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You are Sam Smith, a network technician with Global Packaging. You have been ask

ID: 3877167 • Letter: Y

Question

You are Sam Smith, a network technician with Global Packaging. You have been asked to configure the Internet Protocol (IP) address and subnet mask on a local host computer to enable IP connectivity. For this assignment, include the following:

Explain why and how the IP address and subnet mask enable computers to communicate with each other on that network.

Briefly explain how you know that the host computer was placed on the correct subnet.

Explain the relationship between IP addressing, DNS and DHCP.

Describe briefly the different types of network messages.

Explanation / Answer

A computer need IP address to communicate and get differentiated with other systems. Hence every system in the network consists unique IP addresses.

IP address consists of 4 blocks separated by decimals which has two parts namely, network address and host address. In turn we have three IP classes basing on the ranges like X.x.x.x(X denotes class ranges).

Class A ranges from 0-127

Class B ranges from 128-191

Class C ranges from 192-223

Subnet mask is used to segments existing IP address in network which can be used to divide into discrete network for routing the traffic. Subnet mask is used for creating multiple independent networks from a single network.

This subnetting is performed in two ways namely:

FLSM(Fixed Length Subnet Mask): It takes fixed length for every segment in the network.

VLSM(Variable Length Subnet Mask): Contrary to FLSM, we can assign any number of local systems basing on the requirements.

We can retrieve the IP address and subnet mask in local system by entering command "ipconfig" in command prompt.

DNS is Domain Name System which resolves the network clients. DNS servers maintain information of computer's fully qualified domain name to its assigned IP address.

DHCP is Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol which automatically assign an IP address to a computer from a defined configuration.

Example:

An organization has 4 departments consisting 10 local systems each. Every department has one admin, one supervisor, eight employee systems to be connected in the local network. So, Sam Smith can give IP address class A to employee systems, class B to supervisor, class C to admin systems in all the departments for differentiation. He can give unique subnet address to each department to differentiate each other.

Types of network messages:

Type

Description Network Message Types

0 Echo Reply

3 Destination Unreachable

4 Source Quench

5 Redirect

8 Echo Request

9 Router Advertisement

10 Router Solicitation

11 Time Exceeded

12 Parameter Problem

13 Timestamp Request

14 Timestamp Reply

15 Information Request

16 Information Reply

17 Address Mask Request

18 Address Mask Reply