by Matt Naugle's book "Illustrated TCP/IP: A Graphic Guide to the Protocol Suite"
The Origins of TCP/IP
• A TCP/IP network is heterogeneous.
• Popularity due to:
- Protocol suite part of the Berkeley Unix operating system
- College students worked with it and then took it to corporate America
- In 1983, all government proposals required TCP/IP
- The Web graphical user interface(browser)
• TCP/IP has easy remote access capabilities.
A TCP/IP network is generally a heterogeneous network. The suite of protocols that encompass TCP/IP were originally designed to allow different types of computer systems to communicate as if they were the same system. It was developed by a project underwritten by an agency of the Department of Defense known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
There are many reasons why the early TCP/IP became popular, three of which are paramount.
- First, DARPA provided a grant to allow the protocol suite to become part of Berkeley’s Unix system. When TCP/IP was introduced to the commercial marketplace, Unix was always mentioned in every story about it. Berkeley Unix and TCP/IP became the standard operating system and protocol of choice for many major universities, where it was used with workstations in engineering and research environments.
- Second, in 1983, all U.S. government proposals that included networks mandated the TCP/IP protocol. (This was also the year that the ARPAnet was converted to the TCP/IP protocol. Conversions in those days happened within days. That was when the Internet was small.)
- And third, a graphical user interface was developed to allow easy access with the system. TCP/IP or its applications can be a difficult protocol to use if you have not had experience with it. Finding information on the Internet was a formidable task. Before the browser, TCP/IP applications were accessed from a command line interface with a few basic applications that allowed you to call a remote system and act as a remote terminal, transfer files, and send and receive mail. Some companies of these applications built graphical interfaces to the applications, but they were still rough and would not have gained commercial success. The browser (a killer application) hid all the complexities of the TCP/IP protocol and its applications and allowed for graphics to appear as well as text, and by clicking on either the graphics or text, we could place ourselves anywhere on the Internet (within security reasons!). It also allowed for easier access to information on the Internet.
Based on those points, it was not very long before everyone knew of the capability of the protocol to allow dissimilar systems to communicate through the network—all this without a forklift upgrade to mainframes, minis, and personal computers. It simply bolted on to existing computer devices. TCP/IP became a very popular network operating system that continues today.
TCP/IP originated when DARPA was tasked to bring about a solution to a difficult problem: allowing different computers to communicate with one another as if they were the same computer. This was difficult, considering that all computer architectures in those days (the early 1970s) were highly guarded secrets. Computer manufacturers would not disclose either their hardware or software architectures to anyone. This is known as a closed or proprietary system.
The architecture behind TCP/IP takes an alternative approach. TCP/IP developed into an architecture that would allow the computers to communicate without grossly modifying the operating system or the hardware architecture of the machine. TCP/IP runs as an application on those systems.However, before TCP/IP, the original result was known as the Network Control Program (NCP). The protocol was developed to run on multiple hosts in geographically dispersed areas through a packet switching internet known as the Advanced Research Project Agency network—ARPAnet. This protocol was primarily used to support application-oriented functions and process-to-process communications between two hosts. Specific applications, such as file transfer, were written to this network operating system.
The ARPAnet was taken down in 1993. The Internet that we run today was built during the ARPAnet time, but as a parallel network.In order to perpetuate the task of allowing dissimilar government computers to communicate, DARPA gave research grants to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of California at San Bernadino (UCSB), the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and the University of Utah. A company called BBN provided the Honeywell 316 Interface Message Processors (IMPs, which have evolved into today’s routers), which provided the internet communications links.
In 1971, the ARPAnet Networking Group dissolved, and DARPA took over all the research work. The first few years of this design proved to be an effective test, but had some serious design flaws, so a research project was developed to overcome these problems. The outcome of this project was a recommendation to replace the original program known as NCP with another called Transmission Control Program (TCP). Between the years of 1975–1979, DARPA had begun the work on the Internet technology, which resulted in the TCP/IP protocols as we know them today. The protocol responsible for routing the packets through an internet was termed the Internet Protocol. Today, the common term for this standard is TCP/IP.With TCP/IP replacing NCP, the NCP application-specific programs were converted to run over the new protocol. The protocol became mandated in 1983, when ARPA demanded that all computers attached to the ARPAnet use the TCP/IP protocol.
• In 1983, ARPAnet was split into two networks. - Defense Data Network (DDN) or MILNET
• The DARPA Internet—new name for the ARPAnet
• In 1985, NSFnet was established to allow five supercomputer sites to be accessed by scientists.
• Outside the ARPAnet, many “regional” networks based on TCP/IP were built.
• CSNET (Computer Science Network)
• BITNET (Because It’s Time Network, IBM)
• UUCP (User to User Copy), which became USEnet
• All were connected via the ARPAnet backbone.
• Original routers were called Interface Message Processors (IMPs).
In 1983, the ARPAnet was split into two networks: the Defense Data Network (DDN), also known as the MILNET (military network), and the DARPA Internet, a new name for the old ARPAnet network.Outside of the ARPAnet, many networks were being formed, such as CSNET (Computer Science Network); BITNET (Because It’s Time Network) used between IBM systems; UUCP (User to User Copy), which became the protocol used on USENET (a network used for distributing news); and many others. All of these networks were based on the TCP/IP protocol, and all were interconnected using the ARPAnet as a backbone. Many other advances were also taking place with Local Area Networks using Ethernet, and companies began making equipment that enabled any host or terminal to attach to the Ethernet. The original route messengers, known as IMPs (Interface Message Processors), were now being made commercially and were called routers. These routers were smaller, cheaper, and faster than the ARPAnet’s IMPs, and they were more easily maintained. With these devices, regional networks were built and could now hook up to the Internet.
However, commercial access to the Internet was still very limited. One experiment that was successful, CSNET (computer science network), provided the foundation for the NSF to build another network that interconnected five supercomputer sites. The five sites were interconnected via 56-kbps lines. This was known as NSFnet. However, the NSF also stated that if an academic institution built a community network, the NSF would give it access to the NSFnet. This would allow both regional access to the NSFnet and the regional networks (based on the TCP/IP protocol) to communicate with one another. The NSFnet was formally established in 1986. It built a large backbone network using 56-kbps links, which were later upgraded to T1 links (July 1988). Anyone who could establish a physical link to the NSFnet backbone could gain access to it. In 1990, the NSFnet was upgraded to 45-Mbps links.Once the word of NSFnet spread, many regional networks sprang up, such as NYSERnet (New York State Educational Research Network), CERFnet (named for California Educational Research Network and not Vint Cerf), and others. The regional networks were supported at their level and not by the NSF.
• The original ARPAnet was taken out of service in 1989.
• Internet backbone supported by NSFnet using 56-kbps lines.
• NSFnet upgraded to 45-Mbps backbone.
• In 1993, NSF granted out the operation of the backbone to various companies to continue running it.
• Most operations of the Internet are run by private companies and not the government.
