UNIT III : NETWORK LAYER

Network Layer Services – Performance –– Network Layer Protocols: IP, IPV4 Addresses –
Forwarding of IP Packets-ARP-RARP- ICMP v4 – Unicast Routing Algorithms: RIP,OSPF–
Multicasting Basics – IPV6 Addressing – IPV6 Protocol

Network Layer Introduction

• The network layer in the TCP/IP protocol suite is responsible for the host-to- host delivery of
datagrams.
• It provides services to the transport layer and receives services from the data- link layer.
• The network layer translates the logical addresses into physical addresses
• It determines the route from the source to the destination and also manages the traffic problems
such as switching, routing and controls the congestion of data packets.
• The main role of the network layer is to move the packets from sending host to the receiving
host

Services provided by network layer are

PACKETIZING
▪ The first duty of the network layer is definitely packetizing.
▪ This means encapsulating the payload (data received from upper layer) in a
network-layer packet at the source and decapsulating the payload from the
network-layer packet at the destination.
▪ The network layer is responsible for delivery of packets from a sender to a
receiver without changing or using the contents.

ROUTING AND FORWARDING

Routing
▪ The network layer is responsible for routing the packet from its source to the
destination.
▪ The network layer is responsible for finding the best one among these possible
routes.
▪ The network layer needs to have some specific strategies for defining the best
route.
▪ Routing is the concept of applying strategies and running routing protocols to
create the decision-making tables for each router.
▪ These tables are called as routing tables.
Forwarding
▪ Forwarding can be defined as the action applied by each router when a packet
arrives at one of its interfaces.
▪ The decision-making table, a router normally uses for applying this action is
called the forwarding table.
▪ When a router receives a packet from one of its attached networks, it needs to
forward the packet to another attached network.

ERROR CONTROL
▪ The network layer in the Internet does not directly provide error control.
▪ It adds a checksum field to the datagram to control any corruption in the
header, but not in the whole datagram.
▪ This checksum prevents any changes or corruptions in the header of the
datagram.
 ▪ The Internet uses an auxiliary protocol called ICMP, that provides some kind
of error control if the datagram is discarded or has some unknown information
in the header.

FLOW CONTROL
▪ Flow control regulates the amount of data a source can send without
overwhelming the receiver.
▪ The network layer in the Internet, however, does not directly provide any flow
control.
▪ The datagrams are sent by the sender when they are ready, without any
attention to the readiness of the receiver.
▪ Flow control is provided for most of the upper-layer protocols that use the
services of the network layer, so another level of flow control makes the
network layer more complicated and the whole system less efficient.

CONGESTION CONTROL
▪ Another issue in a network-layer protocol is congestion control.
▪ Congestion in the network layer is a situation in which too many datagrams are
present in an area of the Internet.
▪ Congestion may occur if the number of datagrams sent by source computers is
beyond the capacity of the network or routers.
▪ In this situation, some routers may drop some of the datagrams.

SECURITY
▪ Another issue related to communication at the network layer is security.
▪ To provide security for a connectionless network layer, we need to have
another virtual level that changes the connectionless service to a connection-
oriented service. This virtual layer is called as called IPSec (IP Security).

NETWORK LAYER PERFORMANCE

The performance of a network can be measured in terms of

Delay, Throughput and Packet loss.
• Congestion control is an issue that can improve the performance.

DELAY
• A packet from its source to its destination, encounters delays.
• The delays in a network can be divided into four types:
Transmission delay, Propagation delay, Processing delay and Queuing delay.

Transmission Delay
• A source host or a router cannot send a packet instantaneously.
• A sender needs to put the bits in a packet on the line one by one.
• If the first bit of the packet is put on the line at time t 1 and the last bit is put on

the line at time t2, transmission delay of the packet is (t2 - t1).
• The transmission delay is longer for a longer packet and shorter if the sender
can transmit faster.
• The Transmission delay is calculated using the formula
Delaytr = (Packet length) / (Transmission rate)
 • Example :
In a Fast Ethernet LAN with the transmission rate of 100 million bits per
second and a packet of 10,000 bits, it takes (10,000)/(100,000,000) or
100 microseconds for all bits of the packet to be put on the line.

Propagation Delay
• Propagation delay is the time it takes for a bit to travel from point A to point B
in the transmission media.
• The propagation delay for a packet-switched network depends on the
propagation delay of each network (LAN or WAN).
• The propagation delay depends on the propagation speed of the media, which is
3X108 meters/second in a vacuum and normally much less in a wired medium.
• It also depends on the distance of the link.
• The Propagation delay is calculated using the formula
Delaypg = (Distance) / (Propagation speed)
• Example
If the distance of a cable link in a point-to-point WAN is 2000 meters and
the propagation speed of the bits in the cable is 2 X 10 8 meters/second,
then the propagation delay is 10 microseconds.

Processing Delay
• The processing delay is the time required for a router or a destination host
to receive a packet from its input port, remove the header, perform an error
detection procedure, and deliver the packet to the output port (in the case of a
router) or deliver the packet to the upper-layer protocol (in the case of the
destination host).
• The processing delay may be different for each packet, but normally is
calculated as an average.

Delaypr = Time required to process a packet in a router or a destination host

Queuing Delay
• Queuing delay can normally happen in a router.
• A router has an input queue connected to each of its input ports to store packets
waiting to be processed.
• The router also has an output queue connected to each of its output ports to
store packets waiting to be transmitted.
• The queuing delay for a packet in a router is measured as the time a packet
waits in the input queue and output queue of a router.
Delayqu = The time a packet waits in input and output queues in a router

Total Delay
• Assuming equal delays for the sender, routers and receiver, the total delay
(source-to-destination delay) of a packet can be calculated if we know the
number of routers, n, in the whole path.
Total delay = (n + 1) (Delaytr + Delaypg + Delaypr) + (n) (Delayqu)
• If we have n routers, we have (n +1) links.

• Therefore, we have (n +1) transmission delays related to n routers and the

source, (n +1) propagation delays related to (n +1) links, (n +1) processing
 delays related to n routers and the destination, and only n queuing delays
related to n routers.
THROUGHPUT
• Throughput at any point in a network is defined as the number of bits passing
through the point in a second, which is actually the transmission rate of data at
that point.
• In a path from source to destination, a packet may pass through several links
(networks), each with a different transmission rate.
• Throughput is calculated using the formula
Throughput = minimum{TR1 , TR2, . . . TRn}
• Example:
Let us assume that we have three links, each with a different transmission
rate.
The data can flow at the rate of 200 kbps in Link1, 100 kbps in Link2 and
150kbps in Link3.
Throughput = minimum{200,100,150} = 100.

PACKET LOSS
• Another issue that severely affects the performance of communication is the
number of packets lost during transmission.
• When a router receives a packet while processing another packet, the received
packet needs to be stored in the input buffer waiting for its turn.
• A router has an input buffer with a limited size.
• A time may come when the buffer is full and the next packet needs to be
dropped.
• The effect of packet loss on the Internet network layer is that the packet needs
to be resent, which in turn may create overflow and cause more packet loss.

CONGESTION CONTROL
• Congestion at the network layer is related to two issues, throughput and delay.

Based on Delay
• When the load is much less than the capacity of the network, the delay is at a
minimum.
• This minimum delay is composed of propagation delay and processing delay,
both of which are negligible.
• However, when the load reaches the network capacity, the delay increases
sharply because we now need to add the queuing delay to the total delay.
• The delay becomes infinite when the load is greater than the capacity.

Based on Throughout
• When the load is below the capacity of the network, the throughput increases
proportionally with the load.
• We expect the throughput to remain constant after the load reaches the
capacity, but instead the throughput declines sharply.
• The reason is the discarding of packets by the routers.

• When the load exceeds the capacity, the queues become full and the routers
have to discard some packets.
 • Discarding packets does not reduce the number of packets in the network
because the sources retransmit the packets, using time-out mechanisms, when
the packets do not reach the destinations.

Congestion Control Mechanisms

• Congestion control is a mechanism for improving performance.
• It refers to techniques and mechanisms that can either prevent congestion
before it happens or remove congestion after it has happened.
• In general, we can divide congestion control mechanisms into two broad
categories:
➢ Open-loop Congestion control (prevention)
➢ Closed-loop Congestion control (removal)

OPEN-LOOP CONGESTION CONTROL

▪ In open-loop congestion control, policies are applied to prevent congestion
before it happens.
▪ these mechanisms, congestion control is handled by either the source or the
In
destination.

Retransmission Policy
➢ Retransmission is sometimes unavoidable.
➢ If the sender feels that a sent packet is lost or corrupted, the packet
needs to be retransmitted.
➢ Retransmission in general may increase congestion in the network.
➢ However, a good retransmission policy can prevent congestion.
➢ The retransmission policy and the retransmission timers must be
designed to optimize efficiency and at the same time prevent congestion.

Window Policy
➢ The type of window at the sender may also affect congestion.
 ➢ The Selective Repeat window is better than the Go-Back-N window for
congestion control.
➢ In the Go-Back-N window, when the timer for a packet times out,
several packets may be resent, although some may have arrived safe and
sound at the receiver.
➢ This duplication may make the congestion worse.
➢ The Selective Repeat window, on the other hand, tries to send the
specific packets that have been lost or corrupted.

