TCPIP, Ethernet & Network Essentials - A "Triple Play" Perspective - 3 Day Class                                            IC-5401

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• About
• Course Outline

• Dates/Pricing
• Who Should Attend
• Course Details

One of a kind, "Triple Play"
focused, TCPIP, Ethernet & Network Essentials course

• The prerequisite for technical employees involved with any or all of the "Triple Play" technologies
• Combines the essential components of many separate, longer and less substantive classes into one complete class
• Yields superior results with greatly minimized costs & time investments

Also ideal as a preparation or follow up to any of the following:

• Vendor training on products that use TCPIP protocols and technologies (IPTV, VOIP, routers, switches, ADSL, etc.)
• Industry certification programs such as CCNE, CCNA, etc.

Course Outline

This is a one-of-a-kind, completely "Triple Play"-focused TCPIP, Ethernet and Network essentials course. It combines the essential components of many separate & less substantive classes into one complete class. This approach yields superior results with greatly minimized costs & time investments to your company!

Students leave the class with a crystal clear understanding of the core TCPIP, Ethernet LAN & networking essentials as well as how they apply to each of the Triple Play technologies.

Anyone involved with installing, repairing and/or maintaining any of the Triple Play technologies (Internet data access and home networking over ADSL lines or fiber circuits, POTS/Voice over IP and/or Video over IP/IPTV) should attend. Students will learn the all important and necessary underlying core of IP fundamentals, TCPIP protocol technologies, networking essentials and LAN/WAN principles that each and every one of these Triple Play technologies require.

The classroom learning environment is maximized by a sophisticated array of equipment - protocol analyzers, hubs, switches, routers, servers, personal computers, etc. At appropriate points throughout the course, the instructor will explain & demonstrate technology details over this circuit. Detailed, Triple Play-specific workbook diagrams are invaluable reference tools both during & after the class!

Dates/Pricing

Who should attend?

Any Triple Play employee, regardless of background or experience level, interested in gaining a crystal clear understanding of TCPIP protocols and technologies, Ethernet and network essentials.

• Installation and Repair, Help Desk
• Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3
• Engineers, Tech Support
• Network Operations Center, Data Technicians
• Note: Managers, Sales or Marketing personnel interested in understanding the technology are also welcome to attend.

Course Details

• Protocol & Data Foundations:
• Data fundamentals - digital and data principles, data bits and bytes,
  octets, binary, nibbles, hexadecimal, general protocol principles
• ASCII coding - how/where does it apply to TCPIP, DNS, Telnet, FTP, HTTP, HTML, IPTV and data in general?
• Message oriented protocol fundamentals
• Reading and interpreting TCPIP, Ethernet, VOIP and IPTV protocols on a protocol analyzer in hexadecimal, summary and detailed decode formats

• The OSI Model & the TCPIP Stack:
• No fluff - just the important principles of layering & layered protocols
• The model's purpose, functionalities and its relationship to TCPIP
• How does the OSI model apply to repeaters, hubs, bridges, switches &
  routers?
• A complete breakdown of layered protocols through various network
  scenarios and products (repeaters, hubs, switches, bridges and routers)
• Layer 1, 2 & 3 issues through an intermediary network fully explained

• TCPIP Fundamentals:
• Overview of the TCPIP suite/stack of protocols - IP/ARP/RARP, TCP/UDP/ICMP/ IGMP, FTP/TELNET/DNS/SMTP/SNMP/HTTP
• How does each layer relate to the OSI model and what is important to know
  about each layer?
• IP connectionless networks and general routing principles
• The framing and reframing process as a datagram is routed from one side of a network to another
• The TCPIP Application Process protocols (HTTP, FTP, Telnet, DNS, etc.)
• Major fields within the IP header
• Major fields within the TCP header
• IP addressing - static versus dynamic
• DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocols)
• Common IP addressing scenarios on a typical ADSL or fiber-optic customer circuit
• NAT (Network Address Translation) - internal vs. external addresses
• Client server communications, port numbers (well known vs. random numbers), firewalls, filtering/security, etc.
• UDP vs. TCP message exchange