The NSFnet was found to be very useful beyond its conception of linking supercomputers to academic institutions. In 1987, NSF awarded a contract to MERIT Network (along with IBM and MCI) to upgrade the NSFnet to T1 and to link six regional networks, the existing five supercomputer centers, MERIT, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research into one backbone. This was completed in July 1988. In 1989, a nonprofit organization known as ANS (Advanced Network and Services, Inc.) was spun off from the MERIT team. Its goal was to upgrade the NSFnet to a 45-Mbps backbone and link together 16 regional sites. This was completed in November 1991.More commercial entities were springing up building regional networks via TCP/IP as well. To allow these entities access to the backbone, a concept known as the Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) was built. This was a point on the backbone that allowed commercial regional networks access to the academic NSFnet backbone.
The original ARPAnet was expensive to run and interest inside DARPA began to wane. Major promoters of the ARPAnet had left DARPA to take positions elsewhere. It was taken completely out of service in 1989, and what emerged in its place is what we know as the Internet. The term Internet was coined as an abbreviation to the Internet Protocol (IP).The NSFnet was basically a mirror image of the ARPAnet, and they were running in parallel. Regional networks based on the TCP/IP protocol were interconnected via NSFnet, which had connections to the ARPAnet. More connections were being made through NSFnet because it was higher speed, easier to hook into, and less expensive. It was determined that the original network, the ARPAnet, should be shut down. Sites on the ARPAnet found new homes within the regional networks or as regional networks. NSFnet provided the backbone for interconnection of these regional networks.
• Today, any company can build a backbone based on TCP/IP.
• Connections to other backbones are provided through peering points known as Network Access Points (NAPs).
• Internet Service Providers allow for anyone to connect to the Internet through Points of Presence (POPs). - Essentially, a location in any city that can accept a phone call from a user’s modem. The line is then connected to a network that provides access to the Internet.
• Running TCP/IP does not require access to the Internet.
Around 1993, NSF decided it could not continue supporting the rapid expansion directly and produced contracts for outsourcing the continuation of the Internet. Many companies responded to the call, and the functional responsibilities of running the Internet were given to many different companies. In place of the NSFnet would be a concept called Network Access Points, points located throughout the United States through which companies that built their own backbones could interconnect and exchange route paths.
Also with this came the concept of peering. NAPs provided access to other backbones, and by peering with another backbone provider, a provider allowed their backbone to be used by another provider to move their customers’ traffic. There was a lot of controversy with this concept: Who should a backbone provider peer with or not peer with? Why should a provider let another provider use its backbone as a transit for its customers for free? The answer: because NSF stated this and the issue was tabled.
NAPs are basically the highest point in the Internet. In this way, many backbones would be privately built, and all would be interconnected through the NAPs. Initially, there were four official NAPs, but this number has grown by an additional 13 (as of 1999). Even with the commercialization of the Internet, no one company owned any part of the Internet, and everyone associated with the Internet had to abide by the rules in place. External companies simply provided a specific service required to run the Internet. For example, Network Solutions, Inc. was granted the right to control the domain name registration. However, it does not own this capability. Network Solutions is still under the authority of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority run by Jon Postel (as of 1999) at the University of Southern California. AT&T was granted the right to host many document databases required by the Internet user community. Eventually, all the functions of running the Internet were contracted out by NSF. Any company (with lots of money) can build a backbone. To provide access to others, its backbone must be connected to others at the NAP. Individual backbone providers then interconnect multiple connections known as Points of Presence, (POPs), which are where the individual user or business connects to the Internet.
In April of 1995, the NSFnet backbone was shut down, and the Internet was up and running as we know it today.One last distinction of TCP/IP: Running the protocol on any network does not require a connection to the Internet. TCP/IP may be installed on as few as two network stations or on as many as can be addressed (possibly millions). When a network requires access to the Internet, the network administrator must call his or her local registry (or Internet Service Provider [ISP]) to place a request for access and be assigned an official IP address
The World Wide Web
The Web came to us in 1994 (commercially) and allowed for everyone to work on the Internet, even though many had no idea what they were working on. The browser became the interface, a simple-to-use interface, and this was the start of the commercialization of the Web. This is when “corporate” money became involved. However, the idea started out way back in 1981 with a program called Enquire, developed by Tim Berners-Lee. A program known as Mosaic was released in November 1993 as freeware written by the cofounder of NetScape, Marc Andreeson, at the U.S. National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA). Mosaic allowed text and graphics on the same Web page and was the basis for NetScape’s Navigator browser and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. First and foremost, the Web allows anyone, especially non technical people, instant access to an infinite amount of information. You can get stock reports, information from a library, order a book, reserve airline tickets, page someone, find that long-lost friend through the yellow pages, order a data line for your house, check your credit card statement, check on the availability of that one-and-only car, provide computer-based training, or attend a private (video and audio) meeting. And yes, you can send an email. All this and still more! Unlike other online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online (at the time), anyone can create a Web page as well—not too hard to do, the language to create a Web page is pretty much English. Millions of ideas are available, and there is a pulldown menu in the browser that allows you to see the source code (the basic instructions that tell the Web server how to format a page) of any Web page. By 1995, companies known as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were advertising their ability to put you on the Web for a low price of $19.95. In fact, today (1999), most professional ISPs give you space on their servers (a small amount, but enough to get started) for you to create your Web page, at no charge!
Point and click to access any information that you would like; you do not have to know an operating system to move around the Web. No other “cyberspace” provider has the rich simplicity of the browser. One click and you can be on a server in Japan, video conference to California, send an email to your friend in England, or plan a vacation to Breckenridge, Colorado. Other online providers had information, but it was the simplicity and combination of text and still pictures on the same page that catapulted the Web into every home. Virtually anything that you want to check on, you can do on the Web and you do not have to remember IP addresses, directory commands for DOS and Unix, file compression, executing the TAR command, printing to a postscript printer, and so on. Simply stated, the Web allows everyone access to network data with a simple click of the mouse.
•The biggest asset of the Web is its biggest downfall:
- Information
•Information on the Web can be posted by anyone.
•However:
- Many Web pages are not kept up
- Many are not written correctly (minutes to build a screen)
- Information is old and out of date
- Information is not documented
- Incredibly hard to search for simple items due to more than 50 million Web sites available (as 1999)
- Search engines bring back many undesired Web pages which require advanced searching techniques
What is the downfall of the Internet? The biggest problem with the Internet is its biggest asset: information. You may find yourself scratching your head while traveling the Internet. Anyone can create content and post it, so there is a lot of old information on the Internet. Web pages are not kept up. Web pages are not written correctly and contain too many slow-loading graphics. Many links that are embedded in other Web pages no longer exist. Information is posted without having validity checks. Remember, no one entity owns the Internet or the Web application. Some companies with Web pages are no longer around. All Web pages are not created equal; some take an eternity to write to your browser, while others take a minimal amount of time. Also, all ISPs are not created equal. An ISP is your connection to the Internet. Test out your ISP for service and connectivity. I recently switched from a major ISP to a local ISP and found 4x improvement in speed. However, the local ISP does not provide national service (local phone numbers around the United States). So when I started traveling, I switched to another ISP that has both national coverage and speed. Be careful when scrutinizing the Internet. Make sure the data is reputable (i.e., can be verified). There are many charlatans on the Internet posting fiction. The Internet really introduced us to the concept of trying something for free. For us old timers, we expected this. Postings to the Internet were always free and commercialism was a no-no. Years ago, when I was developing software, the Internet came to my rescue many times with postings of source code that assisted in my development projects. This source code was available for free and often the person who posted it did not mind an occasional email with a question or two. Another concept that the Internet was not used for was known as shareware, where the free samples of applications range from severely crippled (lacking many of the full-version features such as printing abilities) to the full-blown version of the software. The Web combined the two concepts, and the marketing concept really took hold when the Internet came into the business world. Every business sponsoring a Web page will give you something if you purchase something—a very old concept brought to life again via the Internet.