Acknowledgment Policy
➢ The acknowledgment policy imposed by the receiver may also affect
congestion.
➢ If the receiver does not acknowledge every packet it receives, it may
slow down the sender and help prevent congestion.
➢ Several approaches are used in this case.
➢ A receiver may send an acknowledgment only if it has a packet to be
sent or a special timer expires.
➢ A receiver may decide to acknowledge only N packets at a time.
➢ Sending fewer acknowledgments means imposing less load on the
network.

Discarding Policy
➢ A good discarding policy by the routers may prevent congestion and at
the same time may not harm the integrity of the transmission.
➢ For example, in audio transmission, if the policy is to discard less
sensitive packets when congestion is likely to happen, the quality of
sound is still preserved and congestion is prevented or alleviated.

Admission Policy
➢ An admission policy, which is a quality-of-service mechanism can also
prevent congestion in virtual-circuit networks.
➢ Switches in a flow first check the resource requirement of a flow before
admitting it to the network.
➢ A router can deny establishing a virtual-circuit connection if there is
congestion in the network or if there is a possibility of future congestion.

CLOSED-LOOP CONGESTION CONTROL

▪ Closed-loop congestion control mechanisms try to alleviate congestion after it
happens.
▪ Several mechanisms have been used by different protocols.

Backpressure
➢ The technique of backpressure refers to a congestion control mechanism
in which a congested node stops receiving data from the immediate
upstream node or nodes.
➢ This may cause the upstream node or nodes to become congested, and
they, in turn, reject data from their upstream node or nodes, and so on.

➢ Backpressure is a node-to- node congestion control that starts with a

node and propagates, in the opposite direction of data flow, to the
 source.
➢ The backpressure technique can be applied only to virtual circuit
networks, in which each node knows the upstream node from which a
flow of data is coming.

Choke Packet
➢ A choke packet is a packet sent by a node to the source to inform it of
congestion.
➢ In backpressure, the warning is from one node to its upstream node,
although the warning may eventually reach the source station.
➢ In the choke-packet method, the warning is from the router, which has
encountered congestion, directly to the source station.
➢ The intermediate nodes through which the packet has traveled are not
warned.
➢ The warning message goes directly to the source station; the
intermediate routers do not take any action.

Implicit Signaling
➢ In implicit signaling, there is no communication between the congested
node or nodes and the source.
➢ The source guesses that there is congestion somewhere in the network
from other symptoms.
➢ For example, when a source sends several packets and there is no
acknowledgment for a while, one assumption is that the network is
congested.
➢ The delay in receiving an acknowledgment is interpreted as congestion
in the network; the source should slow down.

Explicit Signaling
➢ The node that experiences congestion can explicitly send a signal to the
source or destination.
➢ The explicit-signaling method is different from the choke-packet
method.
➢ In the choke-packet method, a separate packet is used for this purpose;
in the explicit-signaling method, the signal is included in the packets
that carry data.

➢ Explicit signaling can occur in either the forward or the backward

direction.
NETWORK LAYER PROTOCOLS : IP, ICMPV4
The main protocol Internet Protocol is responsible for packetizing,
forwarding,and delivery of a packet at the network layer.
➢ The Internet Control Message Protocol version 4 (ICMPv4) helps IPv4 to
handle some errors that may occur in the network-layer delivery.

IP - INTERNET
➢ The Internet Protocol is the key tool used today to build scalable,
heterogeneous internetworks.
➢ IP runs on all the nodes (both hosts and routers) in a collection of networks
➢ IP defines the infrastructure that allows these nodes and networks to function
as a single logical internetwork.

IP SERVICE MODEL
➢ Service Model defines the host-to-host services that we want to provide
➢ The main concern in defining a service model for an internetwork is that we can
provide a host-to-host service only if this service can somehow be provided over
each of the underlying physical networks.
➢ The Internet Protocol is the key tool used today to build scalable, heterogeneous
internetworks.
➢ The IP service model can be thought of as having two parts:
• A GLOBAL ADDRESSING SCHEME - which provides a way to
identify all hosts in the internetwork
• A DATAGRAM DELIVERY MODEL – A connectionless model of data
delivery.

IP PACKET FORMAT / IP DATAGRAM FORMAT

➢ A key part of the IP service model is the type of packets that can be carried.
➢ The IP datagram consists of a header followed by a number of bytes of data.

FIELD DESCRIPTION

Version Specifies the version of IP. Two versions exists – IPv4 and IPv6.
HLen Specifies the length of the header
TOS An indication of the parameters of the quality of service
(Type of Service) desired such as Precedence, Delay, Throughput and Reliability.
Length Length of the entire datagram, including the header. The maximum
size of an IP datagram is 65,535(210 )bytes
Ident Uniquely identifies the packet sequence number.
(Identification) Used for fragmentation and re-assembly.
Flags Used to control whether routers are allowed to fragment a packet.
If a packet is fragmented , this flag value is [Link] not, flag value is
0.
Offset Indicates where in the datagram, this fragment belongs.
(Fragmentation The fragment offset is measured in units of 8 octets
offset) (64 bits). The first fragment has offset zero.
TTL Indicates the maximum time the datagram is allowed to
(Time to Live) remain in the network. If this field contains the value zero, then
the datagram must be destroyed.
Protocol Indicates the next level protocol used in the data portion of the
datagram
Checksum Used to detect the processing errors introduced into the packet
Source Address The IP address of the original sender of the packet.
Destination The IP address of the final destination of the packet.
Address
Options This is optional field. These options may contain values for
options such as Security, Record Route, Time Stamp, etc
Pad Used to ensure that the internet header ends on a 32 bit boundary.
The padding is zero.

IP DATAGRAM - FRAGMENTATION AND REASSEMBLY

Fragmentation :
➢ Every network type has a maximum transmission unit (MTU), which is the
largest IP datagram that it can carry in a frame.

➢ Fragmentation of a datagram will only be necessary if the path to the

destination includes a network with a smaller MTU.
➢ When a host sends an IP datagram,it can choose any size that it wants.
➢ Fragmentation typically occurs in a router when it receives a datagram that it
wants to forward over a network that has an MTU that is smaller than the
received datagram.
➢ Each fragment is itself a self-contained IP datagram that is transmitted over a
sequence of physical networks, independent of the other fragments.
➢ Each IP datagram is re-encapsulated for each physical network over which it
travels.
 ➢ For example , if we consider an Ethernet network to accept packets up to 1500
bytes long.
➢ This leaves two choices for the IP service model:
• Make sure that all IP datagrams are small enough to fit inside one packet
on any network technology
• Provide a means by which packets can be fragmented and reassembled
when they are too big to go over a given network technology.
➢ Fragmentation produces smaller, valid IP datagrams that can be readily
reassembled into the original datagram upon receipt, independent of the order
of their arrival.

Example:

➢ The original packet starts at the client; the fragments are reassembled at the
server.
➢ The value of the identification field is the same in all fragments, as is the value
of the flags field with the more bit set for all fragments except the last.
➢ Also, the value of the offset field for each fragment is shown.
➢ Although the fragments arrived out of order at the destination, they can be
correctly reassembled.
 ➢ The value of the offset field is always relative to the original datagram.
➢ Even if each fragment follows a different path and arrives out of order, the
final destination host can reassemble the original datagram from the
fragments received (if none of them is lost) using the following strategy:
1) The first fragment has an offset field value of zero.
2) Divide the length of the first fragment by 8. The second fragment has an
offset value equal to that result.
3) Divide the total length of the first and second fragment by 8. The third
fragment has an offset value equal to that result.
4) Continue the process. The last fragment has its M bit set to 0.
5) Continue the process. The last fragment has a more bit value of 0.

Reassembly:
➢ Reassembly is done at the receiving host and not at each router.
➢ To enable these fragments to be reassembled at the receiving host, they all
carry the same identifier in the Ident field.
➢ This identifier is chosen by the sending host and is intended to be unique
among all the datagrams that might arrive at the destination from this source
over some reasonable time period.
➢ Since all fragments of the original datagram contain this identifier, the
reassembling host will be able to recognize those fragments that go together.
➢ For example, if a single fragment is lost, the receiver will still attempt to
reassemble the datagram, and it will eventually give up and have to garbage-
collect the resources that were used to perform the failed reassembly.
➢ Hosts are now strongly encouraged to perform “path MTU discovery,” a
process by which fragmentation is avoided by sending packets that are small
enough to traverse the link with the smallest MTU in the path from sender to
receiver.

IP SECURITY
There are three security issues that are particularly applicable to the IP protocol:
(1) Packet Sniffing (2) Packet Modification and (3) IP Spoofing.

Packet Sniffing
➢ An intruder may intercept an IP packet and make a copy of it.
➢ Packet sniffing is a passive attack, in which the attacker does not change the
contents of the packet.
➢ This type of attack is very difficult to detect because the sender and the receiver
may never know that the packet has been copied.
➢ Although packet sniffing cannot be stopped, encryption of the packet can make
the attacker’s effort useless.
➢ The attacker may still sniff the packet, but the content is not detectable.

