Network Hardware and its Security

Read and understand the situations outlined below and attempt to initiate the desired discussion:

• When selecting a NIC to install, analyze and explain what an administrator should do if a motherboard supports more than one kind of expansion slot. Define wireless NICs and describe their advantages and disadvantages. Describe the symptoms that may indicate that two devices are attempting to use the same interrupt request (IRQ). Describe the factors to consider when choosing an NIC for a workstation or a server.

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• Explain why network engineers value VLANs. Include a discussion on reasons for using VLANs. Describe the advantages of VLAN trunking. Describe a distance-vector routing protocol suited to WANs. Describe how a bridge translates between two segment types.

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• Explain why multitasking does not mean performing more than one operation simultaneously. Be sure to define preemptive multitasking. Describe symmetric multiprocessing and asymmetric multiprocessing.

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• Describe three advantages of choosing a proprietary UNIX system. Describe the key difference between freely distributable UNIX and proprietary implementations. Explain how UNIX and Linux handle multiprocessing. Describe the UNIX memory model in terms of addressing scheme and virtual memory.

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• Describe who should conduct a security audit and explain its advantages, if any. Explain how to block traffic attempting to exit a LAN and discuss why an administrator would want to do this. Define secure shell (SSH) and explain threats it guards against. Include an explanation of the encryption algorithms that may be used with it. Describe the two phases IPsec use to accomplish authentication

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