•Old-style marketing.
- “Give away the razor and sell the razor blades”—Gillette
- The old concept of “try before you buy”
- Many diversified programs and interactive Web pages
- Most companies have a Web page
Another problem of the Internet is the spread of viruses. Protect your workstation with some type of antiviral software before downloading anything from the Internet. Most protection schemes are dynamic in that they are constantly checking for viruses even during an email download or a file transfer. Here is where the other online providers do have an advantage. Private online providers such as America Online and CompuServe make every effort to test uploaded software and generally do not allow for content to be written to their servers. You will find those services more protected and watched over than the Internet. The Internet has truly tested the first Amendment of the Constitution: the right to free speech. The Internet is still the best thing going.
Applications from all types of businesses are available on the Internet. Today (1999), many experiments are on the Web as well, including audio/visual applications such as movies, radio, and even telephone access.
Internet, Intranets, and Extranets
•The Internet is a complex organization of networks managed by companies that provide access to international resources through the use of the TCP/IP protocol suite.•An intranet uses the TCP/IP protocols and applications based on the Internet but in a corporate environment.
•An extranet is the sharing of a corporate intranet (maybe just a piece of it) with the outside world.
- E-commerce is an example of an extranet
When a business exposes part of its internal network to the outside community, it is known as an extranet. You may have used this extranet when browsing through a web page ordering some diskettes via a reseller’s Web page. You will not have complete access to a corporate network, but merely a part of it that the business wants you to have access to. The company can block access on its routers and put firewalls (a piece of software or hardware that allows you access to resources based on a variety of parameters such as IP addresses, port numbers, domain names, etc.) into place that force you to have access only to a subset of its intranet.
Who Governs the Internet?
Who governs the protocol, the Internet, and the Web? First off, let’s make it clear that no one company or person owns the Internet. In fact, some say that it is a miracle that the Internet continues to function as well as it does. Why is this hard to believe? Well, in order to function, the Internet requires the complete cooperation of- thousands of companies known as Internet Service Providers (ISPs),
- telecommunications companies,
- standards bodies such as IANA, application developers, and
- a host of other resources.
The TCP/IP protocol suite is governed by an organization known as the Internet Activities Board (IAB). In the late 1970s, the growth of the Internet was accompanied by a growth in the size of the interested research community, representing an increased need for coordination mechanisms. Vint Cerf, then manager of the Internet Program at DARPA, formed several coordination bodies: an International Cooperation Board (ICB) to coordinate activities with some cooperating European countries centered on Packet Satellite research; an Internet Research Group, which was an inclusive group providing an environment for general exchange of information; and an Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB). The ICCB was an invitational body to assist Cerf in managing the burgeoning Internet activity. In 1983, continuing growth of the Internet community demanded a restructuring of the coordination mechanisms. The ICCB was disbanded and, in its place, a structure of Task Forces was formed, each focused on a particular area of the technology (e.g., routers, end-to-end protocols, etc.). The Internet Activities Board (IAB) was formed from the chairs of the Task Forces. By 1985, there was a tremendous growth in the more practical/engineering side of the Internet. This resulted in an explosion in the attendance at the IETF meetings. This growth was complemented by a major expansion in the community. No longer was DARPA the only major player in the funding of the Internet. In addition to NSFnet and the various U.S. and international government-funded activities, interest in the commercial sector was beginning to grow. Also in 1985, there was a significant decrease in Internet activity at DARPA. As a result, the IAB was left without a primary sponsor and increasingly assumed the mantle of leadership.
The growth continued, resulting in even further substructure within both the IAB and IETF. The IETF combined Working Groups into Areas, and designated Area Directors. An Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) was formed of the Area Directors. The IAB recognized the increasing importance of the IETF, and restructured the standards process to explicitly recognize the IESG as the major review body for standards. The IAB also restructured so that the rest of the Task Forces (other than the IETF) were combined into an Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), with the old task forces renamed as research groups. The growth in the commercial sector brought with it increased concern regarding the standards process itself. Starting in the early 1980s (and continuing to this day), the Internet grew beyond its primarily research roots to include both a broad user community and increased commercial activity. Increased attention was paid to making the process open and fair. This coupled with a recognized need for community support of the Internet eventually led to the formation of the Internet Society in 1991, under the auspices of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). In 1992, the Internet Activities Board was
reorganized and renamed the Internet Architecture Board, operating under the auspices of the Internet Society. A more “peer” relationship was defined between the new IAB and IESG, with the IETF and IESG taking a larger responsibility for the approval of standards. Ultimately, a cooperative and mutually supportive relationship was formed among the IAB, IETF, and Internet Society, with the Internet Society taking on as a goal the provision of service and other measures that would facilitate the work of the IETF. This community spirit has a long history beginning with the early ARPAnet. The early ARPAnet researchers worked as a close-knit community to accomplish the initial demonstrations of packet switching technology described earlier. Likewise, the Packet Satellite, Packet Radio, and several other DARPA computer science research programs were multicontractor collaborative activities that heavily used whatever available mechanisms there were to coordinate their efforts, starting with electronic mail and adding file sharing, remote access, and eventually, World Wide Web capabilities.Circuit and Packet Switching
•Circuit switching provides for a prebuilt path that is reserved for the length of the call.
•Packet switching determines a route based on information in the header of the packet. The packet is switched dynamically and multiple data packets may take the same route.
•Packet switching is viable for all types of data, whether voice, video, or store-and-forward data.
TCP/IP allowed for open communications to exist and for the proliferation of LAN-to-LAN and LAN-to-WAN connectivity between multiple operating environments. Its topology and architecture, however, were not based on the methods employed by the phone company: circuit switching.
The phone company (AT&T, before the breakup) basically laughed at the idea of a packet switched network and publicly stated that it could never work. A network whose transmitted information can find its own way around the network? Impossible! A network in which every transmitted packet of information has the same chance for forwarding? The phone company maintained its stance that circuit switching was the only method that should be used for voice, video, or data. Circuit switching by definition provided guaranteed bandwidth and, therefore, Quality of Service. At that time, the phone company was correct, but only for voice. Voice and video cannot withstand delay beyond a small time frame (about 150 milliseconds, or 0.150 seconds), but data could! In packet switching, the path is found in real time, and each time the path should be the same, but it may not be. Still, the information will get from point A to point B. There are many differences between circuit switching and packet switching. One is that in circuit switching, a path is prebuilt before information is sent, whereas packet switching does not predefine or prebuild a path before sending information. For example, when you make a phone call, the phone company physically builds a circuit for that call. You cannot speak (transmit information) until that circuit is built. This circuit is built via hardware. This path is a physical circuit through the telephone network system; however, the phone company is currently employing other technologies to allow for “virtual circuit switching” through technologies such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). For our comparison, a voice path is prebuilt on hardware before information is passed. No information is contained in the digitized voice signal to indicate to the switches where the destination is located. Each transmitting node has the same chance in getting its information to the receiver. In packet switching, the information needed to get to the destination station is contained in the header of the information being sent. Stations, known as routers, in the network read this information and forward the information along its path. Thousands of different packets of information may take the exact same path to different destinations. Today (1999) we are proving that not only is packet switching viable, it can be used for voice, video, and data. Newer, faster stations on the network along with faster transmission transports have been invented. Along with this are new Quality of Service protocols that allow priorities to exist on the network. This allows certain packets of information to “leapfrog” over other packets of information to become first in the transmission.
