Data communication errors

Question

Explain how a network administrator knows whether there is one parity check error per day or 10,000 errors.

Answer 1

Parity check is a technique used to detect errors in transmitted data. In this technique, an additional bit called the parity bit is added to each character or byte to make the total number of ones (or zeros) in the character even or odd. If the number of ones (or zeros) in the character is already even or odd, then the parity bit is set to 0 or 1 to make it even or odd, respectively.

When data is transmitted, the receiving device performs a parity check on each received character to detect any errors. If the number of ones (or zeros) in the received character, including the parity bit, is not even or odd as expected, then an error is detected.

To determine the number of parity check errors per day, the network administrator can use network monitoring tools that capture and analyze network traffic. These tools can identify the number of packets with parity check errors and provide statistics on the frequency and timing of these errors. By analyzing this data over a period of time, the administrator can determine the average number of errors per day.

Similarly, if the administrator wants to know if there are 10,000 errors, they can use the same network monitoring tools to identify the number of packets with errors and calculate the average number of errors per day. If the number of errors per day is consistently higher than expected, then there may be a problem with the network hardware, cabling, or configuration that needs to be addressed.