Essentials

Drive type zero and not installed means the same thing.

Configure and install an IDE interface board--this will be performed only if the motherboard does not support the IDE interface.

When installing SCSI drives externally, be sure to use a SCSI approved cable and use the proper connectors.

Master and Slave are set on the drives, not on the controller. There is a possibility of having a Primary and Secondary controller though.

IDE hard drive parameters are automatically read from the disk with newer BIOS chips but must be manually entered on older architectures. Incorrectly setting the parameters will result in at best poor performance but will most likely render the drive inaccessible. The best thing to do if the values are unknown is to get on the Internet and try to find a spec sheet for the drive. Most manufacturers have posted all their drive specs.

The BIOS auto detect feature eliminates the need for you to set the drive, other than it being set to auto detect!

The advantage of NDIS is that it offers protocol multiplexing so that multiple protocol stacks can be used at the same time. NDIS 3.1 supports Plug and Play.

Protocol analyzers generate statistics based on the network traffic to help create a picture of the networks cabling, software, file server, clients and interface cards. Most have a built-in Time-domain reflectometers (TDRs).

The high-level format creates the DOS boot sector. The DOS FORMAT command is the utility used to perform the high-level format.

Allows a diskless Workstation.

Remote-Boot PROMs allow computers with no hard drive or floppy drive to have access to the network through the use of their memory.

A Baseband system will use digital signaling over a single frequency as "on/off" states.

Baseband transmission uses digital signaling over a single frequency. The digital signal uses the complete bandwidth with a discrete digital signal. Current state and state transition are ways in which data may be represented by a digital signal. Token passing and contention are access methods for networks.

Broadband systems use analog signaling and a range of frequencies. Analog signals are continuous and non-discrete. Baseband networks are digital and uses discrete pulses of electricity or light.

Broadband uses amplifiers to regenerate analog signals but since broadband is unidirectional it must have a way to have two data paths for transmission. This means either using a split or a dual cable configuration--one for sending and one for receiving. Using mid-split method, the bandwidth is divided into two channels, each using different frequencies to support separate transmitting and receiving of signals. Each device on a baseband network can already transmit bi-directional. Some can even transmit both directions at the same time.

Baseband systems use the entire communication channel capacity to transmit a single data signal. Baseband systems are bi-directional.

Broadband uses analog signaling and a range of frequencies.

Fiber-optic cable length can be up to 2 kilometers or 6,562 feet. One mile is 5,280 feet, making the requirement a distance of 6,336 feet.

Fiber-optic cable length can be up to 2 kilometers or 6,562 feet. It is completely immune to electromagnetic interference and is rather costly in comparison to other options. Where great distances and high security is needed, fiber-optic is often required.

Thinnet cable has a maximum usable cable length of 607 feet or 185 meters. It is imperative that the proper type of cable be used. These two types of cable cannot be used together. A BNC barrel connector can be used to connect two shorter segments into one longer one. A loose cable connection can disrupt network activity. As a conversion tip, 1 Meter = 3.281 Feet. (185 Meters = 606.985 Feet).

Thinnet coaxial cable (10Base2) transmits at 10 Mbps up to about 607 feet per cable segment.

Thicknet cable transmits at 10 Mbps up to about 1,640 feet per cable segment.

Unshielded Twisted Pair cable is 10BaseT transmitting normally at 10 Mbps but recently at 100 Mbps (with fast hubs and cards) up to about 328 feet (328.1 ft, to be exact).

RG-58 is coaxial cable with 50-ohm resistance.

Thicknet uses a DB-15 connector also called DIX or AUI. A transceiver and a repeater can interconnect Thicknet with Thinnet.

BNC terminators must close each end of the bus cable.

Thicknet can carry a signal 500 meters (1640.5 feet). As a conversion tip, 1 m = 3.281 feet.

Ethernet 10Base2 and 10Base5 use 50-ohm terminators. 10Base2 transmits at 10 Mbps over a segment length of about 185 meters (the "2" represents "about 200 meters"). 10Base2 uses thin coaxial cable with a minimum segment length of .5 meters (20 inches) and no more than 30 nodes (computers or repeaters) per 185 meter segment. Thicknet was designed to support a backbone for a large department or an entire building. Its maximum segment length is 500 meters.