• Ethernet LAN Essentials & PC Interfacing:
• PC interfacing/networking fundamentals as they relate to Ethernet & LANs
• LAN fundamentals, Ethernet progressions - coax to twisted pair, 10BaseT, 1000BaseT/GigE, twisted pair, cat5 cabling issues, RJ 45 connectors
• MDI and MDI-X pinouts, cabling - straight through versus crossover, hub/switch nomenclatures such as uplink, etc.
• Ethernet address fields - Destination address, Source address, (manufacturer bytes)
• What is the Ethernet Protocol Type field? (0800 IP, 0806 ARP, etc.)
• What is a value of 8100 and how is this used for VLANs?
• What is an Ethernet switch and how does it compare to a hub? How does it
  increase throughput and decrease collisions?
• Full duplex and half duplex Ethernet settings as they apply to Ethernet switches, PCs, ADSL modems and fiber-optic gateways
• VLAN tagging - what is 802.1P (Priority) and 802.1Q (VLAN)?
• How might one encounter these protocols in current networking and triple play environments?
  

• ARP Protocols:
• ARP protocols - TCPIP operation over an Ethernet LAN
• Automatic retrieval of MAC address to IP address relationships
• ARP caching
• Why is it sometimes necessary to clear ARP caches on routers or other network devices?
• How can you check the ARP cache on your PC at the DOS or command prompt?
• ARP protocol structure and decoding of ARP messages
• When and why is proxy ARP used?

• IP Protocol:
• What is a datagram?
• Connectionless IP networks vs. connection oriented networks and protocols
• IP Header fields: IP Version (Version 4, 6), IP Header Length - why is it necessary? TOS (Type of Service) Diffserve (Differentiated Services and prioritization within routers, Datagram ID number - why is this field in the header - how is it used to identify datagrams and how does it relate to ICMP error reporting and troubleshooting?
• Fragmentation, Don't Fragment bit
• TTL (Time to Live Field) - how is this used to report routing problems?
• How is this field used in the Tracerouting process to learn the intermediary routers between a particular source and destination address?
• IP protocol fields - purpose and values (why is 02 used in IPTV?)
• IP Header checksum - how and why is this field in an IP Datagram
• Source and destination address - class A, B, C, D
• Multicast address range (IPTV's use of multicasting)
• Classless InterDomain Routing (CIDR)
• Subnet masks
• IP Options

• TCP Protocol:
• TCP - the end to end integrity protocol
• TCP's unique 3 stage connection process in contrast to other traditional connection oriented protocols
• A complete explanation and demonstration of TCP's use of the Starting Sequence Numbers, Acknowledgement fields, SYN, and Valid Ack bits during the 3 stage connecting process
• How is this TCP connecting process used in traditional data applications such as email?
• How is this TCP connecting process used for VOIP control messages and certain IPTV events and transactions?
• Passing ULP (Upper Layer Protocol) bytes - sequencing and acknowledging between end systems
• How does TCP handle receiving out of order datagrams?
• How does TCP adjust the flow of data from its peer protocol in the remote end system?
• What does TCP do if it does not receive an acknowledgement from its peer protocol in the remote system? How are bit errors at a lower layer corrected?
• TCP header bytes: Port numbers - well known port numbers versus random numbers
• How does a NAT device use these port numbers to uniquely identify a machine on the internal LAN?
• How does a firewall use these well known port numbers to identify an application and how does it know a direction (client to server or server to client)?
• Source Sequence numbers, Ack Sequence numbers, Flag fields and events such as the SYN, FIN and Reset bits
• What TCP connecting and disconnecting events are invoked when a link is "clicked" on a browser?
• Header length - why is the field used, TCP Flags field - urgent pointer, push bit usage
• TCP window - how is this field used between end systems to throttle the amount of data generated toward a peer TCP entity? How can starting default window size values sometimes make a broadband circuit operate with the same performance as a dial-up circuit?
• How can small TCP window offerings affect communications and give the appearance of a telco circuit with a high error rate?
• TCP Header checksum - how and why is it used? Urgent pointer TCP Options - maximum segment size - how does this often relate to MTU size at the frame layer?

