Answer Description

Netstat will show open connections by IP and port. Nslookup will resolve domains to IP addresses (DNS). Ipconfig /all will show you the default gateway and your MAC addresses but not the MAC of another network device. arp -a will show the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) table, which will include the ARP for your default gateway.

Wikipedia

The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a communication protocol used for discovering the link layer address, such as a MAC address, associated with a given internet layer address, typically an IPv4 address. This mapping is a critical function in the Internet protocol suite. ARP was defined in 1982 by RFC 826, which is Internet Standard STD 37. ARP has been implemented with many combinations of network and data link layer technologies, such as IPv4, Chaosnet, DECnet and Xerox PARC Universal Packet (PUP) using IEEE 802 standards, FDDI, X.25, Frame Relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). In Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) networks, the functionality of ARP is provided by the Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP).

Answer Description

Blocking certain ports can restrict specific types of network traffic, for example blocking port 80 would restrict the HTTP protocol. It is important to know however that this only blocks the default HTTP port and another could be used to bypass this measure.

Answer Description

A Protocol Analyzer, also known as a Packet Sniffer, will record a packet and save it to your computer so you can analyze network traffic at a later time.

Wikipedia

A protocol analyzer is a tool (hardware or software) used to capture and analyze signals and data traffic over a communication channel. Such a channel varies from a local computer bus to a satellite link, that provides a means of communication using a standard communication protocol (networked or point-to-point). Each type of communication protocol has a different tool to collect and analyze signals and data. Specific types of protocol analyzers include: A telecom network protocol analyzer A network packet analyzer A bus analyzer An IP load tester

Answer Description

ifconfig can be used to display or modify all network interfances on Linux. Ipconfig is used for Windows systems.

Answer Description

The arp command display and modifies entries in the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) table, which contains IP and MAC Addresses.

Wikipedia

The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a communication protocol used for discovering the link layer address, such as a MAC address, associated with a given internet layer address, typically an IPv4 address. This mapping is a critical function in the Internet protocol suite. ARP was defined in 1982 by RFC 826, which is Internet Standard STD 37. ARP has been implemented with many combinations of network and data link layer technologies, such as IPv4, Chaosnet, DECnet and Xerox PARC Universal Packet (PUP) using IEEE 802 standards, FDDI, X.25, Frame Relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). In Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) networks, the functionality of ARP is provided by the Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP).

Answer Description

Network Interface Controller (NIC) teaming is a form of link aggregation that allows multiple connections for redundancy.

Wikipedia

In computer networking, link aggregation is the combining (aggregating) of multiple network connections in parallel by any of several methods, in order to increase throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain, to provide redundancy in case one of the links should fail, or both. A link aggregation group (LAG) is the combined collection of physical ports. Other umbrella terms used to describe the concept include trunking, bundling, bonding, channeling or teaming. Implementation may follow vendor-independent standards such as Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) for Ethernet, defined in IEEE 802.1AX or the previous IEEE 802.3ad, but also proprietary protocols.

Answer Description

Because your traversing different levels, wireless is out. Coax isn't practical to begin with, so that leave Ethernet and Fiber. The question specifies this is a large building, with a large network, so fiber is the best choice.

Wikipedia

Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of infrared light through an optical fiber. The light is a form of carrier wave that is modulated to carry information. Fiber is preferred over electrical cabling when high bandwidth, long distance, or immunity to electromagnetic interference is required. This type of communication can transmit voice, video, and telemetry through local area networks or across long distances.Optical fiber is used by many telecommunications companies to transmit telephone signals, internet communication, and cable television signals. Researchers at Bell Labs have reached a record bandwidth–distance product of over 100 petabit × kilometers per second using fiber-optic communication.

Answer Description

STP (Shielded Twisted Pair) is a type of Ethernet that has an EMI resistant jacket. Because there are a large amount servers, STP is necessary. UTP should be avoided in data centers because they are susceptible to crosstalk. Fiber is incorrect because the question specifies we need a cost effective solutions. Typically, fiber will be used on trunk and backbone connections.

Wikipedia

Twisted pair cabling is a type of wiring in which two conductors of a single circuit are twisted together for the purposes of improving electromagnetic compatibility. Compared to a single conductor or an untwisted balanced pair, a twisted pair reduces electromagnetic radiation from the pair and crosstalk between neighboring pairs and improves rejection of external electromagnetic interference. It was invented by Alexander Graham Bell.For additional noise immunity, twisted-pair cabling may be shielded. Cable with shielding is known as shielded twisted pair (STP) and without as unshielded twisted pair (UTP).

