Lab 2 Introduction

The purpose of this lab is to gain familiarity with end host management and end host communication. Students will be introduced to a number of tools and utilities that are commonly used to configure, monitor and troubleshoot end hosts. Students will also be introduced to the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) which will be used in later labs. Finally, students will gain experience with IP addresses and the Domain Name System (DNS) which is the Internet-wide service for resolving names to IP addresses.

This lab will be conducted entirely via Schooner. This lab will be more time consuming than Lab #1 so please start early. Lab #2 will be the only lab in which DNS is covered, so if you would like to experiment with DNS in other ways, please see Prof. Barford for ideas.

Objectives

• Develop proficiency with standard end host management and monitoring tools and utilities.


• Become familiar with SNMP in the context of end host management.


• Gain experience with IP addresses.


• Gain experience with DNS and how it is used by end hosts.