Case Project 6-1

You’ve just been hired at ConnectSpree, a small but growing Internet service provider. One of your first goals is to learn about the network—that is, to determine its physical and logical topologies, access method, throughput rates, type of equipment, and the way this equipment is interconnected. Although you don’t yet have an access card that will let you into the secure telco rooms and equipment rooms, you do have permission to log on to the routers and switches. Given what you learned in this chapter and in previous chapters, what kind of network information can you glean from issuing commands on a router or switch? What kind of information could you obtain from issuing commands on your workstation that’s connected to this network? What kind of information do you suppose would not be evident unless you could physically access the network hardware?