CIW Associate certificate is awarded after passing
this exam. CompTIA I-Net+ exam is recognized as equivalent
and there is no need to take this exam if you are an
i-Net+ certified professional. You can proceed to take
other CIW exams! This exam is prerequisite for most
of the master CIW tracks. The CIW Foundations certified
individual has the essential skills and knowledge that
an Internet professional is expected to have.
Foundations exam includes basic knowledge of Internet
technologies, network infrastructure, and Web authoring
using HTML. The exam is of duration of 90 minutes and
there will be approximately 60 questions (excluding
10 non-scored beta questions). You can register for
the exam at NCS/VUE
or Prometric. The passing score is about 75%. Visit
the official CIW site
here.
Objectives covered:
1. Internet Fundamentals: 24 items
2. Web Page Authoring Fundamentals: 12 items
3. Networking Fundamentals: 24 items
Total scored items: 60
In addition, there will be 10 randomly delivered
beta items throughout the exam. These beta items are
not scored.
1. Internetwork IP addressing:
IP addresses are written using decimal numbers separated
by decimal points. This is called dotted decimal notation
of expressing IP addresses.
The different classes of IP addresses is as below:
Class
Format
Leading Bit pattern
Network address Range
Maximum networks
Maximum hosts/ nodes
A
N.H.H.H
0
0-126
127
16,777,214
B
N.N.H.H
10
128-191
16,384
65,534
C
N.N.N.H
110
192-223
2,097,152
254
Network address of all zeros means "This network or segment".
Network address of all 1s means " all networks", same as
hexadecimal of all Fs.
Network number 127 is reserved for loop-back tests.
Host (Node) address of all zeros mean "This Host (Node)".
Host (Node) address of all 1s mean "all Hosts (Nodes) " on
the specified network.
The range of numbers from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255 is
used for multicast packets. This is known as Class D address
range.
The default subnet mask for
Class A network: 255.0.0.0
Class B network: 255.255.0.0
Class C network: 255.255.255.0
2. The range of numbers from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255
is used for multicast packets. This is known as Class D address
range.
3. Telnet, FTP, and TFTP:
TCP/IP is the protocol used when you are Telnetting to a
remote host. Telnet is used for terminal emulation that runs
programs remotely.
FTP is used to transfer files. FTP is a connection-oriented
protocol. It uses TCP/IP for file transfer.
TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) uses UDP. TFTP is a
connectionless protocol.
4. A valid IP address on a host / node can't start with 127;
127.X.X.X is reserved for local loop back. A valid IP address
can't be larger than 255 (in any octet), The maximum allowed
value is 255 in any or combination of octets. For example, 150.206.256.31
is an invalid IP, since one octet exceeded the value 255. An
example of valid IP is 202.122.154.11.
5. The number of distinct IP's required in a network are
a.One each per client computer
b.One each per server computer
c.One each per router interface.
For example, if there are 2 servers, 26 clients machines,
and 2 router interfaces, the total number of IP addresses required
are 30.
6. OSI 7 layers: The 7 layers of OSI model are:
The Application Layer: Application layer is responsible
for identifying and establishing the availability of intended
communication partner and verifying sufficient resources
exist for communication. Some of the important application
layer protocols are: WWW, SMTP, FTP, etc.
The Presentation Layer: This layer is responsible for
presenting the data in standard formats. This layer is responsible
for data compression, decompression, encryption, and decryption.
Some Presentation Layer standards are: JPEG, MPEG, MIDI,
PICT, Quick Time, TIFF.
The Session Layer: Session Layer is responsible for
co-coordinating communication between systems/nodes. The
following are some of the session layer protocols and interfaces:
a) Network File System (NFS), SQL, RPC (Remote Procedure
Call), X-Windows, ASP, DNA SCP.
The Transport Layer: The Transport Layer is responsible
for multiplexing upper-layer applications, session establishment,
and tearing-down of virtual circuits. This layer does "flow
control" to maintain data integrity. Flow Control prevents
the problem of a sending host on one side of the connection
overflowing the buffers in the receiving host.
The Network Layer: There can be several paths to send
a packet from a given source to a destination. The primary
responsibility of Network layer is to send packets from
the source network to the destination network using pre-determined
methods. Routers work at Network layer.
The Data Link Layer: Data Link Layer is layer 2 of OSI
reference model. This layer is divided into two sub-layers:
Logical Link Control (LLC) sub-layer.
Media Access Control (MAC) sub-layer.
The LLC sub-layer handles error control, flow control,
framing, and MAC sub-layer addressing.
The MAC sub-layer is the lower of the two sub-layers
of the Data Link layer. MAC sub-layer handles access
to shared media, such a Token passing or Ethernet.
Physical Layer: The actual flow of bits takes place
through Physical layer. At Physical layer, the interface
between the DTE and DCE is determined. The following are
some of the standard interfaces are defined at Physical
layer: A> EIA/TIA-232, EIA/TIA-449, V.24, V.35, X.21, G.703,
HSSI (High Speed Serial Interface).
