IT Job Interview

This is a hands-on experience question.  The following answer is for UNIX platform.

The first step is to assign a unique internet address to the workstation.  The net-mask has to be assigned the same as other devices in that subnet.  The physical device has to be attached to the network, and the workstation connected.  When attaching the Attachment Unit Interface (AUI), you must make sure that it corresponds with the jumper setting on the unit.

Next, the system should be booted.  At this point, you should ping another workstation or server using its IP address.  If the ping works properly, the next step would be to change the /etc/hosts, /etc/netmasks, /etc/defaultdomain to include all the necessary information required by the system to recognize the network automatically upon booting.  If this system was a client or diskless workstation in an NIS network, then the ‘domainname’ command can be set appropriately or changed in /etc/defaultdomain and rebooted, which will cause it to connect to its NIS master.

Daemons are processes that are run when the system is initialized and continue to run while the system is in operation.  Their purpose is to wait in the background until their services are required.

The most common daemon is the cron daemon.  Here are more examples:  rpc.mountd, nfsd, mountd & biod (NFS daemons), lpd (line printer daemon), rlogind, telnetd (telnet server daemon), routed (network routing daemon), rwhod (remote who daemon).

“Network routes are entirely contained within a single network.  The gateway NCPs, which are responsible for the interface between two networks, also provide virtual route termination services.  NCP translates the session routing from the virtual routes and subarea numbers used in one network to those in another whenever an information from crosses the network boundary.”

“Universally administered addresses are managed by the IEEE and are guaranteed to be unique worldwide.  For those adapters which support universally administered addresses, the adapter’s address is in read-only memory on the adapter and cannot be changed.  This means that if an adapter fails, its replacement will have a different universally administered address, which may impact network management schemes, universally administered addresses do not support any structured assignment which allows identification of the location of a Token-Ring station from its address.”