Author: Author: Richard Pateau

During the past few articles I have talked about VLANs, VLAN tagging and all the good layer 2 things. But I didn’t discuss how hosts on different VLANs communicate, so let’s dive into it. The process of a host in one VLAN communicating with a host on another VLAN is interVLAN routing. This is the…

Hi, today I am going to dive into VLAN tagging and how it works. First let’s break down what access and trunk ports are. Access ports are ports that are connected to end devices such as PCs or laptops. When a switch port  is configured as an access port, it carries traffic for one VLAN…

Hi, today I am going to talk about VLANs (Virtual Local Area Network). In order to understand what VLANs are we need to know what a broadcast domain, and a LAN (Local Area Network) is. A broadcast domain is a set of devices that will receive a broadcast frame when any device in that set…

Hi, today I am going to dive into the classful addressing and classless addressing and their differences. Before classless IP addressing, there was rigid classful addressing. By classful, I mean that there is a block of fixed addresses per network, and the leading decimal had to be within a certain range as well. Let’s start…

Hi, today I am going to talk about the life of a packet which means the process that happens when an IP packet needs to arrive at a destination that must pass through intermediate routers. This is one of the most important topics to truly understand networking.  When a PC on one subnet wants to…

Today we are going to talk about default gateway and default routes. These two are vital when it comes to internetworking and external communication. A default gateway is a router that serves as the “exit door” into subnets that hosts are not currently in. Lets break it down, picture a topology with 10 PCs connected…

Today we are going to talk about connected and local routes. Routes are instructions/rules on a routing table that tells the router where to forward data. A router relies on routes on the routing table to know how to forward a packet. A routing table is populated with routes that tell the router the destination…

Today we are going to dive into the IPv4 header that is added when data is being encapsulated. The IPv4 header is vital for network communication, and gives instructions on how to deal with data. Although the IPv4 header can look daunting at first, after you are familiar with the concepts it makes sense as…

Today we are going to talk about subnet masks, network addresses and broadcast addresses. A subnet mask is very important when it comes to the world of networking and logical addressing. Without a subnet mask, IP addressing would be chaotic and unorganized. A subnet mask is a DDN that divides the network portion from the…

Today we are going to talk about IPv4 which stands for internet protocol version 4. An IP is a logical address that is used in layer 3 to identify host addresses, default gateways, loopback interfaces, and router interfaces. An IP address is much like a home address, where it represents where to send something to…