Packet Modification
➢ The second type of attack is to modify the packet.
➢ The attacker intercepts the packet,changes its contents, and sends the new
packet to the receiver.
➢ The receiver believes that the packet is coming from the original sender.
 ➢ This type of attack can be detected using a data integrity mechanism.
➢ The receiver, before opening and using the contents of the message, can use
this mechanism to make sure that the packet has not been changed during the
transmission.

IP Spoofing
➢ An attacker can masquerade as somebody else and create an IP packet that
carries the source address of another computer.
➢ An attacker can send an IP packet to a bank pretending that it is coming from
one of the customers.
➢ This type of attack can be prevented using an origin authentication
mechanism
IP Sec
➢ The IP packets today can be protected from the previously mentioned attacks
using a protocol called IPSec (IP Security).
➢ This protocol is used in conjunction with the IP protocol.
➢ IPSec protocol creates a connection-oriented service between two entities in
which they can exchange IP packets without worrying about the three attacks
such as Packet Sniffing, Packet Modification and IP Spoofing.
➢ IP Sec provides the following four services:
1) Defining Algorithms and Keys : The two entities that want to create a
secure channel between themselves can agree on some available
algorithms and keys to be used for security purposes.
2) Packet Encryption : The packets exchanged between two parties can
be encrypted for privacy using one of the encryption algorithms and a
shared key agreed upon in the first step. This makes the packet sniffing
attack useless.
3) Data Integrity : Data integrity guarantees that the packet is not
modified during the transmission. If the received packet does not pass
the data integrity test, it is [Link] prevents the second attack,
packet modification.
4) Origin Authentication : IPSec can authenticate the origin of the
packet to be sure that the packet is not created by an imposter. This can
prevent IP spoofing attacks.

4 IPV4 ADDRESSES
• The identifier used in the IP layer of the TCP/IP protocol suite to identify the
connection of each device to the Internet is called the Internet address or IP
address.
• Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the fourth version in the development of
the Internet Protocol (IP) and the first version of the protocol to be widely
deployed.
• IPv4 is described in IETF publication in September 1981.
• The IP address is the address of the connection, not the host or the router. An
IPv4 address is a 32-bit address that uniquely and universally defines the
connection .
• If the device is moved to another network, the IP address may be changed.
 • IPv4 addresses are unique in the sense that each address defines one, and only
one, connection to the Internet.
• If a device has two connections to the Internet, via two networks, it has two
IPv4 addresses.
• Pv4 addresses are universal in the sense that the addressing system must be
accepted by any host that wants to be connected to the Internet.

IPV4 ADDRESS SPACE

• IPv4 defines addresses has an address space.
• An address space is the total number of addresses used by the protocol.
• If a protocol uses b bits to define an address, the address space is 2 b because
each bit can have two different values (0 or 1).
• IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, which means that the address space is 2 32 or
4,294,967,296 (more than four billion).
• 4 billion devices could be connected to the Internet.

IPV4 ADDRESS NOTATION

There are three common notations to show an IPv4 address:
(i) binary notation (base 2), (ii) dotted-decimal notation (base 256), and
(ii) hexadecimal notation (base 16).

In binary notation, an IPv4 address is displayed as 32 bits. To make the address more
readable, one or more spaces are usually inserted between bytes (8 bits).

In dotted-decimal notation,IPv4 addresses are usually written in decimal form with a

decimal point (dot) separating the bytes. Each number in the dotted-decimal notation
is between 0 and 255.

In hexadecimal notation, each hexadecimal digit is equivalent to four bits. This means
that a 32-bit address has 8 hexadecimal digits. This notation is often used in network
programming.

HIERARCHY IN IPV4 ADDRESSING

• In any communication network that involves delivery, the addressing system is
hierarchical.
• A 32-bit IPv4 address is also hierarchical, but divided only into two parts.
• The first part of the address, called the prefix, defines the network(Net ID); the
second part of the address, called the suffix, defines the node (Host ID).
• The prefix length is n bits and the suffix length is (32- n) bits.
 • A prefix can be fixed length or variable length.
• The network identifier in the IPv4 was first designed as a fixed-length prefix.
• This scheme is referred to as classful addressing.
• The new scheme, which is referred to as classless addressing, uses a variable-
length network prefix.

CATEGORIES OF IPV4 ADDRESSING

• There are two broad categories of IPv4 Addressing techniques.
• They are
➢ Classful Addressing
➢ Classless Addressing

CLASSFUL ADDRESSING
• An IPv4 address is 32-bit long(4 bytes).
• An IPv4 address is divided into sub-classes:
Classful Network Architecture

Class A
• In Class A, an IP address is assigned to those networks that contain a large
number of hosts.
• The network ID is 8 bits long.
• The host ID is 24 bits long.
• In Class A, the first bit in higher order bits of the first octet is always set to 0
and the remaining 7 bits determine the network ID.
• The 24 bits determine the host ID in any network.
• The total number of networks in Class A = 2 7 = 128 network address
• The total number of hosts in Class A = 2 24 - 2 = 16,777,214 host address
Class B
• In Class B, an IP address is assigned to those networks that range from small-
sized to large-sized networks.
• The Network ID is 16 bits long.
• The Host ID is 16 bits long.
• In Class B, the higher order bits of the first octet is always set to 10, and the
remaining14 bits determine the network ID.
• The other 16 bits determine the Host ID.
• The total number of networks in Class B = 2 14 = 16384 network address
• The total number of hosts in Class B = 2 16 - 2 = 65534 host address

Class C
• In Class C, an IP address is assigned to only small-sized networks.
• The Network ID is 24 bits long.
• The host ID is 8 bits long.
• In Class C, the higher order bits of the first octet is always set to 110, and the
remaining 21 bits determine the network ID.
• The 8 bits of the host ID determine the host in a network.
• The total number of networks = 2 21 = 2097152 network address
• The total number of hosts = 2 8 - 2 = 254 host address

Class D
• In Class D, an IP address is reserved for multicast addresses.
• It does not possess subnetting.
• The higher order bits of the first octet is always set to 1110, and the remaining
bits determines the host ID in any network.

Class E
• In Class E, an IP address is used for the future use or for the research and
development purposes.
• It does not possess any subnetting.
• The higher order bits of the first octet is always set to 1111, and the remaining
bits determines the host ID in any network.
Address Depletion in Classful Addressing
• The reason that classful addressing has become obsolete is address depletion.
• Since the addresses were not distributed properly, the Internet was faced with
the problem of the addresses being rapidly used up.
• This results in no more addresses available for organizations and individuals
that needed to be connected to the Internet.
• To understand the problem, let us think about class A.
• This class can be assigned to only 128 organizations in the world, but each
organization needs to have a single network with 16,777,216 nodes .
• Since there may be only a few organizations that are this large, most of the
addresses in this class were wasted (unused).
• Class B addresses were designed for midsize organizations, but many of the
addresses in this class also remained unused.
• Class C addresses have a completely different flaw in design. The number of
addresses that can be used in each network (256) was so small that most
companies were not comfortable using a block in this address class.
• Class E addresses were almost never used, wasting the whole class.

Advantage of Classful Addressing

• Although classful addressing had several problems and became obsolete, it had
one advantage.
• Given an address, we can easily find the class of the address and, since the
prefix length for each class is fixed, we can find the prefix length immediately.
• In other words, the prefix length in classful addressing is inherent in the
address; no extra information is needed to extract the prefix and the suffix.

Subnetting and Supernetting

• To alleviate address depletion, two strategies were proposed and implemented:
(i) Subnetting and (ii) Supernetting.

Subnetting
• In subnetting, a class A or class B block is divided into several subnets.
• Each subnet has a larger prefix length than the original network.
• For example, if a network in class A is divided into four subnets, each subnet
has a prefix of nsub = 10.
• At the same time, if all of the addresses in a network are not used, subnetting
allows the addresses to be divided among several organizations.

CLASSLESS ADDRESSING
• In 1996, the Internet authorities announced a new architecture called classless
addressing.
• In classless addressing, variable-length blocks are used that belong to no
classes.
• We can have a block of 1 address, 2 addresses, 4 addresses, 128 addresses, and
so on.
 • In classless addressing, the whole address space is divided into variable length
blocks.
• The prefix in an address defines the block (network); the suffix defines the
node (device).
• Theoretically, we can have a block of 2 0, 21, 22, 232 addresses.
• The number of addresses in a block needs to be a power of 2. An organization
can be granted one block of addresses.

• The prefix length in classless addressing is variable.

• We can have a prefix length that ranges from 0 to 32.
• The size of the network is inversely proportional to the length of the prefix.
• A small prefix means a larger network; a large prefix means a smaller network.
• The idea of classless addressing can be easily applied to classful addressing.
• An address in class A can be thought of as a classless address in which the
prefix length is 8.
• An address in class B can be thought of as a classless address in which the
prefix is 16, and so on. In other words, classful addressing is a special case of
classless addressing.

Notation used in Classless Addressing

• The notation used in classless addressing is informally referred to as slash
notation and formally as classless interdomain routing or CIDR.

• For example , [Link] /24 represents the IP address [Link]

and, its subnet mask [Link], which has 24 leading 1-bits.

