01. A protocol analyser capture from an ISA100.11a field network is being reviewed alongside a capture from a plain 802.15.4 network, and the frame formats look strikingly similar.
How does the ISA100.11a MAC sub-layer relate to the 802.15.4 MAC beneath it?
a) It is a sub-layer beneath the 802.15.4 MAC that supplies the timing the radio needs for hopping
b) It is a proprietary time division MAC that replaces the 802.15.4 MAC and every one of its frame formats
c) It is the 802.15.4 MAC with carrier sense removed, so every transmission is scheduled and no frame is ever contended
d) It is the 802.15.4 MAC used largely as published, with what ISA100.11a adds placed in the sub-layer above it
02. On a bottling line, an engineer suspects that a neighbouring system is overlapping the channel used by the plant’s IoT gateway. She changes the gateway to a different channel, and over the following hour the retry counter falls sharply.
What is the appropriate next step?
a) Accept the improvement as proof of cause, since retries are the metric the fault was reported against and they have clearly fallen.
b) Confirm against the same measurement that identified the fault, and hold the change under observation long enough to cover the conditions that produced it.
c) Apply the same channel change to every gateway, so the deployment configuration stays consistent and the interference cannot recur elsewhere.
d) Revert the change and compare, because a fault that clears on its own cannot be attributed to a configuration setting.
03. A manufacturer is preparing its first wireless IoT deployment in a country it has not operated in before. The project engineer is working through the vendor’s product documentation alongside the national regulator’s radio database.
Which two statements correctly describe what each source answers?
(Select the two best answers.)
a) Vendor documentation answers what the device itself supports — its radios, its configurable parameters and its interfaces.
b) A regulatory radio database answers which vendor products perform best in the intended band, at the planned node density and alongside the local licensed incumbents.
c) Vendor documentation answers whether the intended band and power level remain lawful once the equipment is installed and the site licence is in force.
d) A regulatory radio database answers whether the intended band and use are permitted for that country and site.
04. In an airport baggage-handling facility, the 802.15.4 nodes stay associated and every captured frame decodes cleanly, but at certain times of day throughput collapses and MAC retries climb sharply. A capture taken during one of these periods shows no increase in 802.15.4 traffic.
Which instrument should the engineer reach for, and why?
a) A spectrum analyser, because it decodes the competing transmitter’s frames and identifies which protocol is occupying the band during each episode.
b) A protocol analyser, because the rise in retries is logged in the MAC headers and the capture will name the device that is causing them.
c) A protocol analyser, because the association state machine must always be examined first, before any physical-layer cause is considered.
d) A spectrum analyser, because the symptom points to energy the radios cannot decode, which a frame decoder will never show.
05. A utility is documenting the timing structures used across its metering and distribution-automation networks, and successive drafts keep conflating three of them.
Which statement correctly separates the superframe, the multi-superframe and the slot frame?
a) The superframe is the repeating TSCH schedule, the multi-superframe is the beacon-bounded cycle DSME defines, and the slot frame is the individual guaranteed allocation granted to a single device within it.
b) The superframe belongs to the PHY, the multi-superframe belongs to the MAC, and the slot frame belongs to the network layer where routing decides which hop transmits when.
c) The superframe is the beacon-bounded cycle holding a contention access period followed by guaranteed slots, the multi-superframe repeats that cycle so DSME can schedule more devices, and the slot frame is the timeslot-and-channel-offset schedule TSCH runs to.
d) The superframe and the slot frame are one structure under two names, and the multi-superframe is the term used when a network operates on more than one channel, as a hopping deployment does.
06. In a distribution warehouse, battery-powered Zigbee temperature tags at the far end of the racking are intermittently unreachable. The coordinator and the handful of mains-powered devices all sit near the offices.
Which explanation and remedy fit the way Zigbee device roles actually work?
a) The tags are sleeping end devices that rely on a parent to hold traffic for them, so coverage is extended by adding mains-powered routers along the racking.
b) The tags are routers whose radios sleep between beacons, so the coordinator must be reconfigured to beacon more often across the racking.
c) The coordinator relays every frame in the network, so the remedy is to move it deep into the racking and let the mains-powered devices near the offices rejoin as end devices.
d) The tags lost their PAN identifier at the last rejoin, so the remedy is to reissue it from the coordinator and re-run discovery on every tag.
07. A farming co-operative is choosing between Sigfox and LoRaWAN for soil-moisture sensors spread over holdings whose outer edges have no reliable coverage today.
What is the architectural difference between the two, and what does it mean for the co-operative?
a) Sigfox devices join through a network server the co-operative hosts, whereas LoRaWAN devices are provisioned by the operator, so the outer holdings are a provisioning task.
b) Both are operator-run networks and neither permits private infrastructure, so the co-operative must simply choose whichever operator already advertises coverage across the holdings.
c) Sigfox is a subscription to one operator’s network, whereas LoRaWAN can also be run privately, so only in the LoRaWAN case can the co-operative put its own gateway on the far holdings.
d) Sigfox forms a mesh between sensors while LoRaWAN is a star of stars, so the co-operative would depend on sensor-to-sensor relaying to reach the outer holdings with Sigfox.
08. An instrumentation engineer is documenting how an ISA100.11a subnet is configured and managed from the system manager, and needs to describe the part played by the network layer management object (NLMO).
What is the NLMO responsible for?
a) Holding the data link layer’s superframe and channel hopping attributes so the system manager can schedule links, and reporting slot usage back to it
b) Holding the join and session key material so the system manager can distribute it to field devices, as each new contract is established
c) Holding the mapping between HART command numbers and object identifiers, so the gateway can translate them for the host application
d) Holding the network layer’s configurable attributes so the system manager can read and set them, and reporting that layer’s status back to it
09. In a Thread network at a distribution depot, several mains-powered devices were installed as routers. After some of them were removed, the network carried on forwarding traffic through devices that the tool had previously listed as end devices.
Why did those devices become routers?
a) The commissioner reassigned the router role to the remaining devices, because router assignment is fixed when a device is commissioned and does not change afterwards
b) A router-eligible end device requested a router identifier from the leader when the mesh needed the connectivity, and the leader granted it
c) The border router promoted the devices with the strongest signal to it, because router selection ranks every device by link quality and hop count to the network beyond
d) A router-eligible end device took the router role as soon as its parent was lost, because every mains-powered device holds and keeps that role permanently
10. At a utilities substation, the network team proposes dropping the planned VLAN segmentation and dynamic ACLs in favour of an air-gapped IoT network, arguing that physical separation is stronger than any of them and makes the firewall and IDS/IPS unnecessary.
What is the best assessment of that proposal?
a) An air gap is one control among several and is rarely maintained in practice, so segmentation, dynamic ACLs, firewalling and monitoring still carry the design.
b) VLANs and dynamic ACLs provide isolation equivalent to an air gap, so the choice between the two approaches is a procurement and cost decision rather than a security one.
c) An air gap protects the IoT segment but leaves the enterprise segment exposed, so the firewall belongs on the enterprise side only.
d) An air gap removes the need for a firewall, for IDS/IPS, for dynamic ACLs and for VLAN segmentation, since no traffic can cross into the enterprise network at all.