Thicknet is good for backbones and Thinnet is used for branch segments. Thicknet has a larger copper core than Thinnet and can carry signals much farther. Transceivers attach to the Thicknet cable and the transceiver cable's AUI connector plugs into a repeater. Branching segments of Thinnet plug into the repeater and connect the computers to the network.

The maximum distance for a 10BaseFL segment is 2000 meters. This is used for running Ethernet over fiber-optic cable. 10BaseFL is 10 Mbps, baseband over fiber-optic cable.

The Session layer of the OSI Reference Model provides end-to-end communication integrity. The OSI Reference Model Session layer allows two computers to communicate and maintain control over a single session.

MEM CC00 is a hexadecimal reference to upper memory.

Some cards have both external and on-board transceivers.

Software settings must usually match settings on the card.

A network or protocol analyzer could also be used. A voltmeter measures AC or DC voltage between two electronic points. An Ohmmeter measures resistance or continuity between two points in a cable to determine if cable has an open or reveals a short.

The ISA data bus operates at 8 MHz, regardless of the CPU speed. Minimum CPU requirements for NT server is 486/33 CPU or higher.

Using Bus topology if the cable is not functioning between terminators the entire network will be down.

The three types of hubs are active, passive, and hybrid. A hybrid hub can connect different cable types to the same hub.

Broadband systems use amplifiers to regenerate the analog signal.

RJ-45 connectors are used to connect Unshielded Twisted Pair cable. RJ-45 connectors house 8 wires (4 twisted pairs) connections.

Plenum cabling is made of special material that is fire resistant and is designed to give off less poisonous chemical fumes in case of fire. It may also be specified in local building codes for overhead use.

Each Network adapter card must have a unique network address that will convert the parallel input from the computer bus into a serial output. Adapter cards transmit at a certain speed and each receiving adapter must receive at the transmission speed of the sending adapter.

Point-to-point communication uses only two systems to make the connection. This type of system will transfer data between computers and between computers and other devices such as printers or bar code readers.

Thinnet uses RG-58, 50-Ohm cable.

The PCI bus uses a 32 bit bus and PCI video cards are generally faster than VLB or others for graphics intensive operations.

Thinnet commonly uses RG-58 A/U cable.

This is caused by an IRQ conflict in the new server. Two or more devices are using the same interrupt. When a device, in this case the NIC card, raises an interrupt, the CPU is not sure what device raised it. The server in question can transmit because the CPU sends data to the NIC via the I/O address. In this case you can transmit but not receive.

I/O Address 360 conflicts with the I/O Adress of the LPT1 port but will not necessarily prevent printing. The I/O address is a RANGE of addresses; 360 = 360-37Fh. LPT1 uses 378-37Fh. H=hex. IRQ 3 is used by COM2. If COM2 is assigned to another device, like a mouse, and the mouse driver is loaded, a conflict will occur. The MEM=CC000 does not conflict with Upper memory; a sign of the board MLID driver loading.

Allows a diskless workstation by establishing communication with the server and returning the appropriate boot information.

Remote-Boot PROMs allow computers with no hard drive or floppy drive to have access to the network using their memory.

Broadband systems use analog signaling and a range of frequencies. Analog signals are continuous and non-discrete.

Broadband uses amplifiers to regenerate analog signals, not repeaters, but since broadband is unidirectional it must have a way to have two data paths for transmission. This means either using a split or a dual cable configuration - one for sending and one for receiving.

Fiber-optic is the best cable to use when connecting sites up to 2 km or 6562 feet apart.

You probably experienced this the first time you installed an Ethernet network card. COM1 uses INT 4, COM2 uses INT 3. Interrupt 3 is the default for the Eagle/Novell NE2000 NIC.

A transceiver for Thinnet Ethernet uses a vampire tap or piercing tap to make the actual physical connection. Connection is made with an AUI port connector on the card.

50-Ohm terminators are used on the cable ends and they must test at 50 ohms.

A special chip called a PROM can be used on a network adapter card for a high security workstation with no disk drives.

The correct syntax in the config.sys file is Device= followed by the complete path. Himem.sys must be loaded to use high memory.

Interrupts or exceptions are interpreted by the processor to handle external device problems. Exceptions can be classified as faults, traps or aborts and are not necessarily considered serious errors as a result of memory faults.

NDIS allows for a flexible environment of data exchange. This interface is used by protocol drivers to communicate with the NIC and offers protocol multiplexing so that multiple protocol stacks can be used at the same time. The protocol manager establishes MAC and Transport protocol driver connection and is responsible for routing network requests to the appropriate driver.