Address Aggregation
• One of the advantages of the CIDR strategy is address aggregation
(sometimes called address summarization or route summarization).
• When blocks of addresses are combined to create a larger block, routing can be
done based on the prefix of the larger block.
• ICANN assigns a large block of addresses to an ISP.
• Each ISP in turn divides its assigned block into smaller subblocks and grants
the subblocks to its customers.

Special Addresses in IPv4

• There are five special addresses that are used for special purposes:
this-host address, limited-broadcastaddress, loopback address,
private addresses, and multicast addresses.
This-host Address
✓ The only address in the block [Link]/32 is called the this-host address.
✓ It is used whenever a host needs to send an IP datagram but it does not know its
own address to use as the source address.

Limited-broadcast Address
✓ The only address in the block [Link]/32 is called the limited-
broadcast address.
✓ It is used whenever a router or a host needs to send a datagram to all devices in
a network.
✓ The routers in the network, however, block the packet having this address as
the destination;the packet cannot travel outside the network.

Loopback Address
✓ The block [Link]/8 is called the loopback address.
✓ A packet with one of the addresses in this block as the destination address
never leaves the host; it will remain in the host.

Private Addresses
✓ Four blocks are assigned as private addresses: [Link]/8, [Link]/12,
[Link]/16, and [Link]/16.

Multicast Addresses
✓ The block [Link]/4 is reserved for multicast addresses.

FORWARDING OF IP PACKETS
• Forwarding means to deliver the packet to the next hop (which can be the final
destination or the intermediate connecting device).
• Although IP protocol was originally designed as a connectionless protocol,
today the tendency is to use IP as a connection-oriented protocol based on the
label attached to an IP datagram .
• When IP is used as a connectionless protocol, forwarding is based on the
destination address of the IP datagram.
• When the IP is used as a connection-oriented protocol, forwarding is based on
the label attached to an IP datagram.

FORWARDING BASED ON DESTINATION ADDRESS

➢ This is a traditional approach.
➢ In this case, forwarding requires a host or a router to have a forwarding table.
➢ When a host has a packet to send or when a router has received a packet to be
forwarded, it looks at this table to find the next hop to deliver the packet to.

➢ The main points in forwarding of IP Packets(datagram) are the following:

• Every IP Packets contains the IP address of the destination host.
• The network part of an IP address uniquely identifies a single physical
network that is part of the larger Internet.
• All hosts and routers that share the same network part of their address
are connected to the same physical network and can thus communicate
with each other by sending frames over that network.
 • Every physical network that is part of the Internet has at least one router
that, by definition, is also connected to at least one other physical
network; this router can exchange packets with hosts or routers on either
network.

➢ Forwarding IP Packets can therefore be handled in the following way.

• A Packets is sent from a source host to a destination host, possibly
passing through several routers along the way.
• Any node, whether it is a host or a router, first tries to establish whether
it is connected to the same physical network as the destination.

➢ To do this, it compares the network part of the destination address with the
network part of the address of each of its network interfaces. (Hosts normally
have only one interface, while routers normally have two or more, since they
are typically connected to two or more networks.)
➢ a match occurs, then that means that the destination lies on the same physical
If
network as the interface, and the packet can be directly delivered over that
network that has a reasonable chance of getting the packet closer to its
destination.
➢ If there is no match, then the node is not connected to the same physical
network as the destination node, then it needs to send the packet to a router.
➢ In general, each node will have a choice of several routers, and so it needs to
pick the best one, or at least one that has a reasonable chance of getting the
datagram closer to its destination.
➢ The router that it chooses is known as the next hop router.
➢ The router finds the correct next hop by consulting its forwarding table. The
forwarding table is conceptually just a list of (NetworkNum, NextHop) pairs.
➢ There is also a default router that is used if none of the entries in the table
matches the destination’s network number.
➢ All Packets destined for hosts not on the physical network to which the sending
host is attached will be sent out through the default router.

Forwarding Algorithm

Simplified Forwarding Module

 • The job of the forwarding module is to search the table, row by row.
• In each row, the n leftmost bits of the destination address (prefix) are kept and
the rest of the bits (suffix) are set to 0s.
• If the resulting address ( network address), matches with the address in the first
column, the information in the next two columns is extracted; otherwise the
search continues. Normally, the last row has a default value in the first column,
which indicates all destination addresses that did not match the previous rows.
• Routing in classless addressing uses another principle, longest mask
matching.
• This principle states that the forwarding table is sorted from the longest mask
to the shortest mask.
• In other words, if there are three masks, /27, /26, and /24, the mask /27 must be
the first entry and /24 must be the last.
Example

• Let us make a forwarding table for router R1 using the configuration as given
in the figure above

• When a packet arrives whose leftmost 26 bits in the destination address match
the bits in the first row, the packet is sent out from interface m2.
• When a packet arrives whose leftmost 25 bits in the address match the bits in
the second row, the packet is sent out from interface m0, and so on.
• The table clearly shows that the first row has the longest prefix and the fourth
row has the shortest prefix.
• The longer prefix means a smaller range of addresses; the shorter prefix means
a larger range of addresses.
FORWARDING BASED ON LABEL
• In a connection-oriented network (virtual-circuit approach), a switch forwards a
packet based on the label attached to the packet.
• Routing is normally based on searching the contents of a table; switching can
be done by accessing a table using an index.
• In other words, routing involves searching; switching involves accessing.
Example
• The Figure below shows a simple example of using a label to access a
switching table.
• Since the labels are used as the index to the table, finding the information in the
table is immediate.

Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)

• During the 1980s, several vendors created routers that implement switching
technology.
• Later IETF approved a standard that is called Multi-Protocol Label Switching.
• In this standard, some conventional routers in the Internet can be replaced by
MPLS routers, which can behave like a router and a switch.
• When behaving like a router, MPLS can forward the packet based on the
destination address; when behaving like a switch, it can forward a packet based
on the label.

ICMPV4 - INTERNET CONTROL MESSAGE PROTOCOL VERSION

➢ ICMP is a network-layer protocol.
➢ It is a companion to the IP protocol.
➢ Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) defines a collection of error
messages that are sent back to the source host whenever a router or host is
unable to process an IP datagram successfully.
ICMP MESSAGE TYPES
➢ ICMP messages are divided into two broad categories: error-reporting
messages and query messages.
➢ The error-reporting messages report problems that a router or a host
(destination) may encounter when it processes an IP packet.
➢ The query messages help a host or a network manager get specific information
from a router or another host.

ICMP Error – Reporting Messages

➢ Destination Unreachable―When a router cannot route a datagram, the datagram

is discarded and sends a destination unreachable message to source host.
➢ Source Quench―When a router or host discards a datagram due to congestion, it
sends a source-quench message to the source host. This message acts as flow
control.
➢ Time Exceeded―Router discards a datagram when TTL field becomes 0 and a
time exceeded message is sent to the source host.
➢ Parameter Problem―If a router discovers ambiguous or missing value in any
field of the datagram, it discards the datagram and sends parameter problem
message to source.
➢ Redirection―Redirect messages are sent by the default router to inform the source
host to update its forwarding table when the packet is routed on a wrong path.

ICMP Query Messages

 ➢ Echo Request & Reply―Combination of echo request and reply messages
determines whether two systems communicate or not.
➢ Timestamp Request & Reply―Two machines can use the timestamp request
and reply messages to determine the round-trip time (RTT).
➢ Address Mask Request & Reply―A host to obtain its subnet mask, sends an
address mask request message to the router, which responds with an address
mask reply message.
➢ Router Solicitation/Advertisement―A host broadcasts a router solicitation
message to know about the router. Router broadcasts its routing information
with router advertisement message.

ICMP MESSAGE FORMAT

➢ An ICMP message has an 8-byte header and a variable-size data section.

Type Defines the type of the message

Code Specifies the reason for the particular message type
Checksum Used for error detection
Rest of the header Specific for each message type
Data Used to carry information
Identifier Used to match the request with the reply
Sequence Number Sequence Number of the ICMP packet

ICMP DEBUGGING TOOLS

Two tools are used for debugging purpose. They are (1) Ping (2) Traceroute

Ping
➢ The ping program is used to find if a host is alive and responding.
➢ The source host sends ICMP echo-request messages; the destination, if alive,
responds with ICMP echo-reply messages.
 ➢ The ping program sets the identifier field in the echo-request and echo-reply
message and starts the sequence number from 0; this number is incremented by
1 each time a new message is sent.
➢ The ping program can calculate the round-trip time.
➢ It inserts the sending time in the data section of the message.
➢ When the packet arrives, it subtracts the arrival time from the departure time to
get the round-trip time (RTT).
$ ping [Link]

Traceroute or Tracert
➢ The traceroute program in UNIX or tracert in Windows can be used to trace
the path of a packet from a source to the destination.
➢ It can find the IP addresses of all the routers that are visited along the path.
➢ The program is usually set to check for the maximum of 30 hops (routers) to be
visited.
➢ The number of hops in the Internet is normally less than this.
$ traceroute [Link]

ARP and RARP

ARP and RARP are the LAN (Local Area Network) protocols. A LAN is a fast, fault-
tolerant data network that only covers a limited area of land. There are three types of LAN data
transmissions unicast, multicast, and broadcast. A single packet is transferred from the source
to a destination on the network during a unicast transmission. A single data packet is copied
and delivered to a certain group of network nodes as part of a multicast transmission. A single
data packet is copied and delivered to every network node as part of a broadcast transmission.
Both ARP and RARP use broadcast in request and unicast in response.

