Concept of layering.OSI and TCP/IP Protocol Stacks; Basics of packet, circuit and virtual circuit-switching; Data link layer: framing, error detection, Medium Access Control, Ethernet bridging; Routing protocols: shortest path, flooding, distance vector and link state routing; Fragmentation and IP addressing, IPv4, CIDR notation, Basics of IP support protocols (ARP, DHCP, ICMP), Network Address Translation (NAT); Transport layer: flow control and congestion control, UDP, TCP, sockets; Application layer protocols: DNS, SMTP, HTTP, FTP, Email.
.$$\scriptsize{\overset{{\large{\textbf{Mark Distribution in Previous GATE}}}}{\begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|}\hline \textbf{Year}& \textbf{2026 - 1}& \textbf{2026 - 2}& \textbf{2025 - 1}& \textbf{2025 - 2}& \textbf{2024 - 1}& \textbf{2024 - 2}& \textbf{2023}& \textbf{2022}& \textbf{2021 - 1}& \textbf{2021 - 2}&\textbf{Minimum}&\textbf{Average}&\textbf{Maximum}\\\hline \textbf{1 Mark Count}&2&3&2&4&3&3&2&2&1&1&1&2.3&4\\\hline \textbf{2 Marks Count}&3&3&3&1&3&3&3&4&4&3&1&3&4\\\hline \textbf{Total Marks}&8&9&8&6&9&9&8&10&9&7&\bf{6}&\bf{8.3}&\bf{10}\\\hline \end{array}}}$$