Network Infrastructure Analysis & Monitoring

Due: Nov 11 th

Overview: In this laboratory, you will extend the knowledge and experience you gained in the
previous laboratory assignment: Introduction to Network Troubleshooting. Much of the experience you
gained in the previous laboratory assignment was based on a PC’s interaction with the network and
remote services. In this laboratory assignment, you will begin using enterprise-class network equipment
(routers and switches) to identify the operations of the network itself. You will take many of the topics
discussed in lecture and gain hands-on experience in dealing with these technologies. Specifically, you
will utilize the router and switch to observe the results of different LAN segmentation approaches, as
well as differentiating between the switching process and the routing process.

Just as you utilized a protocol analyzer and a NIC in promiscuous mode in the previous laboratory, you
will use the same approach in this laboratory assignment. However, there will be several architectural
changes in the approach to utilizing the protocol analyzer within the network. Specifically, since a
switch does not forward every frame out every interface, as a hub does, you will need to configure the
switch to allow you to observe every frame of interest. This is performed by configuring a mirror port on
the switches, as necessary. The interconnection of these devices will require several additional cables.
Use the cables you constructed in the previous lab as necessary.

Objectives

Primary Objectives
• Evaluate the capabilities of the Linksys device to utilize IEEE 802.1Q VLANs
• Perform a series of file transfers in order to evaluate the functionality of jumbo frames
o Compare and contrast the performance of jumbo frames versus standard frames. Use a
small file (~2 MB), a large file (~100 MB), and a very large file (1 GB) to perform this
experiment.
• Identify the extent of the MAC broadcast domain and the contention domain(s)
• Deploy IEEE 802.1Q VLANs according to the network diagram below
o Identify the effect of the VLAN tag on the Ethernet header and trailer
o What is required to allow inter-VLAN communication?
• Extend the IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging to the hosts
o How does this impact the managability of the network and its attached nodes?
• Does this approach change network performance?
• Monitor the amount of traffic between each of the interfaces associated with a particular VLAN
o Compare the number of ingress and egress octets. Explain.
o Compare the number of ingress and egress packets. Explain.
o What is the correlation between octets and packets?

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 • Identify the number of errored packets during a large file transfer
o What effect does an errored packet have on the tracking of octets and packets?
o How does this impact the overall performance of the network?
• Using Wireshark, show an 802.1Q tag and describe each fields’ purpose and function

For your final documentation, compare and contrast the different VLAN approaches on both the router
and the switches. Also, compare and contrast the differences between the Linksys device and the
functinality of the enterprise-class equipment (Cisco router and switch and the HP switch).

Extension Objectives
• Interconnect two switches and enable Spanning Tree Protocol
o Run a packet capture that shows the spanning tree process
o Show the spanning tree process in action on the switches
o What is the benefit of implementing a spanning tree protocol?
• Configure a DHCP server on the Cisco 2611 to offer IP addressing to all VLANs

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Network Diagram

You should use addressing of 192.168.X.0/24 for VLAN 101 and 192.168.10X.0/24 for VLAN 201.

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