What is ARP?
ARP stands for Address Resolution Protocol which is a LAN protocol. It is a process that links
the Internet Protocol (IP) address to the media access control (MAC) address, often known as a
fixed physical machine address in a local area network (LAN).

The Networking layer comes under the OSI (Open Source Interconnection) model. The MAC
address also known as the Data link layer 48 bit long is used and it creates and destroys a
connection between two devices that are physically connected so that data transfer can occur.
Similarly, the IP address length is 32 bits long and is also known as the network layer or the
layer in charge of sending data packets across various routers.
Types of ARP
They are divided into different types, namely
Proxy ARP
Proxy ARP is a method for responding to an ARP request for an IP address that is not on the
same network as the proxy device. The proxy gives its own MAC address as the destination
because it is aware of the traffic's final destination's location.
Reverse ARP (RARP)
The Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) is a protocol for address discovery that can
be used by hosts that are unaware of their IP address.

Inverse ARP (IARP)

IARP uses a MAC address to find an IP address as opposed to ARP, which uses an IP address.

What is RARP?
A TCP/IP protocol called RARP is in charge of converting physical addresses (MAC addresses)
into IP addresses. For example, Diskless Workstations have only the MAC address but do not
have IP addresses. So using the RARP protocol one can find the IP address via any external
source.

We have a RARP server waiting for RARP queries on the same network as the hosts. A table on
this server contains a mix of MAC and IP addresses. It searches its table when it receives a
RARP request to find the IP address that corresponds to the MAC address in the RARP request
packet. The host is then sent a RARP reply by the RARP server. The host is aware of its IP
address when it receives the RARP reply.

UNICAST ROUTING ALGORITHMS

➢ There are three main classes of routing protocols:
1) Distance Vector Routing Algorithm – Routing Information Protocol
2) Link State Routing Algorithm – Open Shortest Path First Protocol
3) Path-Vector Routing Algorithm - Border Gateway Protocol

DISTANCE VECTOR ROUTING (DSR)

ROUTING INFORMATION PROTOCOL
(RIP)BELLMAN FORD ALGORITHM
➢ Distance vector routing is distributed, i.e., algorithm is run on all nodes.
➢ Each node knows the distance (cost) to each of its directly connected neighbors.
➢ Nodes construct a vector (Destination, Cost, NextHop) and distributes to its
neighbors.
➢ Nodes compute routing table of minimum distance to every other node via
NextHop using information obtained from its neighbors.

Initial State
➢ In given network, cost of each link is 1 hop.
➢ Each node sets a distance of 1 (hop) to its immediate neighbor and
cost to itself as 0.
➢ Distance for non-neighbors is marked as unreachable with value ∞ (infinity).
➢ For node A, nodes B, C, E and F are reachable, whereas nodes D and G
are unreachable.

➢ The initial table for all the nodes are given below

➢ Each node sends its initial table (distance vector) to neighbors and receives
their estimate.
➢ Node A sends its table to nodes B, C, E & F and receives tables from nodes B,
C, E & F.
➢ Each node updates its routing table by comparing with each of its neighbor's
table
➢ For each destination, Total Cost is computed as:
▪ Total Cost = Cost (Node to Neighbor) + Cost (Neighbor to Destination)
➢ If Total Cost < Cost then
▪ Cost = Total Cost and NextHop = Neighbor
➢ Node A learns from C's table to reach node D and from F's table to reach
node G.
➢ Total Cost to reach node D via C = Cost (A to C) + Cost(C to D)
Cost = 1 + 1 = 2.
▪ Since 2 < ∞, entry for destination D in A's table is changed to (D, 2, C)

▪ Total Cost to reach node G via F = Cost(A to F) + Cost(F to G) = 1 + 1 = 2

▪ Since 2 < ∞, entry for destination G in A's table is changed to (G, 2, F)

➢ Each node builds complete routing table after few exchanges amongst its
neighbors.
 ➢ System stabilizes when all nodes have complete routing information, i.e.,
convergence.
➢ Routing tables are exchanged periodically or in case of triggered update.
➢ The final distances stored at each node is given below:

Updation of Routing Tables

There are two different circumstances under which a given node decides to send a
routing update to its neighbors.

Periodic Update
➢ In this case, each node automatically sends an update message every so often,
even if nothing has changed.
➢ The frequency of these periodic updates varies from protocol to protocol, but
it is typically on the order of several seconds to several minutes.

Triggered Update
➢ In this case, whenever a node notices a link failure or receives an update from
one of its neighbors that causes it to change one of the routes in its routing
table.
➢ Whenever a node’s routing table changes, it sends an update to its neighbors,
which may lead to a change in their tables, causing them to send an update to
their neighbors.
Count-To-Infinity (or) Loop Instability Problem
• Suppose link from node A to E goes down.
❖ Node A advertises a distance of ∞ to E to its neighbors
❖ Node B receives periodic update from C before A’s update
reaches B
❖ Node B updated by C, concludes that E can be reached in 3 hops via C
❖ Node B advertises to A as 3 hops to reach E
❖ Node A in turn updates C with a distance of 4 hops to E and so on
• Thus nodes update each other until cost to E reaches infinity, i.e., no
convergence.
• Routing table does not stabilize.
• This problem is called loop instability or count to infinity

Solution to Count-To-Infinity (or) Loop Instability Problem :

 • Infinity is redefined to a small number, say 16.
• Distance between any two nodes can be 15 hops maximum. Thus distance
vector routing cannot be used in large networks.
• When a node updates its neighbors, it does not send those routes it learned
from each neighbor back to that neighbor. This is known as split horizon.
• Split horizon with poison reverse allows nodes to advertise routes it learnt
from a node back to that node, but with a warning message.

ROUTING INFORMATION PROTOCOL (RIP)

Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is a dynamic routing protocol that uses hop count as a
routing metric to find the best path between the source and the destination network. It is a distance-
vector routing protocol that has an AD value of 120 and works on the Network layer of the OSI
model. RIP uses port number 520.

Hop Count
Hop count is the number of routers occurring in between the source and destination network.
The path with the lowest hop count is considered as the best route to reach a network and therefore
placed in the routing table. RIP prevents routing loops by limiting the number of hops allowed in a
path from source and destination. The maximum hop count allowed for RIP is 15 and a hop count of
16 is considered as network unreachable.

Features of RIP
1. Updates of the network are exchanged periodically.
2. Updates (routing information) are always broadcast.
3. Full routing tables are sent in updates.
4. Routers always trust routing information received from neighbor routers. This is also known as
Routing on rumors.
• RIP is an intra-domain routing protocol based on distance-vector algorithm.
• Here, intra-domain means routing the packets in a defined domain, for example,
web browsing within an institutional area. To understand the RIP protocol, our main
focus is to know the structure of the packet, how many fields it contains, and how these
fields determine the routing table.
Example

• Routers advertise the cost of reaching networks. Cost of reaching each link is 1
hop. For example, router C advertises to A that it can reach network 2, 3 at cost
0 (directly connected), networks 5, 6 at cost 1 and network 4 at cost 2.
• Each router updates cost and next hop for each network number.
• Infinity is defined as 16, i.e., any route cannot have more than 15 hops.
Therefore RIP can be implemented on small-sized networks only.
• Advertisements are sent every 30 seconds or in case of triggered update.
The following timers are used to update the routing table:
RIP update timer : 30 sec
The routers configured with RIP send their updates to all the neighboring routers every
30 seconds.
RIP Invalid timer : 180 sec
The RIP invalid timer is 180 seconds, which means that if the router is disconnected
from the network or some link goes down, then the neighbor router will wait for 180 seconds to take
the update. If it does not receive the update within 180 seconds, then it will mark the particular route
as not reachable.
RIP Flush timer : 240 sec
The RIP flush timer is 240 second which is almost equal to 4 min means that if the router
does not receive the update within 240 seconds then the neighbor route will remove that particular
route from the routing table which is a very slow process as 4 minutes is a long time to wait.
Advantages of RIP
The following are the advantages of a RIP protocol:
• It is easy to configure
• It has less complexity
• The CPU utilization is less.
Disadvantages of RIP
The following are the disadvantages of RIP:
• In RIP, the route is chosen based on the hop count metric. If another route of better
bandwidth is available, then that route would not be chosen. Let's understand this scenario
through an example.
• The RIP is a classful routing protocol, so it does not support the VLSM (Variable Length
Subnet Mask). The classful routing protocol is a protocol that does not include the subnet
mask information in the routing updates.
• It broadcasts the routing updates to the entire network that creates a lot of traffic. In RIP, the
routing table updates every 30 seconds. Whenever the updates occur, it sends the copy of the
update to all the neighbors except the one that has caused the update. The sending of updates
to all the neighbors creates a lot of traffic. This rule is known as a split-horizon rule.
• It faces a problem of Slow convergence. Whenever the router or link fails, then it often takes
minutes to stabilize or take an alternative route; This problem is known as Slow convergence.
• RIP supports maximum 15 hops which means that the maximum 16 hops can be configured
in a RIP
• The Administrative distance value is 120 (Ad value). If the Ad value is less, then the protocol
is more reliable than the protocol with more Ad value.
• The RIP protocol has the highest Ad value, so it is not as reliable as the other
routing protocols.