ODI was developed by Apple and Novell to simplify driver development and to provide support for multiple protocols on the same card.

NetBEUI is NetBIOS extended user interface. Network vendors separated NetBIOS, a Session layer protocol, so that it could be used with other routable transport protocols. NetBEUI is a transport protocol and does not support routing.

NWLink, a transport protocol, is Microsoft's version of IPX/SPX. The IPX protocol is not tied to a particular frame type. In Token Ring, there are two IPX supported frames. A frame type is the structure of headers added by the Data Link layer to the data packet.

Layer 1, the physical layer, transmits unstructured raw bits over a physical medium such as the network cable. Point-to-point and multi-point are the two basic connection types. Broadband and baseband are two different techniques for transmitting encoded signals over cable. Baseband uses digital signals and broadband uses analog signals.

In a network several protocols must work together so that data is prepared, transferred, received and acted upon. A protocol stack is several protocols whereby each layer specifies a different protocol for handling a subsystem function of the communication process.

486 DX processors include a math co-processor not included with 486SX.

The OSI Reference Model Layers are to provide services to the next higher layer and to shield those layers from the details of how the services are actually implemented. Each OSI layer does communicate with the levels below it as well as those above it.

The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is a public domain protocol and the others were developed for their company's proprietary product.

The OSI Reference Model transport protocols consists of the TCP, SPX, ATP, NWLink, and NetBEUI. IPX is a network protocol.

The OSI Reference Model Network layer protocols are IP, IPX, NWLink, NetBEUI, and DDP. TCP and SPX protocols are part of the Transport layer of the OSI Model. Note that NWLink and NetBEUI are both transport and network protocols. DDP stands for Datagram Delivery Protocol, TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol, IPX stands for Internetwork Packet Exchange, and IP stands for Internet Protocol.

The OSI Reference Model Transport layer protocols provide the following functions Message unpacking, Message acknowledgment, and reassembling of messages. The Transport layer has the responsibility to interface between the Session and the Network layers of the OSI Reference Model. It will also perform the following functions:

-Message fragmentation and reassembling of long messages.
-Flow control, error handling and problem solving of packet reception.
-Ensures packet error free delivery, with no packet loss and reception of packets in sequence. Message encryption occurs at the Presentation layer.

The OSI Reference Model Data Link layer protocols receive data frames from the Network layer and pass them onto the Physical Layer. The Data Link layer will package the RAW bits received from the Physical layer into data frames and pass them onto the Network layer.

The IEEE 802.6 category describes the Metropolitan Area Network.

Protocols that support multiple LAN-to-LAN communications are known as routable protocols.

The hardware devices require a means to communicate with the network operating system and the device driver provides an interface between the hardware and the operating system.

Packet generation starts at the Application layer of the OSI Reference Model and descends through all seven layers and onto the topology.

The Presentation layer is responsible for the following operations.

-Translating data into an intermediary format that will be commonly recognized.
-Responsible for protocol conversion, data translation, data encryption, character set conversion, and expanding graphical commands.
Name recognition is provided by the Session layer.

Error checking is provided in the Physical, Data Link, and Transport OSI Reference Model layers.

-Physical Layer provides bit by bit error correction
-Transport Layer makes sure that all of the packets sent have arrived from the send client
-Data Link Layer provides the Cyclical Redundancy Check (CRC)

The Network OSI Reference Model layer provides message addressing, translating logical addresses into physical addresses, and translating names into physical addresses.

The IEEE 802.12 category describes the 100-Mbps 100BaseVG-AnyLAN standard.

The IEEE 802.9 category describes the Integrated Voice/Data Network standard.

The Data Link layer of the OSI Reference Model is divided into two sublayers; the MAC Sublayer and the LLC Sublayer. or The two parts of the OSI Data Link Layer are the Logical Link Control and the Media Access Control.

The IEEE 802.2 Subcommittee describes the Logical Link Control category. IEEE 802 Category 802.2 defines the Data Link layer's Logical Link Control (LLC) section of the OSI Reference Model.

The IEEE 802.4 Subcommittee describes the Token passing bus standard.

Packets are the basic units of network communications. A packet is a unit of information containing data, header formatting, and header addressing.

The IEEE 802.10 Subcommittee describes the Networking Security implementations.

The IEEE 802.11 standard defines wireless networking technology implementations.