Answer Description

The ipconfig command will present you with information on all NIC's on a computer or server.

Wikipedia

ipconfig (standing for "Internet Protocol configuration") is a console application program of some computer operating systems that displays all current TCP/IP network configuration values and refreshes Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Domain Name System (DNS) settings.

Answer Description

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is used to have a secure connection over a public network.

Wikipedia

A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The benefits of a VPN include increases in functionality, security, and management of the private network. It provides access to resources that are inaccessible on the public network and is typically used for remote workers. Encryption is common, although not an inherent part of a VPN connection.A VPN is created by establishing a virtual point-to-point connection through the use of dedicated circuits or with tunneling protocols over existing networks. A VPN available from the public Internet can provide some of the benefits of a wide area network (WAN). From a user perspective, the resources available within the private network can be accessed remotely.

Answer Description

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) transfers emails between servers using TCP 25.

Wikipedia

The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typically use SMTP only for sending messages to a mail server for relaying, and typically submit outgoing email to the mail server on port 587 or 465 per RFC 8314. For retrieving messages, IMAP (which replaced the older POP3) is standard, but proprietary servers also often implement proprietary protocols, e.g., Exchange ActiveSync. SMTP's origins began in 1980, building on concepts implemented on the ARPANET since 1971. It has been updated, modified and extended multiple times. The protocol version in common use today has extensible structure with various extensions for authentication, encryption, binary data transfer, and internationalized email addresses. SMTP servers commonly use the Transmission Control Protocol on port number 25 (for plaintext) and 587 (for encrypted communications).

Answer Description

The Windows ping command uses ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo request to reach a target IP, then the host will reply with an ICMP Reply.

Wikipedia

Ping is a computer network administration software utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network. It is available for virtually all operating systems that have networking capability, including most embedded network administration software. Ping measures the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer that are echoed back to the source. The name comes from active sonar terminology that sends a pulse of sound and listens for the echo to detect objects under water.Ping operates by means of Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets. Pinging involves sending an ICMP echo request to the target host and waiting for an ICMP echo reply. The program reports errors, packet loss, and a statistical summary of the results, typically including the minimum, maximum, the mean round-trip times, and standard deviation of the mean. The command-line options of the ping utility and its output vary between the numerous implementations. Options may include the size of the payload, count of tests, limits for the number of network hops (TTL) that probes traverse, interval between the requests and time to wait for a response. Many systems provide a companion utility ping6, for testing on Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) networks, which implement ICMPv6.

Answer Description

Tracert (traceroute) is a diagnostic tool that will display the route and measure transmit times between network devices.

Wikipedia

In computing, traceroute and tracert are computer network diagnostic commands for displaying possible routes (paths) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The history of the route is recorded as the round-trip times of the packets received from each successive host (remote node) in the route (path); the sum of the mean times in each hop is a measure of the total time spent to establish the connection. Traceroute proceeds unless all (usually three) sent packets are lost more than twice; then the connection is lost and the route cannot be evaluated. Ping, on the other hand, only computes the final round-trip times from the destination point. For Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) the tool sometimes has the name traceroute6 and tracert6.

Answer Description

IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long, represented in hexadecimal format.

Wikipedia

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and is intended to replace IPv4. In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF, which subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017.Devices on the Internet are assigned a unique IP address for identification and location definition. With the rapid growth of the Internet after commercialization in the 1990s, it became evident that far more addresses would be needed to connect devices than the IPv4 address space had available. By 1998, the IETF had formalized the successor protocol. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, theoretically allowing 2128, or approximately 3.4×1038 total addresses. The actual number is slightly smaller, as multiple ranges are reserved for special use or completely excluded from use. The two protocols are not designed to be interoperable, and thus direct communication between them is impossible, complicating the move to IPv6. However, several transition mechanisms have been devised to rectify this. IPv6 provides other technical benefits in addition to a larger addressing space. In particular, it permits hierarchical address allocation methods that facilitate route aggregation across the Internet, and thus limit the expansion of routing tables. The use of multicast addressing is expanded and simplified, and provides additional optimization

Answer Description

RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) uses TCP port 3389.