RIP Message Format

• The message format is used to share information among different routers. The
RIP contains the following fields in a message:
 ➢ Command - It indicates the packet type.
Value 1 represents a request packet. Value 2 represents a response packet.
➢ Version - It indicates the RIP version number. For RIPv1, the value is 0x01.
➢ Address Family Identifier - When the value is 2, it represents the IP protocol.
➢ IP Address - It indicates the destination IP address of the route. It can be the
addresses of only the natural network segment.
➢ Metric - It indicates the hop count of a route to its destination.

LINK STATE ROUTING (LSR)

OPEN SHORTEST PATH PROTOCOL
(OSPF)DIJKSTRA’S ALGORITHM
• Each node knows state of link to its neighbors and cost.
• Nodes create an update packet called link-state packet (LSP) that contains:
➢ ID of the node
➢ List of neighbors for that node and associated cost
➢ 64-bit Sequence number
➢ Time to live
• Link-State routing protocols rely on two mechanisms:
➢ Reliable flooding of link-state information to all other nodes
➢ Route calculation from the accumulated link-state knowledge

Reliable Flooding
• Each node sends its LSP out on each of its directly connected links.
• When a node receives LSP of another node, checks if it has an LSP already for
that node.
• If not, it stores and forwards the LSP on all other links except the incoming
one.
• Else if the received LSP has a bigger sequence number, then it is stored and
forwarded. Older LSP for that node is discarded.
• Otherwise discard the received LSP, since it is not latest for that node.
• Thus recent LSP of a node eventually reaches all nodes, i.e., reliable flooding.

(a) (b) (c) (d)

• Flooding of LSP in a small network is as follows:
➢ When node X receives Y’s LSP (fig a), it floods onto its neighbors A
and C (fig b)
➢ Nodes A and C forward it to B, but does not sends it back to X (fig c).
➢ Node B receives two copies of LSP with same sequence number.
➢ Accepts one LSP and forwards it to D (fig d). Flooding is complete.
• LSP is generated either periodically or when there is a change in the topology.
Route Calculation
• Each node knows the entire topology, once it has LSP from every other node.
• Forward search algorithm is used to compute routing table from the received
LSPs.
• Each node maintains two lists, namely Tentative and Confirmed with entries of
the form (Destination, Cost, NextHop).
DIJKSTRA’S SHORTEST PATH ALGORITHM
(FORWARD SEARCH ALGORITHM)
1. Each host maintains two lists, known as Tentative and Confirmed
2. Initialize the Confirmed list with an entry for the Node (Cost = 0).
3. Node just added to Confirmed list is called Next. Its LSP is examined.
4. For each neighbor of Next, calculate cost to reach each neighbor as Cost (Node
to Next) + Cost (Next to Neighbor).
a. If Neighbor is neither in Confirmed nor in Tentative list, then add
(Neighbor, Cost, NextHop) to Tentative list.
b. If Neighbor is in Tentative list, and Cost is less than existing cost, then
replace the entry with (Neighbor, Cost, NextHop).
5. If Tentative list is empty then Stop, otherwise move least cost entry from
Tentative list to Confirmed list. Go to Step 2.
Example :

OPEN SHORTEST PATH FIRST PROTOCOL (OSPF)

• OSPF is a non-proprietary widely used link-state routing protocol.
• OSPF Features are:
➢ Authentication―Malicious host can collapse a network by advertising
to reach every host with cost 0. Such disasters are averted by
authenticating routing updates.
➢ Additional hierarchy―Domain is partitioned into areas, i.e., OSPF is
more scalable.
➢ Load balancing―Multiple routes to the same place are assigned same
cost. Thus traffic is distributed evenly.

Link State Packet Format

 Version ― represents the current version, i.e., 2.
Type ― represents the type (1–5) of OSPF message.
Type 1 - “hello” message, Type 2 - request, Type 3 – send ,
Type 4 - acknowledge the receipt of link state messages ,
Type 5 - reserved
SourceAddr ― identifies the sender
AreaId ― 32-bit identifier of the area in which the node is located
Checksum ― 16-bit internet checksum
Authentication type ― 1 (simple password), 2 (cryptographic authentication).
Authentication ― contains password or cryptographic checksum

Open Shortest First Protocol(OSPF):

The OSPF stands for Open Shortest Path First. It is a widely used and supported routing
protocol. It is an intradomain protocol, which means that it is used within an area or a network. It is
an interior gateway protocol that has been designed within a single autonomous system.
It is based on a link-state routing algorithm in which each router contains the information of
every domain, and based on this information, it determines the shortest path. The goal of routing is
to learn routes.
The OSPF achieves by learning about every router and subnet within the entire network.
Every router contains the same information about the network. The way the router learns this
information by sending LSA (Link State Advertisements). These LSAs contain information about
every router, subnet, and other networking information. Once the LSAs have been flooded, the
OSPF stores the information in a link-state database known as LSDB. The main goal is to have the
same information about every router in an LSDBs.
OSPF areas:
OSPF divides the autonomous systems into areas where the area is a collection of networks,
hosts, and routers. Like internet service providers divide the internet into a different autonomous
system for easy management and OSPF further divides the autonomous systems into Areas.

Routers that exist inside the area flood the area with routing information

In Area, the special router also exists. The special routers are those that are present at the
border of an area, and these special routers are known as Area Border Routers. This router
summarizes the information about an area and shares the information with other areas.
All the areas inside an autonomous system are connected to the backbone routers, and these
backbone routers are part of a primary area. The role of a primary area is to provide communication
between different areas.
How does OSPF work?
There are three steps that can explain the working of OSPF:
Step 1: The first step is to become OSPF neighbors. The two connecting routers running OSPF on
the same link creates a neighbor relationship.
Step 2: The second step is to exchange database information. After becoming the neighbors, the two
routers exchange the LSDB information with each other.
Step 3: The third step is to choose the best route. Once the LSDB information has been exchanged
with each other, the router chooses the best route to be added to a routing table based on the
calculation of SPF.
There are four types of links in OSPF:
• Point-to-point link: The point-to-point link directly connects the two routers without any
host or router in between.
• Transient link: When several routers are attached in a network, they are known as a transient
link.
The transient link has two different implementations:
Unrealistic topology: When all the routers are connected to each other, it is known as an
unrealistic topology.
Realistic topology: When some designated router exists in a network then it is known as a
realistic topology. Here designated router is a router to which all the routers are connected.
All the packets sent by the routers will be passed through the designated router.
• Stub link: It is a network that is connected to the single router. Data enters to the network
through the single router and leaves the network through the same router.
• Virtual link: If the link between the two routers is broken, the administration creates the
virtual path between the routers, and that path could be a long one also.

OSPF Message Format

The following are the fields in an OSPF message format:

• Version: It is an 8-bit field that specifies the OSPF protocol version.

• Type: It is an 8-bit field. It specifies the type of the OSPF packet.
• Message: It is a 16-bit field that defines the total length of the message, including the header.
Therefore, the total length is equal to the sum of the length of the message and header.
• Source IP address: It defines the address from which the packets are sent. It is a sending
routing IP address.
• Area identification: It defines the area within which the routing takes place.
• Checksum: It is used for error correction and error detection.
• Authentication type: There are two types of authentication, i.e., 0 and 1. Here, 0 means for
none that specifies no authentication is available and 1 means for pwd that specifies the
 password-based authentication.
• Authentication: It is a 32-bit field that contains the actual value of the authentication data.

Difference Between Distance-Vector And Link-State Algorithms

Distance vector Routing Link state Routing

Each node talks only to its directly Each node talks to all other nodes, but
connected neighbors, but it tells them it tells them only what it knows for
everything it has learned sure (i.e., only the state of its directly
(i.e., distance to all nodes). connected links).

MULTICASTING
• In multicasting, there is one source and a group of destinations.
• Multicast supports efficient delivery to multiple destinations.
• The relationship is one to many or many-to-many.
• One-to-Many (Source Specific Multicast)
oRadio station broadcast
oTransmitting news, stock-price
oSoftware updates to multiple hosts
• Many-to-Many (Any Source Multicast)
oMultimedia teleconferencing
oOnline multi-player games
oDistributed simulations

• In this type of communication, the source address is a unicast address, but the
destination address is a group address.
• The group address defines the members of the group.

• In multicasting, a multicast router may have to send out copies of the same
datagram through more than one interface.
• Hosts that are members of a group receive copies of any packets sent to that
group’s multicast address
• A host can be in multiple groups
• A host can join and leave groups
• A host signals its desire to join or leave a multicast group by
communicating with its local router using a special protocol.
• In IPv4, the protocol is Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP)
• In IPv6, the protocol is Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD)
IGMP OR MLD PROTOCOL
• Hosts communicate their desire to join / leave a multicast group to a router
using Internet Group Message Protocol (IGMP) in IPv4 or Multicast
Listener Discovery (MLD) in IPv6.
• Provides multicast routers with information about the membership status of
hosts connected to the network.
• Enables a multicast router to create and update list of loyal members for
each group.

