For Networking Lovers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection

The Carrier Sense part refers to the ability of a network node to listen on the line for traffic before sending a data packet. Because each node has equal access to the line (Multiple Access) collisions occur very frequently. So, Collision Detection is used to determine if two or more lines of code collide and if they do the node will resend the data after a random amount of time until the destination address is reached. Collisions are the reason that although it might be a 10base or 100base network, only 70 percent of the maximum bandwidth is utilized.

Answer: 10base5

Vampire taps refer to the connection in a transceiver box that essentially taps into a Thick Ethernet cable, usually around RG-8 or RG-11. Yellow cable is another common name for Thick Ethernet with others including Thin Net and Garden Hose.

Answer: fiddie or eff dee dee eye

It stands for Fiber Distributed Data Interface, which uses fiber optic cable to send data along a ring type network in which there can be many tokens and in some cases another FDDI network is mirrored with it to provide fault tolerance.

Answer: BNC

Transceiver Boxes and AUI are essentially the same thing and occur in 10base5 networks, while RJ-45 connectors are used in networks like 10baseT and 100baseTX. The acronym BNC is thought by many to mean "British Naval Connector" and they look very similar to the connector you may see on the back of your television.

Answer: February 1980

February 1980 was when a major IEEE networking convention was held to discuss the standardization of various networks. You may have heard of 802.11 which is wireless internet or wifi, but there is actually a broad range of standards including the Ethernet standard of 802.3 and the token ring standard of 802.5 . IEEE has also standardized many other computer related concepts and components like IEEE 1394 otherwise known as Firewire and iLink.

Answer: serial

Serial transmission is a way of sending data and as far as I know, has yet to be the name of the physical layout of a networks. The term star topology defines setting up a network in a way that could resemble a star. This is done by using a hub or a switch to connect multiple devices together.

A ring network can be set up either one of two ways. The first of which requires that each node have two NICs(network interface cards)installed in the machine allowing that particular node to be directly connected to nodes that are upstream and downstream to it.

The other way involves a mulitport device like a hub that is constructed differently. These devices are called MAUs or multiport access units and are internally setup to function like a ring.

This can make it very hard to distinguish between a star and ring network because they may very well look the same externally. The final topology listed here-bus-is one of the oldest around. It is comprised of a single cable(most likely coaxial)that the network nodes tap into.

The cable needs to be terminated at both ends so as to prevent data reflection which would result in more than twice as many collisions. It is becomming obsolete because it is very expensive to install and maintain while also being relatively slow.

Answer: Optical Fiber Cable, Twisted Pair Cable

When there are numbers following "base" they represent the maximum throughput in megabits. If you see a number at the end of "base" you can also assume that it is going to use a form of coaxial cable.

Answer: NIC

A NIC(network interface card) is most often part of a node on a network while switches, hubs, and MAUs(multistation access unit) are all multiported devices that allow large numbers of nodes to be connected together.

Answer: RG-8 has a larger copper core

The lower the radio grade, the thicker the cable. All of the other statements were actually the opposite.

Answer: By whoever has the token

Ring networks can run in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise fashion. The token is somewhat like an empty slate with which a commanding node can either pass on or fill the slate with data and then sending it.