The Presentation layer is layer 6 and is the layer that provides redirector functionality. The Presentation OSI Reference Model layer handles decryption, encryption, encoding, decoding, and data translation.

The Data Link layer OSI Reference Model is the only layer to be divided into two sub-categories; the MAC sublayer and the LLC sublayer.

The 802 specifications define the way network adapter cards access and transfer data over physical media, including connecting, maintaining and disconnecting network devices. The IEEE 802.7 Subcommittee describes the Broadband Technical Advisory Group.

The Transport layer of the OSI Reference Model divides and repackages long messages? The Transport layer, (layer 4) provides flow control, error handling, packing and unpacking long messages and sends acknowledgements of receipt.

The Carrier-Sense Multiple Access / Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) method is used with the Contention Access Method on Ethernet bus topology. The CSMA/CA signals its intent to transmit before it actually transmits data, thus avoiding transmission collisions. Demand Priority allows implementation of a scheme where certain types of data will be given priority if there is contention.

The Physical layer of the OSI Reference Model has the responsibility to define how a cable is attached to the NIC.

The Network layer of the OSI Reference Model controls packet switching, routing and network packet congestion with priority of service. The Physical layer transmits unstructured raw bits over a physical medium such as the network cable. The MAC sublayer of the Data Link layer handles bridging.

IEEE protocols at the Physical layer are 802.3 (CSMA/CD LAN or Ethernet), 802.4 (token passing) and 802.5 (Token Ring). 802.4 is also referred to as a Token Bus LAN. The IEEE 802.1 category describes Internetworking.

The IEEE 802.5 Subcommittee describes the Token Ring. The IEEE 802 specifications define the way NICs access and transfer data over media, including connecting, maintaining and disconnecting network components.

The overall purpose of the OSI Reference layers is to provide services to the next layer, shield the upper layers from the details of how the services are actually implemented, and provide an action that will prepare the data for delivery to the networked client.

Token Ring topology uses the token passing media access method. On a token ring network, only that computer in possession of the token, preventing contention as well as simultaneous transmissions.

The Carrier-Sense Multiple Access method is used with Collision Detection on the Ethernet Bus topology to listen for signals on the cable before trying to transmit. The only difference is that the CA avoids collisions by stations announcing that they are going to transmit. They still would wait until the cable is free before sending this announcement but do not listen before transmitting data.

Token Ring topology uses the token passing media access method. On a token ring network, only that computer in possession of the token, preventing contention as well as simultaneous transmissions.

Each layer of the OSI Reference Model will add their own header addressing information to the data being delivered across the network. Additional formatting or addressing must be added at each layer to ensure that the packet will be successfully transmitted across the network.

The NWLink protocol works at the Network and Transport layers of the OSI Reference Model. The more popular application layer protocols are APPC, FTAM, X.400 (email), X.500 (directory services), SMTP (email), FTP (file transfer), and SNMP (network management).

Primary among ISO's accomplishments is the widely accepted Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model.

The Microsoft Troubleshooter for network printing includes these steps. Turning the printer off and then on will not solve the printing problem.

For a print job to successfully complete, it must follow a specified order. Knowing this order helps in troubleshooting when things go wrong.

Print jobs sent to a network shared printer are sent to a print queue where they will wait their turn to be printed (depending on their relative priority).

Most bi-directional printers will utilize the "out of paper" message to indicate not only empty paper trays, but other physical problems including paper jams.

Fault tolerance options are categorized in RAID levels. NT Server supports RAID levels 0,1 and 5. Level 0 is not fault-tolerant.

The service address is the address of a specific upper layer process or protocol. Network devices must have a unique physical address (MAC address) but may have multiple service addresses.

ESDI is one of the disk types that can be used for disk striping. IDE and ESDI drives cannot do sector sparing--only SCSI can. ESDI is old technology and is not being used today. We have placed this question here for your information. ST-506 was one of the original standards for computer disks.

The type of groups supplied with the Windows NT operating system are called local and global. Local groups function for the individual computer whereas Global groups function in the Domain environment.

Administration will control the creating and maintaining of user accounts and resources.

Within the five network management areas, the resource management will be used to support existing resources and to implement any new resources to your network. With a resource manager, you will be able to implement and support the network resources.

Passwords within the Windows NT environment are case sensitive and limited to 14 characters but can be left blank, and should be unique for each user.

Although used for many reasons, centralized security is mission critical in many networking environments.