A network administrator is using a packet analyzer to determine an issue on the local LAN. Two separate computers are showing an error message on the screen and are unable to communicate with other computers in the same lab. The network administrator looks at the following output:
SRC MAC SRC IP DST MAC DST IP
00:1D:1F:AB:10:7D192.168.1.10:200015:BE:9F:AB:10:1D192.168.1.14:1200
05:DD:1F:AB:10:27192.168.1.10:100022:C7:2F:AB:10:A2192.168.1.15:1300
Given that all the computers in the lab are directly connected to the same switch, and are not using any virtualization technology, at which of the following layers of the OSI model is the problem occurring?
A. Network B. Application C. Data link D. Transport
Correct Answer: A
Explanation: If we look at the Source Mac column, we can see two different MAC addresses. Every network interface card has a unique MAC address. These are the network cards in the two separate computers. If we look in the Source IP column, we can see that the two network cards have been assigned the same IP address (192.168.1.10). This is the problem in this question. The error message on the screens will be saying that “An IP conflict exists”. Every network card connected to the network needs to be configured with a different IP address. As the problem is with the IP address configuration of the two computers, we know that the problem is occurring at the Network layer (layer 3) of the OSI model. The network layer is responsible for Internet Protocol (IP) addressing and routing.