CompTIA Network+ Certification Study Guide part 53 pps

While discuss-ing network monitordiscuss-ing, we touched on a few terms such as QoS, traffic shaping, load balancing, high availability, and fault tolerance also known as redundancy.. Ea

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without side authorities Lastly we addressed network monitoring which included a brief example of a few tools and how to use them to conduct network monitoring (see Figure 10.9) We also suggested some helpful tips

on where to look to collect logging information when using some of the default tools installed on operating systems such as Microsoft Windows

XP when we talk about the Event Viewer (see Figure 10.10) While discuss-ing network monitordiscuss-ing, we touched on a few terms such as QoS, traffic shaping, load balancing, high availability, and fault tolerance also known as

redundancy Each of these terms is very important in the network

monitor-ing construct because each one is directly related to all the rest in assistmonitor-ing you, the network engineer and/or manager, in troubleshooting and network optimization

ExAM oBJECTIvES FAST TrACK

Network Management

Network management includes the activities, techniques,

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sures, and gear that pertain to how you operate, administer, main-tain, and condition the networked information systems to ensure the highest availability possible within your budget

Maintaining network equipment, upgrades, repairs (preventative

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maintenance); configuring resources for optimal resource usage and network performance (VOIP) via monitoring techniques; configura-tion management documentaconfigura-tion (wiring schematics for your WAN links and local POP, network diagrams, baselines, policies and regu-lations) are all inclusive to network management

A common way of characterizing network management functions is

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FCAPS

Configuration Management

CM is a practice that involves documentation of a device’s

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ration, as well as keeping that documentation up-to-date so that any future changes can be controlled and tracked

Change control documentation provides a record of changes that

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have been made to a system, which can be used in troubleshooting problems and upgrading systems

Wiring schematics are simple sketches that are created before and

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during installation of the physical media used for computers to talk

to each other

Physical network diagrams contain each physical device and

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cal connection inside your network

Logical network diagrams include but are not limited to protocols,

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configurations, IP addressing, subnets, access control lists, and

security devices

A baseline is how networks operate under “normal” conditions

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which help you recognize performance, collision, and utilization

issues when comparing your “normal” conditions to previous

peri-ods of operation

A calculated plan of action to guide decisions and achieve sound

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outcomes is the goal of creating and adhering to policies,

proce-dures, and configurations

Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)

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requires telecommunications companies and equipment industries

to allow for surveillance capabilities

HIPAA – “The Office for Civil Rights enforces the HIPAA Privacy Rule,

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which protects the privacy of individually identifiable health

informa-tion, and the confidentiality provisions of the Patient Safety Rule …”

Network Monitoring

Network monitoring is a technique used to identify performance

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and connectivity issues Using a tool called packet sniffer allows

you to collect all the data that is being transmitted to and from

your computer or between routers

Notification documentation includes contact information for specific

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people in an organization, their roles, and when they should be called

Network performance optimization is simply assessing your

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network’s status on an ongoing basis by monitoring and discovering

network traffic and logs

QoS prevents dropped packets, delay/latency, jitter, and errors

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Some common QoS protocols include RSVP and MPLS

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Traffic shaping is a technique employed by specifying what traffic

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and at what rate (rate limiting) in a span of time (bandwidth throt-tling) you are going to allow in or out of your network

Load balancing is used on computer networks to distribute the

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incoming traffic upon other network devices if there are indications

of increased network traffic or “load”

High availability is a system design protocol which once

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mented assures a specific degree of uptime continuity in a specific period of time

Cache engines are networked servers dedicated to caching data for

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clients

Fault tolerance is also known as

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you have in place in the case of a network failure and the plan of how you can recover that lost device with a back-up device that is ready to take the failed one’s place

ExAM oBJECTIvES FrEquENTly ASKEd quESTIoNS

What do I need to know about network management for the test? Q:

Remember that network management refers to the activities, tech-A:

niques, measures, and gear that help network engineers and man-agers to operate, administer, maintain, and condition networked information systems to ensure the highest availability possible within an IT department’s budget

Are there any formal methods for implementing network manage-Q:

ment functions?

Yes A common way of characterizing network management func-A:

tions is FCAPS – Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, and Security

Why is MTTR important?

Q:

MTTR is important to understand because this is a critical mea-A:

surement in an overall network management framework used to measure how long it takes to execute replacement procedures for critical networked devices Keeping MTTR short as possible will ensure you have the most efficient procedures and mechanisms in place to cut costs in your IT department’s budget so you can spend the savings on higher priority tasks

What does CM really have to do with computer networking?

