Routing Information Protocol)
RIP is an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) that uses hop count as a metric. RIP comes in versions 1, 2, and RIPng (RIP next generation) an extension of RIPv2 for support of IPv6. More ...
IPv6 Address Format
IPv4 is running out of addresses. IPv6 was designed to solve this problem therefore it is important
to understand the format of an IPv6 address. More ...
Unicast, Multicast, Broadcast. What Does It Mean?
Unicast, Multicast, and Broadcast are different network transmission methods. Unicast is a transmission between a single sender and a single receiver, while Broadcast is a transmission from a single sender to all clients on the network. More ...
Evolution of the Microsoft NOS (Active Directory)
A Network operating system (NOS0) is a networked environment in which resources, such as users, groups, and computers are stored in a central repository. Microsoft's first integrated NOS environment became available in 1990 with the release of Windows NT 3.0. More ...
IPv6 Packet Fragmentation
Unlike in IPv4, an IPv6 router does not fragment a packet unless it is the source of the packet. The fields used in the IPv4 header for fragmentation do not exist in the IPv6 header. More ...