MULTICAST ADDRESSING
• Multicast address is associated with a group, whose members are dynamic.
• Each group has its own IP multicast address.
• IP addresses reserved for multicasting are Class D in IPv4 (Class D [Link]
to [Link]), 1111 1111 prefix in IPv6.
o
• Hosts that are members of a group receive copy of the packet sent when
destination contains group address.

MULTICASTING VERSUS MULTIPLE UNICASTING

• Multicasting starts with a single packet from the source that is duplicated by
the routers. The destination address in each packet is the same for all
duplicates.
• Only a single copy of the packet travels between any two routers.

• In multiple unicasting, several packets start from the source.

 • If there are three destinations, for example, the source sends three packets, each
with a different unicast destination address.
• There may be multiple copies traveling between two routers

NEED FOR MULTICAST

Without support for multicast
• A source needs to send a separate packet with the identical data to each
member of the group
• Source needs to keep track of the IP address of each member in the group

Using IP multicast
• Sending host does not send multiple copies of the packet
• A host sends a single copy of the packet addressed to the group’s multicast
address
• The sending host does not need to know the individual unicast IP address of
each member
TYPES OF MULTICASTING
• Source-Specific Multicast - In source-specific multicast (one-to-many model),
receiver specifies multicast group and sender from which it is interested to
receive packets. Example: Internet radio broadcasts.

• Any Source Multicast - Supplements any source multicast (many-to-many

model).

MULTICAST APPLICATIONS
• Access to Distributed Databases
• Information Dissemination
• Teleconferencing.
• Distance Learning

MULTICAST ROUTING
• To support multicast, a router must additionally have multicast forwarding
tables that indicate, based on multicast address, which links to use to
forward the multicast packet.
• Unicast forwarding tables collectively specify a set of paths.
• Multicast forwarding tables collectively specify a set of trees -Multicast
distribution trees.
• Multicast routing is the process by which multicast distribution trees are
determined.
• To support multicasting, routers additionally build multicast forwarding
tables.
• Multicast forwarding table is a tree structure, known as multicast
distribution trees.
• Internet multicast is implemented on physical networks that support
broadcasting by extending forwarding functions.

MULTICAST DISTRIBUTION TREES

There are two types of Multicast Distribution Trees used in multicast routing.
They are
➢ Source-Based Tree: (DVMRP)
 ▪ For each combination of (source , group), there is a shortest path spanning
tree.
▪ Flood and prune
➢ Send multicast traffic everywhere
➢ Prune edges that are not actively subscribed to group
▪ Link-state
➢ Routers flood groups they would like to receive
➢ Compute shortest-path trees on demand
➢ Shared Tree (PIM)
▪ Single distributed tree shared among all sources
▪ Does not include its own topology discovery mechanism, but instead
uses routing information supplied by other routing protocols
▪ Specify rendezvous point (RP) for group
▪ Senders send packets to RP, receivers join at RP
▪ RP multicasts to receivers; Fix-up tree for optimization
▪ Rendezvous-Point Tree: one router is the center of the group and
therefore the root of the tree.

MULTICAST ROUTING PROTOCOLS

• Internet multicast is implemented on physical networks that support
broadcasting by extending forwarding functions.
• Major multicast routing protocols are:
1. Distance-Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP)
2. Multicast Link State (MOSPF)
3. Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM)

1. Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol

• The DVMRP, is a routing protocol used to share information
between routers to facilitate the transportation of IP multicast packets among
networks.
• It formed the basis of the Internet's historic multicast backbone.
• Distance vector routing for unicast is extended to support multicast routing.
• Each router maintains a routing table for all destination through exchange of
distance vectors.
• DVMRP is also known as flood-and-prune protocol.
• DVMRP consists of two major components:
• A conventional distance-vector routing protocol, like RIP
• A protocol for determining how to forward multicast packets, based on the
routing table
• DVMRP router forwards a packet if
• The packet arrived from the link used to reach the source of the packet
• If downstream links have not pruned the tree
• DVMRP protocol uses the basic packet types as follows:
 • The forwarding table of DVMRP is as follows:

Multicasting is added to distance-vector routing in four stages.

➢ Flooding
➢ Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF)
➢ Reverse Path Broadcasting (RPB)
➢ Reverse Path Multicast (RPM)
Flooding
Router on receiving a multicast packet from source S to a Destination fromNextHop,
forwards the packet on all out-going links.
Packet is flooded and looped back to S.
The drawbacks are:
o It floods a network, even if it has no members for that group.
o Packets are forwarded by each router connected to a LAN, i.e., duplicate
flooding

Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF)

RPF eliminates the looping problem in the flooding process.
Only one copy is forwarded and the other copies are discarded.
RPF forces the router to forward a multicast packet from one specific interface:
the one which has come through the shortest path from the source to the router.
Packet is flooded but not looped back to S.
Reverse-Path Broadcasting (RPB)
RPB does not multicast the packet, it broadcasts it.
RPB creates a shortest path broadcast tree from the source to each destination.
It guarantees that each destination receives one and only one copy of the
packet.
We need to prevent each network from receiving more than one copy of the
packet.
If a network is connected to more than one router, it may receive a copy of the
packet from each router.
One router identified as parent called designated Router (DR).
Only parent router forwards multicast packets from source S to the attached
network.
When a router that is not the parent of the attached network receives a multicast
packet, it simply drops the packet.

Reverse-Path Multicasting (RPM)

To increase efficiency, the multicast packet must reach only those networks
that have active members for that particular group.
RPM adds pruning and grafting to RPB to create a multicast shortest path tree
that supports dynamic membership changes.

Pruning:
 Sent from routers receiving multicast traffic for which they have no active

group members
 “Prunes” the tree created by DVMRP

 Stops needless data from being sent

Grafting:
 Used after a branch has been pruned back

 Sent by a router that has a host that joins a multicast group

 Goes from router to router until a router active on the multicast group is
reached

 Sent for the following cases

 ▪ A new host member joins a group
▪ A new dependent router joins a pruned branch
▪ A dependent router restarts on a pruned branch

2. Multicast Link State (MOSPF)

Multicast Open Shortest Path First (MOSPF) is the extension of the Open Shortest
Path First (OSPF) protocol, which is used in unicast routing. It also uses the source-based
tree approach to multicasting. If the internet is running a unicast link-state routing
algorithm, the idea can be extended to provide a multicast link-state routing algorithm.
To extend unicasting to multicasting, each router needs to have another database, as
with the case of unicast distance-vector routing, to show which interface has an active
member in a particular group.
Example of tree formation in MOSPF

3. Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM)

PIM divides multicast routing problem into sparse and dense mode.
PIM sparse mode (PIM-SM) is widely used.
PIM does not rely on any type of unicast routing protocol, hence protocol
independent.
 Routers explicitly join and leave multicast group using Join and Prune
messages.
One of the router is designated as rendezvous point (RP) for each group in a
domain to receive PIM messages.
Multicast forwarding tree is built as a result of routers sending Join messages
to RP.
Two types of trees to be constructed:
▪ Shared tree - used by all senders
▪ Source-specific tree - used only by a specific sending host
The normal mode of operation creates the shared tree first, followed by one or
more source-specific trees
Shared Tree
When a router sends Join message for group G to RP, it goes through a setof
routers.
Join message is wildcarded (*), i.e., it is applicable to all senders.
Routers create an entry (*, G) in its forwarding table for the shared tree.
Interface on which the Join arrived is marked to forward packets for that
group.
Forwards Join towards rendezvous router RP.
Eventually, the message arrives at RP. Thus a shared tree with RP as root is
formed.

Example
Router R4 sends Join message for group G to rendezvous router RP.
Join message is received by router R2. It makes an entry (*, G) in its table and
forwards the message to RP.
When R5 sends Join message for group G, R2 does not forwards the Join. It
adds an outgoing interface to the forwarding table created for that group.

As routers send Join message for a group, branches are added to the tree, i.e.,
shared.
Multicast packets sent from hosts are forwarded to designated router RP.
Suppose router R1, receives a message to group G.oR1 has no state for group G.
o Encapsulates the multicast packet in a Register message.
o Multicast packet is tunneled along the way to RP.
RP decapsulates the packet and sends multicast packet onto the shared tree,
towards R2.
R2 forwards the multicast packet to routers R4 and R5 that have members for
group G.
Source-Specific Tree
RP can force routers to know about group G, by sending Join message to the
sending host, so that tunneling can be avoided.
Intermediary routers create sender-specific entry (S, G) in their tables. Thus
a source-specific route from R1 to RP is formed.
If there is high rate of packets sent from a sender to a group G, then shared-
tree is replaced by source-specific tree with sender as root.
Example

Rendezvous router RP sends a Join message to the host router R1.

Router R3 learns about group G through the message sent by RP.
Router R4 send a source-specific Join due to high rate of packets from sender.
Router R2 learns about group G through the message sent by R4.
Eventually a source-specific tree is formed with R1 as root.