TCP/IP Protocol Documents
•Review RFC 1583.•TCP/IP technical documents are known as Request for Comments (RFCs).
•Can be found at any of the three registries
- –APNIC (Asia), RIPE (Europe), INTERNIC (U.S.)
- –Point your browser to: ds.internic.net/RFC/rfcxxxx.txt
- –Replace the x with the RFC number
Complete details of a Request for Comments (RFC) document are contained in RFC 1543. If TCP/IP is such an open protocol, where does one find out information on the protocol and other items of interest on the Internet? RFCs define the processing functions of this protocol, and these documents are available online or may be purchased. Online, they may be found on any of the three registries: InterNIC (US), RIPE (Europe), and APNIC (Asia Pacific). For example, point your Web browser to http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc-index.txt and review the latest index (updated almost daily) of RFCs.
My suggestion is that you save this as a file in your local computer. You will return many times to this document to find more information about a particular aspect of a protocol. Use the Find tool under the Edit pulldown menu to provide a search. Be careful: Just because you type in a word, the search engine may not find specifically what you are looking for, so you may have to know a few things before venturing forth, but for the most part, this is the best method of weeding through the RFCs. After finding an RFC, change rfc-index on the URL to rfcxxxx.txt, where x is the RFC number, and you now have the RFC online. I suggest that you save the RFCs that you will return to the most on your local directory—they can take some time to download. A majority of individuals are trusting the statements of a company’s implementation of the TCP/IP protocols more than what is written in an RFC. The RFC is the definitive document for the TCP/IP protocol suite. I asked some systems engineers who I know two things:
•When was the last time you reviewed a question by reading an RFC?
•Have you read RFC 1812, 1122, and 1123?
The answer to the first question is generally, “I don’t know” (occasionally, I got the response, “Hey Matt, get a life!”), and the answer to the second question is, “What’s in those RFCs?” How any systems engineers can claim that they know the TCP/IP protocol (as always indicated on their résumés, along with knowledge of 100 other protocols and applications) without having read these three RFCs? The Web makes it so easy to review an RFC: Simply point your browser to ds.internic.net/rfc/rfcxxxx.txt, or for an index to ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc-index.txt. Get the RFC electronically, save it, and then use the search commands to find what you are looking for.
Why Study the RFCs?
•Request for Comments technically define a protocol for the Internet and are informational, or even humorous.•The first RFC was written by Steve Crocker.
- Sent via “snail mail” until FTP came along
- Does not automatically become an RFC
- First enters as an RFC draft with no number associated
- Must follow the instructions for authors detailed in RFC 1543
At this point it is considered a public document. A peer review process is then conducted over a period of time and comments are continually made on the draft. It will then be decided whether or not it becomes an RFC .Steve Crocker wrote the first RFC in 1969. These memos were intended to be an informal, fast way to share ideas with other network researchers. RFCs were originally printed on paper and distributed via snail mail (postal). As the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) came into use, the RFCs were prepared as online files and accessed via FTP. Existing RFCs (as of 1999) number over 2200 and contain information on any aspect of any Internet protocol.
Development engineers read these documents and produce applications based on them. For systems engineers, most of the RFCs do not need to be studied. However, for a basic understanding of the TCP/IP protocol suite, three RFCs must be read. Therefore, in the spirit of the RFC action words, “you MUST read RFCs 1122, 1123, and 1812 before being able to state that you understand the TCP/IP protocol suite.” There are many RFCs, but the majority can be summed up in those three RFCs. The reading is not difficult, and many things are explained.
Submitting an RFC
•Anyone can submit an RFC according to RFC 1543.- A major source for RFCs is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which now has over 75 working groups
•The secondary publication may be in postscript.
- Primarily used for clarity
- Updated by new RFCs
- RFCs can be obsoleted but their numbers are never used again
•The RFC announcements are distributed via two mailing lists:
- the “IETF-Announce” list (IETF-Request@cnri.reston.va.us), and
- the “RFC-DIST” list (RFC-Request@NIC.DDN.MI).
Memos proposed to be RFCs may be submitted by anyone. One large source of memos that become RFCs comes from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The IETF working groups (WGs) evolve their working memos (known as Internet Drafts (I-Ds) ) until they feel they are ready for publication. Then the memos are reviewed by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and, if approved, are sent by the IESG to the RFC Editor. The primary RFC must be written in ASCII text. This includes all pictures, which leads to some interesting images! The RFC may be replicated as a secondary document in PostScript (this must be approved by the author and the RFC editor). This allows for an easy-to-read RFC, including pictures. The primary RFC, however, is always written in ASCII text. Remember: Simplicity and availability for all is the overall tone of the Internet. Therefore, in order to interact in a digital world, it is mandatory that everyone have at least ASCII terminal functions either through a computer terminal or on a PC. The format of an RFC is indicated by RFC 1543, “Instructions to Authors,”. Each RFC is assigned a number in ascending sequence (newer RFCs have higher numbers, and they are never reassigned). Once issued, RFCs do not change. Revisions may be made to the RFCs, but revisions are issued as a new RFC. But do not throw out that old RFC. Some of the newer RFCs only replace part of the older RFC such as replacing an appendix or updating a function. They may also simply add something to the older RFC. This is indicated by an “updated-by:” statement on the first page. If a new RFC completely replaces an RFC, the new RFC has “Obsolete: RFC XXXX” in the upper-left corner of the RFC. The index of RFCs, indicated by the URL given earlier, contains the information about updates. The RFCs are continuing to evolve as the technology demands. This allows for the Internet to become the never-ending story. For example, the wide area network connection facility known as the Frame Relay specification is becoming very popular, and there are RFCs to define how to interface TCP to the frame relay protocol. RFCs also allow refinements to enhance better interoperability. As long as the technology is changing, the RFCs must be updated to allow connection to the protocol suite. IPv6 is well documented with many RFCs. As of 1999, the IETF now has in excess of 75 working groups, each working on a different aspect of Internet engineering. Each of these working groups has a mailing list to discuss one or more draft documents under development. When consensus is reached on a draft, a document may be distributed as an RFC.