Q:

CM is the most vital part of computer networking because without

A:

a written and agreed-upon plan to manage your network devices,

services, and failures you will find yourself stuck in complex

imple-mentations, troubleshooting, and replacing devices

What is the main difference between physical and logical network

Q:

diagrams?

The difference is that physical network diagrams are only going to

A:

include the physical characteristics of your network such as

loca-tion, media converter connections, and the speed of the network

links, whereas logical network diagrams only include the logical

pieces of your network such as IP address, subnets, protocols,

ser-vices, and so on

How do baselines and policies, procedures, and configurations

Q:

relate?

Baselines help you to identify how your network operates under

A:

“normal” conditions By creating a baseline you can start to

recog-nize performance, collision, and utilization issues when comparing

your “normal” conditions to previous periods of operation Your

baseline will then guide how your policies, procedures, and

con-figurations should be created For example, if you want to create

a policy on how much space a user is allowed to have for e-mail

you must first determine how much space is being used for e-mail

by each user and then monitor that activity to find the “normal”

size or average size most users consume for email Once you have

established a baseline you now know what “normal” is for the size

of a typical user’s e-mail usage You now can decide whether or not

to create a policy to state each user is allowed to have this amount

of e-mail storage based on the normal conditions of the normal

e-mail user in the network

What is the most important part about network monitoring?

Q:

The most important point about network monitoring is that, just

A:

as documentation on configurations and changes can be helpful

in solving problems with your network, so can the logs generated

by the software running on these machines Network

monitor-ing includes review network system logs that are records of events

that have occurred and actions that were taken Many systems

will provide logs that will give automated information on events

that have occurred, including accounts that were used to log on,

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activities performed by users and by the system, and problems that transpired

Is QoS different from traffic shaping?

Q:

Yes QoS is a measure of value of a network service (that is VoIP) A:

compared to the expected or predicted performance quality that net-work service is actually producing on your netnet-work Increasing usable bandwidth and lowering latency are the goals of traffic shap-ing This technique is employed by specifying a traffic type to be allowed in and out of your network which is to be governed by a con-figured targeted rate (rate limiting) and time span (bandwidth throt-tling) In other words we use QoS to identify what traffic to shape [Q] What is the difference between load balancing and high availability? Q:

The difference between load balancing and high availability is A:

that we use load balancing to distribute high volumes of traffic so that we can achieve a degree of high availability Load balancing

is a technique employed on computer networks to distribute the incoming traffic upon other network devices if there are indica-tions of increased network traffic or “load” High availability is a system design protocol which once implemented assures a spe-cific degree of uptime continuity in a spespe-cific period of time The goal of high availability is to ensure that users have the maxi-mum uptime so that they can access network resources anytime and anywhere

SElF TEST

You have just been hired to Aplura Inc., a global ISP, as their first

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junior network analyst Bob, your supervisor, was late this morn-ing and before he picked up his daily cup of coffee he asks you to begin troubleshooting the connectivity from your office’s border router to the border router in your remote office in Sydney, Aus-tralia You find the CM documentation but you are looking for the link speed of your router to determine if it is correct What piece of information is missing from this document?

A Physical Access Methods

B Service Protocols

C Hardware Devices

D Software Applications

It is 2 a.m (EST) on a Friday night You are at work sweating

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because you cannot find a piece of CM documentation that would

resolve this crazy issue that got you out of bed four hours ago You

have looked in the server room and now you are trying to break into

your boss’s office to see if he has what you are looking for Just last

week your company hired a consulting firm to install new switches

that can be remotely managed by your Chief Information Officer’s

blackberry You didn’t care nor did you pay any mind to what CM

changes have occurred, you were too busy fighting off users’

pass-word issues But now, 2 a.m on a Friday, you are in a real need

of that document that describes the login procedures for the new

switches What type of CM documentation are you looking for?

A Physical network diagram documentation

B Wiring schematics documentation

C Configuration updates documentation

D Change control documentation

Your friend and coworker Mike just got approval to buy four new

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servers that will increase your fault tolerance by 80 percent You

both plan to celebrate by making a dinner reservation at the finest

restaurant in town Thirty minutes before you get to leave for the

day your supervisor says, “We need three segments of UTP cabling

made, 19.5-feet long to connect their notebooks to the

develop-ment lab.” There is no other way they can connect up and this is

urgent now because they have just received a call from your

compa-ny’s top customer who wants a demonstration of the new product

In order to execute this demo for the customer they need network

connectivity now! But you forgot how to make UTP cables; where

can you find this information?

