Question

Question 1

a. Connectivity between different company sites is provided by an outside MSP. Should a Network Administrator nevertheless be concerned with monitoring traffic statistics across these outside connections? Discuss four reasons and four ways for doing this
(8 marks)

b. Network Management Systems (NMS) can be implemented in three different ways, namely Centralized, Distributed and Decentralized. Describe three scenarios under which NMS can be implemented as:
i. Centralized
ii. Distributed
iii. Decentralized
(9 marks)


c. Standard Network Management practice includes configuration management. Describe in full detail a configuration operation at the element management layer, a configuration operation at the network management layer, and a configuration operation at the service management layer.

(8 marks)

[TOTAL 25]


Question 2

a. One technique that can be used to roll back management transactions involves reverting to an earlier configuration file. Discuss two scenarios to prove this as a true management transaction. Discuss also two scenarios to reveal drawbacks of this technique subject to true management transactions

(8 marks)

b. A customer is having problems connecting to a wireless network in a shared office space. The customer can detect several other wireless network signals. All of the wireless networks have different SSIDs but several are using the same encryption type. What is the problem and how will you identify the problem? What should be configured on the customer’s wireless network to improve connectivity to the wireless network and how will you configure this?
(9 marks)


c. A network engineer needs to set up a topology that will not fail if there is an outage on a single piece of the topology. However, the computers need to wait to talk on the network to avoid congestions. Discuss two topologies that cannot achieve this and describe why. Discuss also two topologies the engineer would implement and describe how these can achieve the expected results.
(8 marks)

[TOTAL 25]



Question 3

a. A company wants to create highly available datacenters. Describe two full implementations that will allow the company to continue to maintain an Internet presence at all sites in the event that a WAN circuit at one site goes down. Describe also two known implementations that will not work and show why.
(8 marks)


b. Network segmentation provides high availability through redundancy. Using appropriate illustrations discuss three full implementations (integrated) describing how this can be achieved.

(9 marks)

c. A network technician is diligent about maintaining all system servers at the most current service pack level available. After performing upgrades, users experience issues with server-based applications. Discuss four server applications that could be affected and why, showing how they are affected. Finally Describe four standard implementations that should be adopted to prevent such issues in the future

(8 marks)

[TOTAL 25]



Question 4
a. A technician, Joe, needs to troubleshoot a recently installed NIC. The PC has limited Internet connection although all other nodes on same network have Internet connections. Describe p practically in in clear steps four Methods Joe must adopt to troubleshoot and resolve the issue.

(8 marks)

b. A company has implemented the capability to send all log files to a central location by utilizing an encrypted channel. The log files are sent to this location in order to be reviewed. A recent exploit has caused the company’s encryption to become unsecure.
Describe fully three implementations the company can adopt to resolve this.
(9marks)


c. A system administrator has been tasked to ensure that the software team is not affecting the production software when developing enhancements. The software that is being updated is on a very short SDLC and enhancements must be developed rapidly. These enhancements must be approved before being deployed. Discuss four implementations that will mitigate production outages before the enhancements are deployed.
(8 marks)

[TOTAL 25]

Answer 1

The three NMS systems are given below.

Explanation:

• The centralized system is developed to connect all the users with a central network owner.
• This is because the central owner is used to store the user's information and data that can be accessed by users.
• This system stores user's contents and profiles.
• The decentralized system is used with multiple owners and it stores multiple copies of the data.
• In a distributed system, the users have access to all the data, and its biggest example is the internet.