Network Fundamentals & Terminology
What type of network covers a small geographic area, such as a single office or building, for local resource sharing?
Local Area Network (LAN)
What legacy topology relies on a single central coaxial cable with terminators at both ends to absorb remaining electrical signals?
Bus Topology
What are the three layers that make up the traditional Three-Tier Network Model?
Core, Distribution, and Access layers.
What unique hardware identification address is permanently assigned to a Network Interface Card (NIC)?
MAC Address Table (or Forwarding Table)
What logical addressing scheme do routers evaluate to determine how to route packets across distinct subnets?
IP Addresses
What term measures how easily a network can grow in capacity and number of devices without requiring a redesign?
Scalability
In which common topology do all endpoint workstations connect directly to a single central switch or hub?
Star Topology
Which architecture model reduces costs and management complexity for smaller networks by combining the Core and Distribution layers into one?
Collapsed Core Model
What table does a switch construct and dynamically update to keep track of which physical MAC address is connected to each switch port?
MAC address table (or Forwarding Table)
What router interface IP address is configured on local host devices as the designated exit path for destination networks outside the LAN?
Default Gateway
What network performance metric measures the delay or lag in packet delivery caused by bandwidth congestion?
Latency
Which redundant topology connects every device directly to every other device using separate cables, making it highly reliable but expensive?
Mesh Topology
What term describes network traffic moving between internal enterprise hosts and external destinations like the internet or cloud?
North-South Traffic
What standard technology allows Ethernet cables to carry electrical power along with data to devices like IP phones or wireless access points?
Power over Ethernet (PoE)
What device acts specifically as a bridge between wireless 802.11 Wi-Fi clients and a wired 802.3 Ethernet network?
Wireless Access Point (WAP)
What term describes a network's ability to remain functional despite a device or link failure due to redundant components?
Fault Tolerance
What two-layer data center topology connects every (redacted) switch directly to every (redacted) switch to deliver fixed two-hop latency?
Spine and Leaf Topology
What term describes internal traffic moving laterally between systems inside the same network or data center, such as server-to-server data transfers?
East-West Traffic
What switch feature copies frames from active network ports and sends them to a designated port for analysis by tools like Wireshark?
Port Mirroring
What hardware device converts optical light signals from fiber-optic cabling into standard copper Ethernet signals?
Optical Network Terminal (ONT)
What specialized network classification applies to wearable devices and fitness trackers?
Body Area Network (BAN)
What mechanism is used in a Ring topology to sequence data delivery and eliminate packet collisions?
Token Passing
In a Three-Tier architecture, which layer acts as the policy boundary, handling internal routing, WAN connections, and firewall filtering?
Distribution (Aggregation) Layer
What technique aggregates multiple physical Ethernet links into a single logical channel to increase throughput and provide link failover redundancy?
Link Aggregation
What type of virtualized routing solution runs inside a virtual machine or hypervisor without requiring dedicated physical router hardware?
Virtual Router (or Network Function Virtualization/NFV)