Analysis of PIM
Protocol independent because, tree is based on Join messages via shortest path.
Shared trees are more scalable than source-specific trees.
Source-specific trees enable efficient routing than shared trees.
• The main reason for migration from IPv4 to IPv6 is the small size of the
address space in IPv4.
• IPv6 was evolved to solve address space problem and offers rich set of
services. An IPv6 address is 128 bits or 16 bytes (octets) long, four times the
address length in IPv4.
• Some hosts and routers will run IPv4 only, some will run IPv4 and IPv6 and
some will run IPv6 only.
DRAWBACKS OF IPV4
• Despite subnetting and CIDR, address depletion is still a long-term problem.
• Internet must accommodate real-time audio and video transmission that
requires minimum delay strategies and reservation of resources.
• Internet must provide encryption and authentication of data for some
applications

FEATURES OF IPV6
1. Better header format - IPv6 uses a new header format in which options are
separated from the base header and inserted, when needed, between the base
header and the data. This simplifies and speeds up the routing process because
most of the options do not need to be checked by routers.
2. New options - IPv6 has new options to allow for additional functionalities.
3. Allowance for extension - IPv6 is designed to allow the extension of the
protocol if required by new technologies or applications.
 4. Support for resource allocation - In IPv6, the type-of-service field has
been removed, but two new fields, traffic class and flow label, have been added
to enable the source to request special handling of the packet. This
mechanism can be used to support traffic such as real-time audio and video.

Additional Features :
1. Need to accommodate scalable routing and addressing
2. Support for real-time services
3. Security support
[Link] -
The ability of hosts to automatically configure themselves with such
information as their own IP address and domain name.
5. Enhanced routing functionality, including support for mobile hosts
6. Transition from ipv4 to ipv6

Representation
A computer normally stores the address in binary, but it is clear that 128 bits cannot easily be
handled by humans. Several notations have been proposed to represent IPv6 addresses when
they are handled by humans. The following shows two of these notations: binary and colon
hexadecimal.

Address Space
The address space of IPv6 contains 2128 addresses. This address space is 296 times the IPv4
address—definitely no address depletion—as shown, the size of the space is

ADDRESS SPACE ALLOCATION OF IPV6

IPv6 provides a 128-bit address space to handle up to 3.4 × 10 38 nodes.
IPv6 uses classless addressing, but classification is based on MSBs.
The address space is subdivided in various ways based on the leading bits.
The current assignment of prefixes is listed in Table

A node may be assigned an “IPv4-compatible IPv6 address” by zero-extending

a 32-bit IPv4 addressto128 bits.
A node that is only capable of understanding IPv4 can be assigned an “IPv4-
mapped IPv6 address” by prefixing the 32-bit IPv4 address with 2 bytes of all
1s and then zero-extending the result to 128 bits.
GLOBAL UNICAST
Large chunks (87%) of address space are left unassigned for future use.

IPv6 defines two types of local addresses for private networks.

oLink local - enables a host to construct an address that need not be
globally unique.
oSite local - allows valid local address for use in a isolated site with
several subnets.
Reserved addresses start with prefix of eight 0's.
oUnspecified address is used when a host does not know its address
oLoopback address is used for testing purposes before connecting
oCompatible address is used when IPv6 hosts uses IPv4 network
o Mapped address is used when a IPv6 host communicates with a IPv4 host
IPv6 defines anycast address, assigned to a set of interfaces.
Packet with anycast address is delivered to only one of the nearest interface.

ADDRESS NOTATION OF IPV6

Standard representation of IPv6 address is x : x : x : x : x : x : x : x where x is a
16-bit hexadecimal address separated by colon (:).
For example,
47CD : 1234 : 4422 : ACO2 : 0022 : 1234 : A456 : 0124

IPv6 address with contiguous 0 bytes can be written compactly.

For example,
47CD : 0000 : 0000 : 0000 : 0000 : 0000 : A456 : 0124 → 47CD : : A456 : 0124

IPv4 address is mapped to IPv6 address by prefixing the 32-bit IPv4 address
with 2 bytes of 1s and then zero-extending the result to 128 bits.
For example,
128. 96.33.81 → : : FFFF : [Link]
This notation is called as CIDR notation or slash notation.
Mapping for EUI-64

Mapping for Ethernet MAC

Example:1
Using the format we defined for Ethernet addresses, find the interface identifier if the
physical address in the EUI is (F5-A9-23-EF-07-14-7A-D2)16.
Solution
We only need to change the seventh bit of the first octet from 0 to 1 and change the format to
colon hex notation. The result is F7A9:23EF:0714:7AD2.
Example:2
Using the format we defined for Ethernet addresses, find the interface identifier if the
Ethernet physical address is (F5-A9-23-14-7A-D2) 16.
Solution
We only need to change the seventh bit of the first octet from 0 to 1, insert two octets FFFE16
and change the format to colon hex notation. The result is F7A9:23FF:FE14:7AD2 in colon
hex.

ADDRESS AGGREGATION OF IPV6

IPv6 provides aggregation of routing information to reduce the burden on
routers.
Aggregation is done by assigning prefixes at continental level.
For example, if all addresses in Europe have a common prefix, then routers in
other continents would need one routing table entry for all networks in Europe.
 ❖ Prefix - All addresses in the same continent have a common prefix
❖ RegistryID ― identifies the continent
❖ ProviderID ― identifies the provider for Internet access, i.e., ISP.
❖ SubscriberID ― specifies the subscriber identifier
❖ SubnetID ― contains subnet of the subscriber.
❖ InterfaceID ―contains link level or physical address.

THE IPv6 PROTOCOL

The change of the IPv6 address size requires the change in the IPv4 packet format. The
designer of IPv6 decided to implement remedies for other shortcomings now that a change is
inevitable. The following shows other changes implemented in the protocol in addition to changing
address size and format.
The IPv6 packet is shown in Figure. Each packet is composed of a base header
followed by the payload. The base header occupies 40 bytes, whereas payload can be up to 65,535
bytes of information. The description of fields follows.

PACKET FORMAT OF IPV6

IPv6 base header is 40 bytes long.

❖ Version — specifies the IP version, i.e., 6.

❖ Traffic Class — defines priority of the packet with respect to traffic
congestion. It is either congestion-controlled or non-congestion controlled
❖ Flow Label — provides special handling for a particular flow of data. Router
handles different flows with the help of a flow table.
❖ Payload Len — gives length of the packet, excluding IPv6 header.
❖ Next Header — Options are specified as a header following IP header.
NextHeader contains a pointer to optional headers.
❖ Hop Limit — Gives the TTL value of a packet.
❖ Source Address / Destination Address — 16-byte addresses of source and
destination host

Extension Headers
Extension header provides greater functionality to IPv6.
Base header may be followed by six extension headers.
 Each extension header contains a NextHeader field to identify the header
following it.

❖ Hop-by-Hop — source host passes information to all routers visited by the

packet
❖ Destination — source host information is passed to the destination only.
❖ Source Routing — routing information provided by the source host.
❖ Fragmentation — In IPv6, only the source host can fragment. Source uses a
path MTU discovery technique to find smallest MTU on the path.
❖ Authentication — used to validate the sender and ensures data integrity.
❖ ESP (Encrypted Security Payload) — provides confidentiality against
eavesdropping.
ADVANCED CAPABILITIES OF IPV6
Auto Configuration — Auto or stateless configuration of IP address to hosts
without the need for a DHCP server, i.e., plug and play.
Advanced Routing — Enhanced routing support for mobile hosts is provided.
Additional Functions ― Enhanced routing functionality with support formobile
hosts.
Security ― Encryption and authentication options provide confidentiality and
integrity.
Resource allocation ― Flow label enables the source to request specialhandling
of real-time audio and video packets

ADVANTAGES OF IPV6
Address space ― IPv6 uses 128-bit address whereas IPv4 uses 32-bit address.
Hence IPv6 has huge address space whereas IPv4 faces address shortage
problem.
Header format ― Unlike IPv4, optional headers are separated from base
header in IPv6. Each router thus need not process unwanted addition
information.
Extensible ― Unassigned IPv6 addresses can accommodate needs of future
technologies.

TRANSITION FROM IPv4 TO IPv6

Although we have a new version of the IP protocol, how can we make the transition to
stop using IPv4 and start using IPv6? in the Internet can move The transition must be smooth
to prevent any problems between IPv4 and IPv6 systems.
Strategies
Three strategies have been devised for transition: dual stack, tunneling, and header
translation. One or all of these three strategies can be implemented during the transition
period.

Dual-Stack Operation and Tunneling

In dual-stack, nodes run both IPv6 and IPv4, uses Version field to decide which
stack should process an arriving packet.
IPv6 packet is encapsulated with an IPv4 packet as it travels through an IPv4
network. This is known as tunneling and packet contains tunnel endpoint as its
 destination address.

Dual Stack

Tunneling strategy

Header translation

Network Address Translation

NAT enables hosts on a network to use Internet with local addresses.
Addresses reserved for internal use range from [Link] to
[Link] Organization must have single connection to the Internet
through a router that
runs the NAT software.