TCP/IP: The (mostly used)Protocols and the OSI Model
The heart of the TCP/IP network protocol is at layers 3(Transport) and 4(Application, Presentation, Session). The applications for this protocol (file transfer, mail, and terminal emulation) run at the session through the application(4th) layer. TCP/IP runs independently of the data-link and physical layer. At these layers, the TCP/IP protocol can run on Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI, serial lines, X.25, and so forth. It has been adapted to run over any LAN or WAN protocol. TCP/IP was first used to interconnect computer systems through synchronous lines and not high-speed local area networks. Today, it is used on any type of media. This includes serial lines (asynchronous and synchronous) and high-speed networks such as FDDI, Ethernet, Token Ring, and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM).TCP/IP is a family of protocols.
- The Internet Protocol (IPv4 and IPv6): RIP, RIP2, OSPF, ICMP, IGMP, RSVP, and ARP
- The Transport Control Protocol and the User Datagram Protocol (TCP and UDP)
- The suite of specific applications specifically developed for TCP/IP(4th level):
- TELNET
- File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
- Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)
- Domain Name Service (DNS)
- Simple Mail Transfer Program (SMTP)
- Real Time Protocol (RTP)
- Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP)
- Boot Protocol (BOOTP)
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
- Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
IP Overview
•IP is designed to interconnect packet switched communication networks to form an internet.•It transmits blocks of data known as datagrams received from IP’s upper-layer software to and from hosts.
•IP provides best-effort or connectionless delivery service.
•IP is responsible for addressing.
•Two versions of IP: version 4 and version 6.
•Network information is distributed via routing protocols.
The Internet Protocol (IP) is situated at the network layer of the OSI model and
- is designed to interconnect packet switched communication networks to form an internet. It transmits blocks of data called datagrams received from the IP’s upper-layer software to and from source and destination hosts.
- It provides a best effort or connectionless delivery service between the source and destination—connectionless in that it does not establish a session between the source and destination before it transmits its data.
- This is the layer that is also responsible for the IP protocol addressing. In order to allow for multiple IP networks to interoperate, there must be a mechanism to provide flow between the differently addressed systems. The device that routes data between different IP addressed networks is called a router, which is often erroneously thought of as being the only function of the IP layer. It is not, and this is explained in more detail later. The router is basically a traffic cop. You tell the traffic cop where you want to go and he points you in the right direction. Routers contain ports that are physical connections to networks. Each of these ports must be assigned a local address. With more than one router, each router must know the others’ configured information. We could configure all the IP addresses and their associated ports on a router statically, but this is a very time-consuming and non efficient method. Therefore, we have protocols that distribute the IP address information to each router. These are called routing protocols. The two main types of routing protocols for IP networks are:
- RIP (Routing Information Protocol, version 1 or 2) and
- OSPF (Open Shortest Path First).
IGPs, EGPs, and Routing Protocols
•There is a difference between a routing protocol and a routable protocol.- A routing protocol is one that is used to propagate route path information on a network
- A routable protocol is one that has the ability to be routed as opposed to a nonroutable protocol such as NetBIOS
•EGPs are used as routing protocols between ASs.
There are two classifications of propagating information:
- Interior Gateway Protocols (IGP) and
- Exterior Gateway Protocols (EGP).
Introduction to Routing Protocols (RIP)
•Rooted in the early days of the ARPAnet.- Historically tied to the Xerox XNS network operating system
•It is known as a distance vector protocol.
•It builds a table of known networks, which is distributed to other routers.
•A hop is one router traversed.
There are a few protocols that handle for a single autonomous system. RIP is the easier of the two (RIP or OSPF) and came from the Xerox Network System (XNS) protocol. The origins of RIP are based in the origins of the Internet, but historically it came from Xerox and its XNS protocol. RIP was freely distributed in the Unix operating system and, because of its simplicity, gained widespread acceptance. Unfortunately, there are many deficiencies associated with this protocol, and there have been many “patches” applied to it to make it work more reliably in large networks. For smaller networks, the protocol works just fine. Since, IP is a routable protocol, it needs a routing protocol to enable it to route between networks. RIP is known as a distance vector protocol. Its database (the routing table) contains two fields needed for routing: a vector (a known IP address) and the distance (how many routers away) to the destination. Actually, the table contains more fields than that, but we will discuss that later. RIP simply builds a table in memory that contains all the routes that it knows about and the distance to that network. When the protocol initializes, it simply places the IP addresses of its local interfaces into the table. It associates a cost with those interfaces and that cost is usually set to 1 (explained in a moment). The router will then solicit (or it may wait for information to be supplied to it) information from other routers on its locally attached subnets. Eventually, as other routers report (send their tables) to other routers, each router will have the information needed about all routes on its subnets or internetwork. Any IP datagrams that must traverse a router in the path to its destination is said to have traversed one hop for each router traversed. Therefore, when a router receives a packet and examines the destination address in the datagram, it will then perform a table lookup based on that destination address. The router will also find the port associated with this destination address in the database and will forward the datagram out of that port and onward to the final destination. In RIP, all routers compute their tables and then give each other their tables (just the IP network address and the cost). Routers that receive this table will add the cost assigned to the incoming interface (received port) to each of the entries in the table. The router then decides whether to keep any of the information in the received table. This information is then passed to other routers.
(OSPF)
•OSPF is an IGP routing protocol.•Operates differently than RIP.
•Used on small, medium, and large networks.
- Most beneficial on large, complex networks
- It maintains the knowledge of all links (interfaces) in the AS
- All routers receive the same link information
OSPF is also routing protocol, but it does not compare to RIP with the exception that it, too, is an IGP. Of course, let’s be fair. In the beginning, when the Internet was created, the processors that we had were nowhere near the power of what we have today. In fact, a Honeywell 516 minicomputer was used as the first router (then called an Internet Message Processor, or IMP). The only micro-CPU in those days was the Z80 from Zilog. RIP worked great on the routers that we had at that time. It had very low overhead (computationally speaking). OSPF is a great protocol, but at the time of RIP, there was no machine that could run it economically. Today, with the faster processors and plentiful memory, OSPF is the routing protocol of choice (for open routing protocols, that is). It is very efficient when it comes to the network, although it is a complicated protocol and is very CPU intensive when it builds its routing table. OSPF is an IGP protocol. It exchanges routing information within a single autonomous system (described as those networks and routers grouped into a single domain under one authority). It can be used in small, medium, or large internetworks, but the most dramatic effects will be readily noticed on large IP networks. As opposed to RIP (a distance vector protocol), OSPF is a link-state protocol. It maintains the state of every link in the domain, and information is flooded to all routers in the domain. Flooding is the process of receiving the information on one port and transmitting it to all other active ports on the router. In this way, all routers receive the same information. This information is stored in a database called the link-state database, which is identical on every router in the AS (or every area if the domain is split into multiple areas). Based on information in the link-state database, an algorithm known as the Dykstra algorithm runs and produces a shortest-path tree based on the metrics, using itself as the root of the tree. The information this produces is used to build the routing table.
Other IP-Related Protocols
•ICMP is an extension of the IP protocol.- IP is connectionless
- Possible to have errors but they are not reported by IP
- ICMP allows for internet devices to transmit error or test messages
- Allows for multicast to operate on an internetwork
- Allows hosts to identify the groups they want to the router
- Allows devices to reserve resources on the network
The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is an extension of the IP layer. This is the reason that it uses an IP header and not a UDP (User Datagram Protocol) header. The purpose of ICMP is to report or test certain conditions on the network. IP delivers data and has no other form of communication. ICMP provides some error reporting mechanism for IP. Basically, it allows internet devices (hosts or routers) to transmit error or test messages. These error messages may be that a network destination cannot be reached or they may generate/reply to an echo request packet (PING, explained later).