A Physical network diagram

B Logical network diagram

C Wiring schematics

D Wiring network server rack schematics

As the network manager for a small ISP in Maryland serving over

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2,000 customers across the eastern United States, you are in charge

of daily operations Your regional supervisor just received a phone

call from corporate He asks you over the phone to develop a

calcu-lated plan of action to guide decisions and achieve sound outcomes

that provide guidelines that the installation contractors will use on

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how to access the closest data center which will be the location that

is outfitted with the latest load balancing technology What kind of document is your regional supervisor asking you to create?

A Common management documentation

B CM documentation

C Procedure

D Policy The FCC reports on how businesses need to accommodate local

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law enforcement with respect to investigating identify theft Since your brother-in-law is a state trooper he tells you all about this new FCC report and how it’s going to affect the whole town Two weeks pass and you don’t hear anything new from your brother-in-law You ring him up on your cell phone to find out why Soon after he picks up the phone he says, “Hey, don’t you work for that commercial telecommunications company on 3rd Avenue?” You pause and say, “Yes, I do.” “Well, tomorrow morning Sargeant Dave Simpson is visiting your organization to investigate some cyber crime charges on a local; are you prepared

to help him when he arrives?” What kind of CM documentation should you be very familiar with in order to assist state and federal governments?

A Policy

B Regulation

C Procedure

D Logical network diagram Just as you arrive to work you get a phone call from that one user

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who always gives you a hard time over some simple user error like leaving their monitor off Well this time the user cannot access her favorite news Web site She tries and tries, but the Web site still doesn’t come up You check her connectivity from her computer to the switch; it’s good You ping her computer from your computer; it’s good You now want to capture packets inbound and outbound from her computer What network monitoring tool would you use

to complete this task?

A Event viewer

B Cache engine

C Packet sniffer

D Load balancing server

You want to control and optimize the network traffic coming into

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your domain, but your boss just does not see why load balancing

is not helping What technique will assist your boss in increasing

usable bandwidth and lowering latency?

A Traffic shaping

B Load balancing

C High availability

D Jitter

You’re VoIP phone rings You pick it up and say, “Hello?” You listen

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very closely but all you can hear is broken speech as if someone is

talking very slowly but the words are not coming out right You notice

your VoIP switch is blinking red and you open up a command console

to your VoIP switch to see why Looks like there is a problem with

your switch and it is not prioritizing your VoIP traffic above all else

What kind of service do you need to enable to ensure VoIP has the

highest priority to ensure your VoIP packets are sent and received first?

A QoS

B Dropped

C Delay

D Jitter

You are working for Google™ as an intern for the summer You

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have always wondered how googling occurred on the back end of

all those servers You ask your supervisor what technique they use

to distribute incoming traffic onto other servers when the traffic

load became overbearing for one single server What technique does

your supervisor tell you that Google™ uses to allow for a group of

computers in a cluster to share traffic load?

A Traffic shaping

B Load balancing

C High availability

D Packet shaping

You were just promoted to network operations manager for your

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division called Customer Data Center Compliance You have worked

at DataFirst, Inc for over 10 years and you expected the promotion;

otherwise you were planning to take a job with MicroServer LLC

As you sit down at your new desk, with a window view, you get a

phone call from one of your subordinates Bob, who now works for

you, is fielding a customer’s question about being able to access

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Internet Web sites quicker than just re-downloading it each time he visits it You think really hard and tell Bob that he needs what?

A Network performance optimization

B Traffic policing

C Fault tolerance

D Cache engines What kind of network management documentation is displayed in

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Figure 10.15?

A Logical network diagram

B Physical network diagram

C Wiring schematic

D CM documentation

FIGurE 10.15

Sample network diagram Permission granted by Mark R Lindsey, mark@lindsey.name.

Network management would be impossible without policies,

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procedures and configurations Calculated plan of action to guide decisions and achieve sound outcomes is the goal of creating and adhering to policies, procedures and configurations Security vulnerabilities and network management challenges are the outcomes of badly written or non-existent policies To prevent this, consider how network technicians create user accounts If each

network technician created user accounts differently you would

have a lot of problems troubleshooting user account issues

be-cause none of the accounts are configured off a standard guideline

Policies provide guidelines on who can create user accounts for

instance Procedures are much more than guidelines Procedures lay

out each step needed to accomplish a task For example, when

cre-ating a user account, the user ID may be the person’s last name and

first initial and not to exceed eight characters Detailed steps with

procedures help execute policies What is a common policy topic?

A A specific layout of the wiring inside your network server room

B Detailed steps in how to configure network backups

C Procedures for installing load balancing software

D IP addressing scheme

As a junior network engineer you want to find out why a Windows

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application fails each time you open it You have four windows

open on your Windows XP workstation Which window is the one

you will use to see application errors?

FIGurE 10.16A

Sample Wireshark capture