Professional Network Engineer Interview Questions & Answers:

1. Why did you choose career in network engineering?

There are many reasons for this choice. It is a perspective area with bright future and great possibilities of career growth. The salaries for engineers are exceptional too. What more, the competition is not so tough like in other fields.
☛ Exceptional computer intelligence and great predispositions to become a network engineer
☛ Love to do the job, motivation and enthusiasm for doing it
☛ Belief in huge perspective of this field nowadays.

"I love to work with networks. I liked it since my childhood. I was an administrator of local network we had back then. I believe this area is very perspective and important in society, because we have networks everywhere right now. To work on the security and effectiveness of it makes me proud and happy in my daily life."

2. How can you describe network topology?

There are many ways to discover network topology and most of the ways you know determine your experience in the field. First, you can ping random IP addresses. If you do a tracert, you can discover router IP addresses. You can install a network traffic packet analyzer to read some of the traffic that passes between segments of the network. You can run an SNMP scanner and attempt to find open systems. Even at a basic level, you can plug a laptop into open data ports to see if you can connect to various servers and other desktops.

3. Do you know about some basic ways to speed up network performance?

There are several ways to improve network performance. You can first make sure you disable peer-to-peer downloading and torrents. Some companies restrict media streaming such as YouTube and Pandora. You can also add compression to files to reduce the amount of bandwidth used. Another area where some network admins make mistakes is timed backups and large data transfers. Make sure your backups are done during slow network times, which is usually overnight when the office is closed.

4. Tell me have you ever worked in heterogeneous environments and multiple server and client platforms?

The obvious answer to this question is yes or no, but you should elaborate if the answer is yes. Most networking environments use a combination of Windows and Linux servers and desktops. Usually, network engineers prefer Linux servers and work with Windows and Linux desktops. Occasionally, you might have some Mac desktops as well to work with.

5. Tell me what is SLIP (Serial Line Interface Protocol) in network engineering?

It is a very simple protocol used for transmission of IP data-grams across a serial line.

6. Tell me what is RIP (Routing Information Protocol)?

It is a simple protocol used to exchange information between the routers.

7. Do you know what is source route?

It is a sequence of IP addresses identifying the route a datagram must follow. A source route may optionally be included in an IP datagram header.

8. What is Proxy ARP in network engineering?

It is using a router to answer ARP requests. This will be done when the originating host believes that a destination is local, when in fact is lies beyond router.

9. Tell me about OSPF?

It is an Internet routing protocol that scales well, can route traffic along multiple paths, and uses knowledge of an Internet's topology to make accurate routing decisions.

10. What is Kerberos in network engineering?

It is an authentication service developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kerberos uses encryption to prevent intruders from discovering passwords and gaining unauthorized access to files.