The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is an extension of the IP protocol that allows for multicasting to exist for IP. The multicast address already existed for IP but there was not a control protocol to allow it to exist on a network. IGMP is a protocol that operates in workstations and routers and allows the routers to determine which multicast addresses exist on their segments. With this knowledge, routers can build multicast trees allowing multicast data to be received and propagated to their multicast workstations. IGMP headers are used as the basis for all multicast routing protocols for IPv4.
RSVP is called the resource reservation protocol and allows some semblance of Quality of Service (QoS) to exist using IP. It used to be we could increase the speed of a network to allow more bandwidth on which to fit hungry applications. With that capability, QoS was essentially ignored. However, bandwidth cannot continually expand. The Internet was not provisioned for Quality of Service, and RSVP is the first attempt to allow for it. Its benefits are apparent in multicasting applications, but it can be used with unicast applications as well. It allows stations on the network to reserve resources via the routers on the network.
ARP is not really part of the network layer; it resides between the IP and data-link layers. It is the protocol that translates between the 32-bit IP address and a 48-bit Local Area Network address. ARP is only used with IPv4; IPv6 has no concept of ARP. Since IP was not intended to run over a LAN, an address scheme was implemented to allow each host and network on the internet to identify itself. When TCP/IP was adapted to run over the LAN, the IP address had to be mapped to the 48-bit datalink or physical address that LANs use, and ARP is the protocol that accomplishes it.
Introduction to Transport Layer Protocols
•TCP provides for reliable data transfer using sequence numbers and acknowledgments.
•UDP provides a simple connectionless transport layer to allow applications access to the IP.
•RTP and RTCP are framework protocols that are usually incorporated into an application.
- It is placed at the transport layer software to work alongside TCP
- Listen for incoming session establishment requests
- Request a session to another network station
- Send and receive data reliably using sequence numbers and acknowledgments
- Gracefully close a session
The Real Time Protocol (RTP) and the Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP) allow for real-time applications to truly exist on an IP network. RTP resides at the transport layer and works alongside the TCP protocol, and is a replacement for the TCP protocol for real-time applications. RTCP is the protocol that provides feedback to the RTP application and lets the application know how things are going on the network. The protocols are actually frameworks more than protocols and are usually included in the application itself rather than residing as a separate protocol that has an interface. Data is not the only information that is being passed around on the Internet. Multimedia applications such as voice and video are moving from experimental status to emerging(as of 1999). However, voice and video cannot simply be placed on a connectionless, packet switched network. They need some help, and RTP, along with RTCP, provides this help. This in conjunction with RSVP is paving the way for real-time applications on the Internet.
Introduction to the TCP/IP Standard Applications
•TELNET—Provides remote terminal emulation.•FTP—Provides a file transfer protocol.
•TFTP—Provides for a simple file transfer protocol.
•SMTP—Provides a mail service.
•DNS—Provides for a name service.
•BOOTP/DHCP—Provides for management of IP parameters.
Remote terminal emulation is provided through the TELNET protocol. For new users of the TCP/IP protocol, this is not Telenet, a packet switching technology using the CCITT standard X.25. It is pronounced TELNET. This is an application-level protocol that allows terminal emulation to pass through a network to a remote network station. TELNET runs on top of the TCP protocol and allows a network workstation to appear as a local device to a remote device (i.e., a host).
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is similar to TELNET in terms of control, but this protocol allows for data files to be reliably transferred on the Internet. FTP resides on top of TCP and uses it as its transport mechanism.
TFTP is a simplex file transfer protocol (based on an unreliable transport layer called UDP), and is primarily used for boot loading of configuration files across an internet.
The Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) is an electronic mail system that is robust enough to run on the entire Internet system. This protocol allows for the exchange of electronic mail between two or more systems on an internet. Along with a system known as Post Office Protocol(POP), individual users can retrieve their mail from centralized mail repositories.
The Domain Name Service (DNS) is a centralized name service that allows users to establish connections to network stations using human-readable names instead of cryptic network addresses. It provides a name-to-network address translation service. There are many other functions of DNS, including mail server name to IP address translation. Mail service would not exist if not for the DNS.
The Boot Protocol (BOOTP) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) allow for management of IP parameters on a network. These protocols do not provide for router configurations but end-station configurations. BOOTP was the original protocol that provided not only a workstation’s IP address but possibly its operating image as well. DHCP is best known for its management allocation scheme of IP addresses and is a superset of BOOTP that provides extended functions of IP as well as IP address management.
The Internet Protocol (IP)
The main goal of IP is to provide interconnection of subnetworks (the interconnection of networks, explained later) to form an internet in order to pass data.
•IP’s main function is to provide for the interconnection of subnetworks to form an internet in order to pass data.
•The functions provided by IP are:
- Basic unit for data transfer
- Addressing
- Routing
- Fragmentation of datagrams
Connectionless, Best-Effort Delivery Service
•Implements two functions: addressing and fragmentation.•IP encapsulates data handed to it from its upper-layer software with its headers.
•IP delivers data based on a best effort.
- Transmits an encapsulated packet and does not expect a response
- Decapsulates a packet (strips its headers off) and hands the data to its upper-layer software
The IP layer provides the entry into the delivery system used to transport data across the Internet. Usually, when anyone hears the name IP, he/she automatically thinks of the networks connected together through devices commonly known as routers, which connect multiple subnetworks together. It is true the IP performs these tasks, but the IP protocol performs many other tasks, as mentioned previously. The IP protocol runs in all the participating network stations that are attached to subnetworks so that they may submit their packets to routers or directly to other devices on the same network. It resides between the datalink layer and the transport layer. IP also provides for connectionless data delivery between nodes on an IP network.
The primary goal of IP is to provide the basic algorithm for transfer of data to and from a network. In order to achieve this, it implements two functions: addressing and fragmentation. It provides a connectionless delivery service for the upper-layer protocols. This means that IP does not set up a session (a virtual link) between the transmitting station and the receiving station prior to submitting the data to the receiving station. It encapsulates the data handed to it and delivers it on a best-effort basis. IP does not inform the sender or receiver of the status of the packet; it merely attempts to deliver the packet and will not make up for the faults encountered in this attempt. This means that if the datalink fails or incurs a recoverable error, the IP layer will not inform anyone. It tried to deliver (addressed) a message and failed. It is up to the upper-layer protocols (TCP, or even the application itself) to perform error recovery. For example, if your application is using TCP as its transport layer protocol, TCP will time-out for that transmission and will resend the data. If the application is using UDP as its transport, then it is up to the application to perform error recovery procedures. IP submits a properly formatted data packet to the destination station and does not expect a status response. Because IP is a connectionless protocol, IP may receive and deliver the data (data sent to the transport layer in the receiving station) in the wrong order from which it was sent, or it may duplicate the data. Again, it is up to the higher-layer protocols (layer 4 and above) to provide error recovery procedures. IP is part of the network delivery system. It accepts data and formats it for transmission to the datalink layer. (Remember, the datalink layer provides the access methods to transmit and receive data from the attached cable plant.) IP also retrieves data from the datalink and presents it to the requesting upper layer.
