Andrew Crouthamel

Cisco CCNA Training Notes

28

Testing Commands
Ping
Local loopback to test TCP/IP stack of device
IPv4 - 127.0.0.1
IPv6 - ::1
Test connectivity to other devices
Either local (LAN) or external (WAN)
Traceroute
Uses the TTL of IPv4 and the hop limit of IPv6 to map the route a packet
will take
TTL/hop limit will start at 1
First router will decrement and send a Time Exceeded
TTL/hop limit will then be set to 2
First router will decrement to 1, pass it on
Second router will decrement to 0, send a Time Exceeded
Process repeats until destination is reached
Traceroute application records this data and presents it as a printout to
the user

Data Link Layer Basics

TCP/IP network access layer is the same as OSI Layers 1 and 2

Packages packets into frames
Does media access control and error detection
Two sublayers
Logical Link Control (LLC)
Identifies which protocol is used for the frame
Places identifier into the frame
Media Access Control (MAC)
Provides data link layer addressing
Delimiting of data according to physical signaling needs of medium to be
transmitted across
Can change for each link between each device from source to destination
ex. Fiber -> Ethernet -> Frame Relay -> Wi-Fi
Encapsulates and de-encapsulates each hop
Generally standardized and defined by a number of organizations, unlike higher level
which is mostly by IETF
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
Header

Andrew Crouthamel

Cisco CCNA Training Notes

29

Control information in beginning of PDU

Fields
Start Frame
Indicates beginning of frame
Source and Destination Address
Indicates source and destination devices
Type
Indicates upper layer service
Priority/Quality of Service
Indicates a particular service level
Logical connection control
Physical link control
Flow control
Congestion control
Data
IP header, transport layer header, application data
Trailer
Control information for error detection at end of PDU
Transmitting device creates a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) and places it in the
Frame Check Sequence (FCS) field
Receiving device calculates its own CRC and checks the FCS field if configured
to do so
Drops frame if CRC is different
Media Access Control
Topology
How the connections between devices is to operate
Media Sharing
How the devices share the media, what rules to follow
Address
Only used on media link between two communicating devices
Specific to one interface on one device
Has to be unique
Common protocols
Ethernet
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)
802.11 Wireless
High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC)
Frame Relay
Ethernet Frame
Most common LAN protocol
IEEE 802.2 and 802.3
Supports 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, and 10Gbps
Uses CSMA/CD as the media access method

Andrew Crouthamel

Cisco CCNA Training Notes

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Uses Ethernet MAC address, 48 bit hexadecimal identifier

Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)
Used to deliver between two nodes
Used on many Serial WAN connections
Defined in RFCs, not IEEE standards
Uses logical connections between nodes to separate them from physical
architecture
802.11 Wireless
Uses same 802.2 LLC and 48-bit addressing scheme as other 802 LANs
Uses CSMA/CA as the media access method
Slightly slower by design, than CSMA/CD for Ethernet
Uses a random backoff timer for all nodes wishing to transmit
When airwaves become clear, nodes wait random amount of time
before transmitting, hopefully preventing a collision
This is because collision detection is not reliable on wireless

Physical Layer Basics

All communications need some sort of physical connection

Can be wired, using electrical pulses with a cable of various specifications
Can be wireless, using radio waves of various of specifications
Wired is the backbone of almost all networks
Requires switches to provide user connectivity
Wireless is now very common
Requires Wireless Access Points (WAP) to support devices
Many homes receive a home router from their ISP which will include wired and wireless
functionality
Network Interface Cards (NICs) connect a device to a network
Can be wired or wireless, supporting a variety of specifications
Defines how to encode and transmit the bits of data from the upper layers over a
specified media type
Data is segmented by the transport layer, placed into packets by the network
layer, encapsulated as frames by the data link layer, then further encoded and
transmitted in certain patterns by the physical layer
Three basic network media
Copper cable
Electrical pulses
Fiber-optic cable
Patterns of light
Wireless
Patterns for radio waves
Many organization define physical layer standards

Andrew Crouthamel

Cisco CCNA Training Notes

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International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

Telecommunications Industry Association/Electronic Industries Association
(TIA/EIA)
International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Federal Communication Commission (FCC)
European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ESTI)
Regional and local standards groups
Comprised of physical components, hardware devices, media
Data is taken and encoded into a defined pattern or code
Allows data to be more efficiently transmitted, less bits can be used to represent
a larger amount of bits
Think compression, like ZIP files
Manchester encoding
A 0 is a high to low voltage transition
A 1 is a low to high voltage transition
Used by older versions of Ethernet
Non-Return to Zero (NRZ)
Either zero or one, no neutral position
A 0 and 1 represented by different specific voltages
Common encoding
Faster transmission methods use more advanced encoding methods, such as
4B/5B or 8B/10B
Asynchronous transmission
Transmitted without an associated clock signal, time spacing may be arbitrary
Requires start and stop flags
Synchronous transmission
Transmitted with an associated clock signal
Modulation
Frequency Modulation (FM)
Amplitude Modulation (AM)
Pulse-Coded Modulation (PCM)
Bandwidth is the capacity of a medium to transmit data
Measured in bits per second
Kbps, Mbps or kb/s, Mb/s
Maximum bandwidth differs based upon physical media type
Throughput
Measure of the transfer of bits over a medium during a period of time
Factors such as amount of traffic, type of traffic, latency affect throughput
Different protocols will have different throughputs on the same medium (and
such, same bandwidth capability)
Goodput