Note: These questions are only intended to give you an idea of the kinds of questions you may face. I have not picked them carefully to give balance coverage of all relevant material, so they are probably light on, for example, wireless MAC schemes. At any rate, please consider these questions in addition to the material probed by the assigned homework questions.

These questions were actually taken from a prior exam.

1. What type of errors cannot be detected by one parity bit?

1. 1 bit errors
2. 2 bit errors
3. 3 bit errors
4. burst errors

2. What problem does byte stuffing in PPP solve?

1. Prevents independent clocks in the sender and receiver from drifting
2. Prevents frame markers from appearing in the data stream
3. Allows data transmission errors to be detected
4. Improves coding efficiency

3. Which phrase applies least to the IP service model?

1. Unordered delivery
2. Best-effort delivery
3. Reliable delivery
4. Single delivery

4. A station on an Ethernet has tried to send its frame 3 times and collided each time. What is the interval over which the station will choose its next backoff delay?

1. [0…7] times 51.2 microseconds
2. [1…8] times 51.2 microseconds
3. [0…15] times 51.2 microseconds
4. [1…16] times 51.2 microseconds

5. Which of the following is not an advantage of using hierarchical addressing?

1. Route aggregation
2. Distributed administration
3. Shorter addresses
4. Smaller forwarding tables
5. Fewer routing messages

6. What is the service provided by the Network layer in the OSI Reference Model?

1. End-to-end packet delivery
2. Single wire packet delivery
3. Single wire bit pipe
4. End-to-end bytestream delivery

7. The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is used primarily to translate from:

1. IP addresses to MAC addresses
2. MAC addresses to IP addresses
3. Host names to IP addresses
4. Local IP addresses to remote IP addresses.

8. ARP provides an interface between which two layers?

1. Transport to Network
2. Network to Data Link
3. Data Link to Physical
4. Network to Physical

9. Do Ethernet switches require ARP tables?

1. Yes, always.
2. No, never.
3. Yes, if IP traffic is being carried on top of Ethernet.
4. No, not if they are learning bridges.

10. Why is the wireless medium access problem arguably more difficult to solve than the wired case? Circle all answers that apply.

1. Wireless signals decay quickly because they spread in all directions
2. Different nodes have different coverage areas
3. Wireless bandwidth is scarce.
4. Not possible to simultaneously transmit and receive on a single frequency band
5. Wireless signals can’t be carried at baseband.

These Peterson questions give you a good idea, though some are too long/hard for the midterm.

1.6, 1.12

2.1, 2.3, 2.10, 2.39, 2.44, 2.49

3.15

4.4, 4.6, 4.10, 4.13, 4.16, 4.23, 4.38

5.5, 5.8, 5.9, 5.18, 5.25, 5.37