• Networking Essentials:
• Repeaters, physical converters, Layer 1 devices
• Bridges (Local and Remote), Ethernet switch, Layer 2 devices
• How does the configuration RFC 1483 in the ISP gateway affect an ADSL line and how its ADSL "modem" should operate?
• Routers, Layer 3 Devices
• How does TCPIP operate over and through these Layer 1, 2 and 3 devices?
• What are the various accepted definitions of the term gateway? Which layers of the OSI Model do they operate at?
• A quick journey from past to present networks (Traditional POTS networks, circuit switched voice, voice digitization, T carrier, DACS type products, ADN/DDS, T carrier leased lines, DLC and GR-303 protocols, ADSL lines and issues, SONET bandwidth and SONET transport networks, VOIP and VOIP gateways
• Virtual networks - X.25, Frame Relay and ATM networks and message switching bandwidth
• Circuit switched bandwidth versus message switching/virtual networks
• ADSL lines
• Frame Relay and DLCIs (Data Link Connection Identifiers)
• Switch networks and Level 2 communications
• ATM and VPI/VCIs (Virtual Path Identifier, Virtual Circuit Identifier)
• How are the ATM VP/VC, VPI/VCIs used between the ADSL modem and the DSLAM for data and management?
• Mapping an ADSL line to a particular ISP gateway through ATM
• How is ATM used in a typical IPTV over ADSL scenario (0/35, 0/33)?
• TCPIP's operation over ATM, frame relay and SONET transport networks
• Ethernet port based VLANs, VPNs, throughput vs. line speed, QOS (quality of service), PPPOE and PPPOA
• NAT (Network Address Translation) functionalities

• UDP Protocols:
• UDP header fields: Source/Target Ports, Message length, checksum
• Port values
• Advantages and disadvantages over TCP
• UDP protocol use in DNS, TFTP, VOIP and IPTV

• ICMP Protocols:
• ICMP - a multipurpose protocol
• Ping - Echo Request and Echo reply message exchanges
• Pinging from a Dos or command prompt - what do all those parameters mean - pinging www.xxx.com (ip address = xx.xx.xx.xx) with 32 bytes of data
• Where does that IP address come from? What does the number of bytes of data, TTL and ms value indicate?
• What other options can a user control when they perform a ping from a Dos or command prompt?
• How to do a continuous ping (-t), set a different buffer size (-1), set a different time to live (-i)
• What does an error message of "destination host unreachable" mean as opposed to "request timeout"?
• Which devices can generate ICMP messages?
• What happens when an ICMP message is discarded?
• ICMP message structures - Echo Request, Echo Reply, Source Quench, Destination Unreachable, Time Exceeded
• How is a source quench message used to throttle datagrams?
• Destination unreachable error codes - examples and scenarios of how these might occur and what might cause them
• Tracerouting - how does it work, what does it tell you? Tracerouting through a firewall
• Usage of the datagram ID in the IP header as it applies to ICMP

• IGMP Protocols:
• Internet Group Management Protocols
• How are they transported through the network?
• Multicast groups and host membership
• Multicast address ranges 224.0.0.0 - 239.255.255.255
• In IPTV, how are multicast addresses applied to TV, music, PPV and EAS channels?
• Multicast Membership Query messages sent from a router/IGMP Proxy device (DSLAM, RT, etc.) to hosts/set top boxes
• IMGP Membership Report and Leave Group messages sent from a host/set top box to a router/IGMP Proxy device (DSLAM, RT, etc.)
• IGMP protocol message structures
• How are all these protocols used in IPTV for channel changing?
• IGMP Proxy at the DSLAM, RT or in-house gateway
• End-to-end IGMP operation from the Set Top Box to the head end

• TCPIP Application Process Protocols:
• Host.txt files
• The domain name structure, domains and root domain name servers
• How does the DNS protocol execute automatically to resolve host name to IP address relationships?
• Primary and secondary domain name servers
• What happens if a DNS query message is corrupted or lost?
• Telnet - what is it used for, what are the sequence of message events involved, ASCII representations used, etc.
• FTP - what is it used for, what are the sequence of message events involved, ASCII representations used, why does it use two ports (20, 21)?
• SMTP - Email specifics, message exchanges used, user configurations as they pertain to SMTP, what is a POP server, ASCII representations used, etc.
• HTTP - what is it used for, what are the sequence of message events involved, ASCII representations used, etc.
• Which of these applications might be encountered in an IPTV environment?