Wikipedia

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft which provides a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection. The user employs RDP client software for this purpose, while the other computer must run RDP server software. Clients exist for most versions of Microsoft Windows (including Windows Mobile), Linux (for example Remmina), Unix, macOS, iOS, Android, and other operating systems. RDP servers are built into Windows operating systems; an RDP server for Unix and OS X also exists (which one? Citation please). By default, the server listens on TCP port 3389 and UDP port 3389.Microsoft currently refers to their official RDP client software as Remote Desktop Connection, formerly "Terminal Services Client". The protocol is an extension of the ITU-T T.128 application sharing protocol. Microsoft makes some specifications public on their website.

Answer Description

Electric cabling can be effected by Electromagnetic Interference (EMO) when nearby other electric cables. Fiber-optic is not affected by EMI because it uses light to transmit data instead of electricity.

Wikipedia

An optical fiber (or fibre in British English) is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber and find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data transfer rates) than electrical cables. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss; in addition, fibers are immune to electromagnetic interference, a problem from which metal wires suffer. Fibers are also used for illumination and imaging, and are often wrapped in bundles so they may be used to carry light into, or images out of confined spaces, as in the case of a fiberscope. Specially designed fibers are also used for a variety of other applications, some of them being fiber optic sensors and fiber lasers.Optical fibers typically include a core surrounded by a transparent cladding material with a lower index of refraction. Light is kept in the core by the phenomenon of total internal reflection which causes the fiber to act as a waveguide. Fibers that support many propagation paths or transverse modes are called multi-mode fibers, while those that support a single mode are called single-mode fibers (SMF). Multi-mode fibers generally have a wider core diameter and are used for short-distance communication links and for applications where high power must be transmitted.

Answer Description

In the Internet Protocol (IP) Time To Live (TTL) is the lifetime of the data being passed over the network before the information is dropped. This is to prevent an infinite loop. Is is defined as the number of hops a packet can go before being discarded. Each time an OSI layer 3 (routing) device handles a packet it deducts the TTL value of the packet by one. If a layer 3 device encounters a TTL of 0 the packet will be discarded. For IPv6 the TTL field has been renamed to hop limit.

Wikipedia

Time to live (TTL) or hop limit is a mechanism which limits the lifespan or lifetime of data in a computer or network. TTL may be implemented as a counter or timestamp attached to or embedded in the data. Once the prescribed event count or timespan has elapsed, data is discarded or revalidated. In computer networking, TTL prevents a data packet from circulating indefinitely. In computing applications, TTL is commonly used to improve the performance and manage the caching of data.

Answer Description

On WiFi networks the term roaming is used to describe the ability for multiple Wireless Access Points (WAP) on a single network to serve as one seemingly continuous access point. These points will generally share a single SSID and authentication mechanisms, allowing users to move freely without disconnecting or having to reauthenticate.

Answer Description

MLPPP is used for link aggregation. For example, it would allow two physical dial up lines to one company computer.

Wikipedia

In computer networking, Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) is a data link layer (layer 2) communication protocol between two routers directly without any host or any other networking in between. It can provide connection authentication, transmission encryption, and data compression. PPP is used over many types of physical networks, including serial cable, phone line, trunk line, cellular telephone, specialized radio links, ISDN, and fiber optic links such as SONET. Since IP packets cannot be transmitted over a modem line on their own without some data link protocol that can identify where the transmitted frame starts and where it ends, Internet service providers (ISPs) have used PPP for customer dial-up access to the Internet. Two derivatives of PPP, Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) and Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (PPPoA), are used most commonly by ISPs to establish a digital subscriber line (DSL) Internet service connection with customers.

Answer Description

When using the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) a client network device is given a lease on an IP address for a certain amount of time. The lease time is set by the DHCP server.

Wikipedia

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a client–server architecture.The technology eliminates the need for individually configuring network devices manually, and consists of two network components, a centrally installed network DHCP server and client instances of the protocol stack on each computer or device. When connected to the network, and periodically thereafter, a client requests a set of parameters from the DHCP server using the DHCP protocol. DHCP can be implemented on networks ranging in size from residential networks to large campus networks and regional ISP networks. Many routers and residential gateways have DHCP server capability. Most residential network routers receive a unique IP address within the ISP network. Within a local network, a DHCP server assigns a local IP address to each device. DHCP services exist for networks running Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), as well as version 6 (IPv6). The IPv6 version of the DHCP protocol is commonly called DHCPv6.