7. HTTP is the protocol used for accessing the World Wide
Web (WWW) services. HTTP operates over TCP/IP. TCP/IP is the
protocol, which is used by all Internet applications such as
WWW, FTP, and Telnet etc. IPX/SPX is proprietary protocol stack
of Novell NetWare.
8. TCP/IP utilities:
NBTSTAT This utility displays current NetBIOS over TCP/IP
connections, and display NetBIOS name cache.
NETSTAT Displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections
since the server was last booted
TRACERT This command is used to determine which route a packet
takes to reach its destination from source.
IPCONFIG Displays Windows IP configuration information.
NSLOOKUP This utility enables users to interact with a DNS
server and display resource records.
ROUTE This command can be used to display and edit static
routing tables.
9. Important port numbers:
The port numbers used by different programs are as below:
FTP: Port #21
Telnet: Port #23
SMTP: Port #25
SNMP: Port #161
It is also important to know that FTP, Telnet, SMTP use TCP;
whereas TFTP, SNMP use UDP.
10. Some of the important commands useful in trouble shooting
TCP/IP networks:
I. Ipconfig: Displays TCP/IP configuration values, including
IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway.
II. Ping: This command can be used to verify whether the
target ip address or host name is present. You need to specify
the target IP address or host name.
III. Route: Displays and manipulates route information.
IV. Tracert: Determines the route packets take to reach the
specified destination.
11. DSL:
DSL uses existing copper phone lines. The access speeds can
be up to 9 MBPS. but has distance limitations and available
in only certain exchange areas.
There are several categories of DSL:
Asymmetric DSL (ADSL): Here data flow is asymmetric.
Data flow in one direction is different from that in the
other direction.
Symmetric DSL (SDSL): Here the data flow is symmetric,
that the data flows equally in both directions.
Other not so much used or known types of DSL are BDSL,
HDSL, and VDSL.
12. ISDN:
ISDN specifies two standard access methods:
BRI (Basic Rate Interface):
Consists of two B channels (64Kbps) and one D channel
(16Kbps).
The B channels can be used for digitized speech transmission
or for relatively high-speed data transport.
The D channel carries signaling information (call setup)
to control calls on B channels.
PRI (Primary Rate Interface):
Consists of 23 B channels and one D channel with a bandwidth
of 1.544Mbps.
PRI uses a DSU/CSU for a T1 connection. B stands for
Bearer Channel.
13. Tracert, Ping use ICMP as their base protocol. ICMP messages
are carried in IP data grams.
14. SMTP is used to upload mail to the mail server. POP3
is used for downloading mail from a mail server to a client
machine running POP3 client.
15. A firewall is a security mechanism, which prevents unauthorized
access to a network or a resource on a network.
TCP is a full-duplex, connection-oriented protocol. It incorporates
error checking as well. UDP (User Data gram Protocol): UDP is
a thin protocol. UDP is a connectionless protocol. It doesn't
contact the destination before sending the packet and doesn't
care whether the packet is reached at the destination. UDP uses
port number 6.
16. A DNS zone file contains the resource records for the
part of the domain for which the zone is responsible. Some of
the resource records are:
SOA (Start Of Authority Record): The first record in any
zone file is the SOA record. The SOA file contains some general
parameters such as contact e-mail of the person responsible
for this zone file, the host on which zone file is maintained
etc.
The NS Record (Name Server Record): NS Record contains the
name servers for this domain. This will enable other name servers
to look up names in your domain.
MX Record (Mail Exchange Record): MX record tells us which
host processes mail for this domain.
Host Record (A Record): A host record is used to statically
associate hosts names to IP addresses within a zone. The syntax
for this is
<hostname> IN A <ip address of the host>
ex:NameServer1 IN A 196.52.34.143
Here 'NameServer1' is the host name and 196.52.34.143 is
its ip address.
CNAME Record (Canonical name): These records allow you to
use more than one name to point to a single Host. Using CNAME,
you can host both WWW and FTP servers on the same machine.
Reverse Look up is useful when you want to implement security.
Reverse look up ensures that the domain name is indeed the domain
that it claims to be.
The correct format for Pointer record is
<ip reverse domain name> IN PTR <host name>
ex.: 16.12.54.204.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR services.yourcompany.co
Here the IP numbers are written in backward order and in-addr.arpa
is appended to the end, creating a Pointer record.
17. Cookies: A cookie is a plain text file that sends out
client information to the corresponding Web server, usually
when the client makes a visit to the Web server. Disabling Cookies
may result in improperly loaded Web pages.
18. Browsers:
Configuring the browser not to show pictures enable the Web
pages to load faster.
A correctly formatted connection to access a Web site over
a secure link will have "https://".
19. News Service:
By installing Internet News service, you can enable all group
members to exchange threaded messages.
NNTP is a service. Users can connect to NNTP service using
client software like Microsoft Internet Mail and News through
TCP/IP.
20. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a reduced version
of SGML.