Data Encapsulation by Layer
IP will add its control information (in the form of headers), specific to the IP layer only, to the data received by the upper layer (transport layer). Once this is accomplished, it will inform the datalink (layer 2) that it has a message to send to the network. At the network layer, encapsulated data is known as a datagram (rumor has it that this term was coined referring to a similar message delivery system known as the telegram). This datagram may be transferred over high-speed networks (Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI). When the datalink layer adds its headers and trailers it is called a packet (a term referring to a small package). When transmitted onto the cable, the physical layer frames (basically with signaling information such as the preamble for Ethernet or the flag field for Frame Relay and X.25) the information it has received from the datalink layer; therefore, it is called a frame. For most of us, the terms frame and packet are interchangeable. If you want to get into an argument about those terms you need to go find the people who are still arguing about baud and bits per second (bps). For simplicity, in network protocols over high-speed networks, packets and frames will be synonymous. Frames will not be mentioned unless the original specification mandated that term. It is important to remember that IP presents datagrams to its lower layer (the datalink layer). When I talk about a datagram, I am specifically talking about the IP layer. When I talk about a packet, I am specifically talking about the access layer (data link and physical).The IP protocol does not care what kind of data is in the datagram. All it knows is that it must apply some control information, called an IP header, to the data received from the upper-layer protocol (presumably TCP or UDP) and try to deliver it to some station on the network or internet. The IP protocol is not completely without merit. It does provide mechanisms on how hosts and routers should process transmitted or received datagrams, or when an error should be generated, and when an IP datagram may be discarded. To understand the IP functionality, a brief look at the control information it adds (the IP header) to the packet will be shown.
IPv4 Header
There are many header fields in the IP header, each with a defined function to be determined by the receiving station. The first field is the VERS, or version, field. This defines the current version of IP implemented by the network station. Version 4 is the latest(as of 1999) version. The other versions out there are in experimental stages, or the experiments are finished and the protocol did not make it or was used to test version 6. There are three versions of IP that are running today (1999): 4, 5, and 6. Most do not believe that version 5 is out there but it is; it is known as the Streams 2 protocol. The following information was taken from RFC 1700.
Assigned Internet Version Numbers
Decimal---Keyword-------Version----------------------------References
0-------------Reserved
1–3---------Unassigned
4------------ IP------------------Internet Protocol-----------------RFC791
5------------ ST-----------------ST Datagram Mode
6------------ IPv6--------------RFC 1883
7------------ TP/IX-------------TP/IX: The Next Internet
9------------ TUBA------------TUBA
15---------- Reserved
Header Length, Service Type, and Total Length Fields
The length of the IP header (all fields except for the IP data field) can vary. Not all the fields in the IP header need to be used. Fields are measured in the amount of 32-bit words. The shortest IP header will be 20 bytes; therefore, this field would contain a 5 (20 bytes = 160 bits; 160 bits/32 bits = 5). This field is necessary, for the header can be variable in length depending on the field called options. IPv6 has a static-length header field.
The service field was a great idea, but it is rarely used and is usually set to 0. This was a entry that would allow applications to indicate the type of routing path they would like (the key point here is that the application chooses this field). For example, a real-time protocol would choose low delay, high throughput, and high reliability—a file transfer does not need this. A TELNET session could choose low delay with normal throughput and reliability. There is another side to this story, however. The router must support this feature as well and this usually means building and maintaining multiple routing tables. The Service type is made up of the following fields: precedence, delay, throughput, and reliability. However, supporting this field caused the router to support multiple routing tables per router, and this complication never progressed with the router vendors. This precedence bits of the service field may have an entry of zero (normal precedence) and up to 7 (network control), which allows the transmitting station’s application to indicate to the IP layer the priority of sending the datagram. This is combined with the D (delay), T (throughput), and R (reliability) bits. This field is known as a Type of Service (TOS) identifier, and these bits indicate to a router which route to take:
- D bit. Request low delay when set to 1
- T bit. Request high throughput when set to 1
- R bit. Request high reliability when set to 1
Fragmentation
•Different media allows for different-sized datagrams to be transmitted and received.
•Fragmentation allows a datagram that is too large to be forwarded to the next LAN segment to be broken up into smaller segments to be reassembled at the destination.
•The fragmentation occurs at the router that cannot forward it to the next interface.
•Applications should use path MTU discovery to find the smallest datagram size.
- Do not depend on the router
A fragmented IP datagram contains the following fields:
- Identification. Indicates which datagram fragments belong together so datagrams do not get mismatched. The receiving IP layer uses this field and the source IP address to identify which fragments belong together.
- Flags. Indicate whether more fragments are to arrive or no more data is to be sent for that datagram (no more fragments).Whether or not to fragment a datagram (a don’t-fragment bit). If a router receives a packet that it must fragment to be forwarded and the don’t-fragment bit is set, then it will discard the packet and send an error message (through a protocol known as ICMP, discussed later) to the source station.
- Offset. Each IP header from each of the fragmented datagrams is almost identical. This field indicates the offset (in bytes) from the previous datagram that continues the complete datagram. In other words, if the first fragment has 512 bytes, this offset would indicate that this datagram starts the 513th byte of the fragmented datagram. It is used by the receiver to put the fragmented datagram back together.
Time to Live (TTL)
This field seems to confuse many people, so let’s state what it does up front. Time to Live (TTL) indicates the amount of time that a datagram is allowed to stay on the network. It is not used by the routers to count up to 16 to know when to discard a packet. There are two functions for the TTL field:- to limit the lifetime of a TCP segment (transmitted data) and
- to end routing loops.
Time to live is a field that is used by routers to ensure that a packet does not endlessly loop around the network. This field (currently defined as the number of seconds) is set at the transmitting station and then, as the datagram passes through each router, it will be decremented. With the speed of today’s (1999) routers, the usual decrement is 1. One algorithm is that the receiving router will notice the time a packet arrives, and then, when it is forwarded, the router will decrement the field by the number of seconds the datagram sat in a queue waiting for forwarding. Not all algorithms work this way. A minimum decrement will always be 1. The router that decrements this field to 0 will discard the packet and inform the originator of the datagram (through the ICMP protocol) that the TTL field expired and the datagram did not make it to its destination.The time-to-live field may also be set to a certain time (i.e., initialized to a low number like 64) to ensure that a packet stays on the network for only a set time. Some routers allow the network administrator to set a manual entry to decrement. This field may contain any number from 0 to 255 (an 8-bit field).
