Networking Basics for Software | Dataford Interview Questions

Explain the networking basics you rely on when building software for Palo Alto Networks.

For this coding task, implement IPv4 longest prefix matching using CIDR routes. Given route entries and a destination address, return the next hop for the most specific matching network, or None if no route matches.

Use the signature longest_prefix_match(routes, ip); each route is an object with cidr and next_hop strings.

Constraints

1 <= len(routes) <= 10^5
Each route uses valid IPv4 CIDR notation with a prefix length from 0 through 32
Each IPv4 octet is an integer from 0 through 255
Each route contains a string next_hop
If multiple matching routes have the same prefix length, return the next hop from the first such route

Function Signature

def longest_prefix_match(routes, ip):

Your question is Networking Basics for Software. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.

Problem

Explain the networking basics you rely on when building software for Palo Alto Networks.

Use the signature longest_prefix_match(routes, ip); each route is an object with cidr and next_hop strings.

Constraints

1 <= len(routes) <= 10^5
Each route uses valid IPv4 CIDR notation with a prefix length from 0 through 32
Each IPv4 octet is an integer from 0 through 255
Each route contains a string next_hop
If multiple matching routes have the same prefix length, return the next hop from the first such route

Function Signature

def longest_prefix_match(routes, ip):

Your question is Networking Basics for Software. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.