Cisco written test is for 50 marks. All are multiple choice questions.

The questions
covered almost all the aspects. 5-6 questions are of general aptitude. Aptitude questions
are simple. 6-7 questions are from OS. In OS, they gave different tasks. we have to tell
the order in which they execute. Some questions are there from micro processors and CA.
They gave some questions on C, C++ and DS. In OS they gave around 2-3 questions on
finding physical address given a virtual address.
I had 3 rounds of interview. Some of my friends had 2 rounds. It depends on the
department which interviews I think. First 2 rounds are fully technical and 3 rd round is
both HR and technical. They asked about paging concept of OS. In compiler design, they
asked about symbol tables and how function calls takes place(w.r.t stack we have to
explain), about some registers, my interests, some SQL queries, some questions on DS
like how to implement a queue with a stack, two programs to write, about run time
polymorphism in C++, about templates, pointers, volatile keyword, about linking,
compiling, loading in deep( this part I didnt answer properly), usecases, some OO
questions, projects i did in detail. Whatever we write in resume they asked me.
Microsoft : In microsoft, they gave only 5 questions. 1 ques to write a program given an
algorithm and find its complexity. 1 ques to write test cases, 1 question to write
algorithm, 1 ques to write o/p and other ques to write error in the program. (Every thing
in C). In the second round they asked to write a program. In interview, they asked
puzzles, OS ques..
Google: Google ques paper has 2 papers. First part is objective. second part is program.
If we clear cut off in first part, they will consider second part while short listing. For first
part we have to read C,C++. In second part, they asked to write a program to find next
element in a Binary search tree. The questions will be simple. So, the cutoff will be high.
Later in interview, they will ask to write programs and puzzles mostly.
I am sending some questions which in general many companies asked. Some of my class
mates send these. Go through these.
A few puzzles and questions asked in FiberLink
1. You have 3 containers of capacity 8lt, 5lt and 3lt. 8 lt. container is filled to capacity
with water, without using any other jars, distribute the water in the 8lt container so that
finally, thers 4lt in 8lt container mand 4 lt. in the 5 lt. container.
ANS: 800 503 530 233 251 701 710 413 440
2. Detect loops in a single linked list in less than O(n^2), and also detect connections
among 2 single linked lists.
ANS:
1. Loop(s) in list
a. Only one can exist and can be found in O(N) with a slow & a fast pointer
b. You can delete the loop in O(N) by detecting meet point OR reverse loop
Connection in Linked lists

a. Find length of lists m,n and start from m-n node in list1 or n-m node in
list2 and move parallely until they meet at meeting point (if any).
3. Given a fully populated array of size n and assured that only numbers in the range of 1
to n are used to populate it, detect if there are duplicates (true or false) in O(n) or less.
ANS: Take an O(n) bit array.
4. For the question above, find out the first duplicate element.( also in O(n) or less.).
5. What do you do to bring about a stack overflow exception?
6. Given that you have an infinite loop in your program during the program execution,
how do you detect the infinite loop?
1.
2.
3.
4.

In-Depth idea about MVC Architecture ( particularly in context of JSP/Servlets)

Give the proper data structure for representing a finite state machine
Questions about functional dependency & normalization in database.
Questions about ARP , connection less & connection-oriented protocol.

Basic questions about pipelining, logic gates-----intel special.

1. Giving the formula of unbiased estimator for covariance matrix
2. How to make 24 with 2 3s & 2 7s? You cant use factorial or power. Only +,-,*,/
operators are allowed.
3. Given an array of 0's and 1's sort the array such that all 0's appear before all 1's.
(Dont use additional array)
4. Given a linked list of n elements, deleted every m'th element starting from the
beginning.
suppose my list has elements as
34, 5, 6, 2, 67, 11, 53, 72, 66, 21, 34, 56
-and if value of m is 4, then the elements which will get deleted are: 2, 72,56. if
m = 1, all elements will get deleted.
-try to cover all possible cases of m, what if m = 1. after deleting don't forget to
free the memory of deleted node.
-and don;t just think the logic, try to write the proper program.
5. Given a binary search tree's root node, decide whether the tree is a valid binary search
tree or not.( solution is already been posted by gokul)
Given a linked list having n elements, you have been given (data) and (position). you
have to search for the node containing (data) in linked list and then delete it. after
deletion insert it in (position) in linked list.
- again don't think just logic, try to write complete program covering all the possible
cases i.e.
- data is not in list.
- data is found in first element of list
- data is found in last element of list

- position is first node

- position is last node
- position is not valid one.
1. Find the most optimized method's complexity to calculate X^n (x to the power of n).
2. write the program to calculate gcd(greatest commond divisor) of two numbers
.recursive one.
3. a person can take 1 step or 2 step to climb up. no of possible ways in which he can
climb up n steps are the result of
- sequence 1,2,4,8,16,32 etc.
-sequence 1,1,3,4,7, i.e. fibonacci sequence
-some other
4. no of edges in a connected graphs having n nodes.
5. If a min heap is maintained in a 0-based array what will be the relation between ith
element of array and 2*i+1 and 2*i+2 th element of array.
6. complexity of sorting an array of positive and negative integers, such that all negative
integers come before positive ones.
[if any other remember objective questions plz add]/
programming question:
Given a node pointer of a valid binary search tree. find the pointer of next higher node in
the tree, or return null if no higher node is found (higher node means , node having data
value just greater than the data value of given node.)
- try to find all sample test case trees.(i.e. - what if right child of given nod eis null, what
if left is null etc.)
-again, try to write proper code
Interview questions:
1. given 2 strings, find the common substring of maximum length .
2. how is memory get attatched with process. virtual memory concepts,
3. how system calls work in linux.
4. given 2 boxes and 50 red and 50 white balls. you are supposed to put balls in both
boxes such that if a person comes and pick a ball , probabiltiy of being it red is
maximum ANS: 1 red ball in one box and 49 red and 50 white in another box
5. suppose we have a document and we are given the position of occureneces for some
words in the document. eg.
iiitb: 4,6,10,59,100,200
bangalore: 56, 61,109,220
placement: 111,333,444
you have to find the text snippet of minimum length which include all the occurences
of these words at least once. Also find the complexity of your algorithm.