Protocol and Header Checksum Fields
What IP asks here is, who above me wants this data? The protocol field is used to indicate which higher-level protocol should receive the data of the datagram (i.e., TCP, UDP, OSPF, or possibly other protocol). This field allows for multiplexing. There are many protocols that may reside on top of IP. Currently, the most common transport implementations are TCP and UDP. If the protocol field is set to a number that identifies TCP, the data will be handed to the TCP process for further processing. The same is true if the frame is set to UDP or any other upper-layer protocol. This field becomes very apparent to anyone who troubleshoots networks. Simply stated, it allows for IP to deliver the data (after it strips off and processes its fields) to the next intended protocol.The second field is a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) of 16 bits. How this number is arrived at is beyond our scope here, but the idea behind it is to ensure the integrity of the header. A CRC number is generated from the data in the IP data field and placed into this field by the transmitting station. When the receiving station reads the data, it will compute a CRC number. If the two CRC numbers do not match, there is an error in the header and the packet will be discarded. Stretching it, you may think of this as a fancy parity check. As the datagram is received by each router, each router will recompute the checksum. Why change it? Because the TTL field is changed by each router the datagram traverses.
IP Options Field
This field is found on IPv4 packet headers. It contains
- information on source routing (nothing to do with Token Ring),
- tracing a route,
- timestamping the packet as it traverses routers,
- and security entries.
Source routing is the ability of the originating station to place route information into the datagram to be interpreted by routers. Router will forward the datagram based on information in the source route fields, and in some cases, it will be blind. The originator indicates the path it wishes to take, and the routers must obey, even if there is a better route. There are two types:
- loose source route (LSR) and
- strict source route (SSR).
Loose source route allows a router to forward the datagram to any router it feels is correct to service the next route indicated in the source route field. A complete list of IP addresses from the source to the destination is probably not in the IP header, but some points in the Internet should be used to forward the datagram. For example, IP multicast uses LSR for tunneling its IP multicast datagrams over the nonmulticast-enabled IPv4 Internet.
Strict source routing forces a router to forward a datagram to its destination completely based on the routes indicated by the source route field. The Traceroute is a very useful utility. It allows the echoing of the forwarding path of a datagram. With this option set, the points to which the datagram is routed are echoed back to the sender. This allows you to follow a datagram along a path. It is very often used in troubleshooting IP networks.
If you have Windows 95, you have this utility. Type in (DOS prompt) “tracert
Source and Destination Address Fields
The next fields are the source and destination address fields. These fields are very important for they identify the individual IP network and station on any IP network. These are particularly important, for users will be most aware of this when starting their workstation or trying to access other stations without the use of a domain name server or an up-to-date host file. These fields indicate the originator of the datagram, the final destination IP address that the packet should be delivered to, and the IP address of the station that originally transmitted the packet. All hosts on an IP internet will be identified by these addresses. IP addressing is extremely important and a full discussion follows. Currently (IPv4), these addresses are set to 32 bits, which allows for over 4 billion addresses. This may sound like a lot of addresses but unfortunately, many mistakes were made in assigning IP addresses to corporations and individuals. The mistakes were made unknowingly, for this protocol suite took off by surprise. This is fully discussed at the end of this section. There are two types of addresses:- classless and
- classful.
The IP Address Scheme
•Two types of addressing schemes for IPv4:
•Classful (based on RFC 791)—The original style of addressing based on the first few bits of the address
- Generally used in customer sites
- Generally used by the global routing tables and ISPs
- Enables very efficient routing, smaller routing tables
- Enables efficient IP address allocation (to the ISPs) and assignment (to the ISP customer)
There are two types of network addressing schemes used with IP:
- Classless. The full address range can be used without regard to bit reservation for classes. This type of addressing scheme is primarily not used in direct host assignment. The scheme is directly applied to the routing tables of the Internet and ISPs.
- Classful. The original (RFC 791) segmentation of the 32-bit address into specific classes denoting networks and hosts.
Classful Addressing—The Original Address Scheme
•Based on RFC 791.•An addressing scheme based on a simple hierarchy.
•Class of address determined by the first few bits of the address.
•Uses the dotted decimal notation system.
•Allocated by the Internet Registry.
•All addresses ultimately owned by the IANA.
Many, many years ago, RFC 760 introduced IP. The beginnings of the IP addressing scheme were very simple and flat. This RFC didn’t have a concept of classes (not to be confused with classless IP of today); addressing was an 8-bit prefix that allowed as many as 200+ networks and a lot of hosts per network. RFC 791 obsoletes RFC 760 and this RFC included the concept of IP address classes. Back then, it was easy to change addressing schemes for there were but a few hosts on the entire network. RFC 950 introduced us to subnetting and RFC1518 introduced the CIDR (classless) protocol. There have been many enhancements to the original IP addressing scheme, but they continue to operate on the bases of Class and Classless.
Addressing’s purpose was to allow IP to communicate between hosts on a network or on an internet. Classful IP addresses identify both a particular node and a network number where the particular node resides on an internet. IP addresses are 32-bits long, separated into four fields of 1 byte each. This address can be expressed in decimal, octal, hexadecimal, and binary. The most common IP address form is written in decimal and is known as the dotted decimal notation system.
There are two ways that an IP address is assigned; it all depends on your connection.
- If you have a connection to the Internet, the network portion of the address is assigned through an Internet Service Provider. Yes, there are three addresses assigned for private addressing. But for a connection to the Internet, at least one address must be defined as a public address assigned to you by the ISP. To identify all hosts on your network with public address, the ISP will only provide the network range (a continuous IP network address segment) that you may work with. It will not assign host numbers nor assign the network numbers to any part of your network. If your network will never have a connection to the Internet, you can assign your own addresses, but it is highly recommended that you follow RFC 1918 for the private assignment. These are Class A, Class B, and Class C address assignments for private use.
IP Address Format
•Uniquely identifies both the network and the host in one address.•Uses the form:
•The address is 32 bits in length which is further separated into 4 bytes of 8 bits each. xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxx
•There are five classes of addresses: A–E.
Each host on a TCP/IP network is uniquely identified at the IP layer with an address that takes the form of
IP addresses are divided into five classes: A, B, C, D, and E. RFC 791, which classified these types, did so without the foregoing knowledge of subnets. The classes allowed for various amounts of networks and hosts to be assigned. Classes A, B, and C are used to represent host and network addresses. Class D is a special type of address used for multicasting (for example, OSPF routing updates use this type of address as well as IP multicast). Class E is reserved for experimental use. For those trying to figure out this addressing scheme, it is best if you also know the binary numbering system and are able to convert between decimal and binary. Finally, IP addresses are sometimes expressed in hexadecimal and it is helpful to know. IPv6 uses only hexadecimal. The most common form for IPv4 is decimal
Identifying a Class
For network and host assignment, Classes A through C are used. Class D is not used for this, and Class E is never assigned. How does a host or internet device determine which address is of which class? Since the length of the network ID is variable (dependent on the class), a simple method was devised to allow the software to determine the class of address and, therefore, the length of the network number. The IP software will determine the class of the network ID by using a simple method of reading the first bit(s) in the first field (the first byte) of every packet.IP addresses contain 4 bytes. We break the IP address down into its binary equivalent.
- If the first bit of the first byte is a 0, it is a Class A address.
- If the first bit is a 1, then the protocol mandates reading the next bit.
- If the next bit is a 0, then it is a Class B address.
- If the first and second bits are 1 and the third bit is a 0, it is a Class C address.
- If the first, second, and third bits are 1, the address is a Class D address and is reserved for multicast addresses.
- Class E addresses are reserved for experimental use.
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