What is Network?

A Network in the world of computers is said to be a collection

of interconnected hosts, via some shared media which can be
wired or wireless. A computer network enables its hosts to
share and exchange data and information over the media.
Network can be a Local Area Network spanned across an office
or Metro Area Network spanned across a city or Wide Area
Network which can be spanned across cities and provinces.

A computer network can be as simple as two PCs connected

together via a single copper cable or it can be grown up to the
complexity where every computer in this world is connected to
every other, called the Internet. A network then includes more
and more components to reach its ultimate goal of data
exchange. Below is a brief description of the components
involved in computer network:

Hosts - Hosts are said to be situated at ultimate end of the

network, i.e. a host is a source of information and another
host will be the destination. Information flows end to end
between hosts. A host can be a users PC, an internet Server, a
database server etc.

Media - If wired, then it can be copper cable, fiber optic cable,

and coaxial cable. If wireless, it can be free-to-air radio
frequency or some special wireless band. Wireless frequencies
can be used to interconnect remote sites too.

Hub - A hub is a multiport repeater and it is used to connect

hosts in a LAN segment. Because of low throughputs hubs are
now rarely used. Hub works on Layer-1 (Physical Layer) of OSI
Model.

Switch - A Switch is a multiport bridge and is used to connect

hosts in a LAN segment. Switches are much faster than Hubs
and operate on wire speed. Switch works on Layer-2 (Data
Link Layer), but Layer-3 (Network Layer) switches are also
available.

Router - A router is Layer-3 (Network Layer) device which

makes routing decisions for the data/information sent for some
remote destination. Routers make the core of any
interconnected network and the Internet.

Gateways - A software or combination of software and

hardware put together, works for exchanging data among
networks which are using different protocols for sharing data.

Firewall - Software or combination of software and hardware,

used to protect users data from unintended recipients on the
network/internet.

All components in a network ultimately serve the hosts.

Host Addressing
Communication between hosts can happen only if they can
identify each other on the network. In a single collision domain
(where every packet sent on the segment by one host is heard
by every other host) hosts can communicate directly via MAC
address.

MAC address is a factory coded 48-bits hardware address

which can also uniquely identify a host. But if a host wants to
communicate with a remote host, i.e. not in the same segment
or logically not connected, then some means of addressing is
required to identify the remote host uniquely. A logical address
is given to all hosts connected to Internet and this logical
address is called Internet Protocol Address.

The International Standard Organization has a well-defined

model for Communication Systems known as Open System
Interconnection, or the OSI Model. This layered model is a
conceptualized view of how one system should communicate
with the other, using various protocols defined in each layer.
Further, each layer is designated to a well-defined part of
communication system. For example, the Physical layer defines
all the components of physical nature, i.e. wires, frequencies,
pulse codes, voltage transmission etc. of a communication
system.

The OSI Model has the following seven layers:

Application Layer (Layer-7): This is where the user

application sits that needs to transfer data between or among
hosts. For example: HTTP, file transfer application (FTP) and
electronic mail etc.

Presentation Layer (Layer-6): This layer helps to

understand data representation in one form on a host to other
host in their native representation. Data from the sender is
converted to on-the-wire data (general standard format) and
at the receivers end it is converted to the native
representation of the receiver.

Session Layer (Layer-5): This layer provides session

management capabilities between hosts. For example, if some
host needs a password verification for access and if credentials
are provided then for that session password verification does
not happen again. This layer can assist in synchronization,
dialog control and critical operation management (e.g., an
online bank transaction).

Transport Layer (Layer-4): This layer provides end to end

data delivery among hosts. This layer takes data from the
above layer and breaks it into smaller units called Segments
and then gives it to the Network layer for transmission.
Network Layer (Layer-3): This layer helps to uniquely
identify hosts beyond the subnets and defines the path which
the packets will follow or be routed to reach the destination.

Data Link Layer (Layer-2): This layer takes the raw

transmission data (signal, pulses etc.) from the Physical Layer
and makes Data Frames, and sends that to the upper layer
and vice versa. This layer also checks any transmission errors
and sorts it out accordingly.

Physical Layer (Layer-1): This layer deals with hardware

technology and actual communication mechanism such as
signaling, voltage, cable type and length, etc.

Network Layer
The network layer is responsible for carrying data from one
host to another. It provides means to allocate logical addresses
to hosts, and identify them uniquely using the same. Network
layer takes data units from Transport Layer and cuts them in
to smaller unit called Data Packet.

Network layer defines the data path, the packets should follow
to reach the destination. Routers work on this layer and
provides mechanism to route data to its destination.

A majority of the internet uses a protocol suite called the

Internet Protocol Suite also known as the TCP/IP protocol
suite. This suite is a combination of protocols which
encompasses a number of different protocols for different
purpose and need. Because the two major protocols in this
suites are TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet
Protocol), this is commonly termed as TCP/IP Protocol suite.
This protocol suite has its own reference model which it follows
over the internet. In contrast with the OSI model, this model
of protocols contains less layers.
 Figure: Comparative depiction of OSI and TCP/IP Reference
Models
This model is indifferent to the actual hardware
implementation, i.e. the physical layer of OSI Model. This is
why this model can be implemented on almost all underlying
technologies. Transport and Internet layers correspond to the
same peer layers. All three top layers of OSI Model are
compressed together in single Application layer of TCP/IP
Model.

Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4)

Internet Protocol is one of the major protocols in the TCP/IP
protocols suite. This protocol works at the network layer of the
OSI model and at the Internet layer of the TCP/IP model. Thus
this protocol has the responsibility of identifying hosts based
upon their logical addresses and to route data among them
over the underlying network.
IP provides a mechanism to uniquely identify hosts by an IP
addressing scheme. IP uses best effort delivery, i.e. it does not
guarantee that packets would be delivered to the destined
host, but it will do its best to reach the destination. Internet
Protocol version 4 uses 32-bit logical address.

Internet Protocol being a layer-3 protocol (OSI) takes data

Segments from layer-4 (Transport) and divides it into packets.
IP packet encapsulates data unit received from above layer
and add to its own header information.

The encapsulated data is referred to as IP Payload. IP header

contains all the necessary information to deliver the packet at
the other end.
IP header includes many relevant information including Version
Number, which, in this context, is 4. Other details are as
follows:

Version: Version no. of Internet Protocol used (e.g. IPv4).

IHL: Internet Header Length; Length of entire IP header.

DSCP: Differentiated Services Code Point; this is Type of

Service.

ECN: Explicit Congestion Notification; It carries information

about the congestion seen in the route.

Total Length: Length of entire IP Packet (including IP header

and IP Payload).

Identification: If IP packet is fragmented during the

transmission, all the fragments contain same identification
number. to identify original IP packet they belong to.

Flags: As required by the network resources, if IP Packet is

too large to handle, these flags tells if they can be
fragmented or not. In this 3-bit flag, the MSB is always set to
0.

Fragment Offset: This offset tells the exact position of the

fragment in the original IP Packet.

Time to Live: To avoid looping in the network, every packet is

sent with some TTL value set, which tells the network how
many routers (hops) this packet can cross. At each hop, its
value is decremented by one and when the value reaches zero,
the packet is discarded.

Protocol: Tells the Network layer at the destination host, to

which Protocol this packet belongs to, i.e. the next level
Protocol. For example protocol number of ICMP is 1, TCP is 6
and UDP is 17.

Header Checksum: This field is used to keep checksum value

of entire header which is then used to check if the packet is
received error-free.

Source Address: 32-bit address of the Sender (or source) of

the packet.

Destination Address: 32-bit address of the Receiver (or

destination) of the packet.

Options: This is optional field, which is used if the value of IHL

is greater than 5. These options may contain values for options
such as Security, Record Route, Time Stamp, etc.

IPv4 supports three different types of addressing modes.:

Unicast Addressing Mode:

In this mode, data is sent only to one destined host. The
Destination Address field contains 32- bit IP address of the
destination host. Here the client sends data to the targeted
server:
Broadcast Addressing Mode:
In this mode, the packet is addressed to all the hosts in a
network segment. The Destination Address field contains a
special broadcast address, i.e. 255.255.255.255. When a
host sees this packet on the network, it is bound to process it.
Here the client sends a packet, which is entertained by all the
Servers:

Multicast Addressing Mode:

This mode is a mix of the previous two modes, i.e. the packet
sent is neither destined to a single host nor all the hosts on
the segment. In this packet, the Destination Address contains
a special address which starts with 224.x.x.x and can be
entertained by more than one host.

Here a server sends packets which are entertained by more

than one servers. Every network has one IP address reserved
for the Network Number which represents the network and one
IP address reserved for the Broadcast Address, which
represents all the hosts in that network.

Hierarchical Addressing Scheme

IPv4 uses hierarchical addressing scheme. An IP address,
which is 32-bits in length, is divided into two or three parts as
depicted:

A single IP address can contain information about the network

and its sub-network and ultimately the host. This scheme
enables the IP Address to be hierarchical where a network can
have many sub-networks which in turn can have many hosts.

Subnet Mask
The 32-bit IP address contains information about the host and
its network. It is very necessary to distinguish both. For this,
routers use Subnet Mask, which is as long as the size of the
network address in the IP address. Subnet Mask is also 32 bits
long. If the IP address in binary is ANDed with its Subnet
Mask, the result yields the Network address. For example, say
the IP Address is 192.168.1.152 and the Subnet Mask is
255.255.255.0 then:

This way the Subnet Mask helps extract the Network ID and
the Host from an IP Address. It can be identified now that
192.168.1.0 is the Network number and 192.168.1.152 is the
host on that network.

Binary Representation
The positional value method is the simplest form of converting
binary from decimal value. IP address is 32 bit value which is
divided into 4 octets. A binary octet contains 8 bits and the
value of each bit can be determined by the position of bit value
'1' in the octet.
Positional value of bits is determined by 2 raised to power
(position 1), that is the value of a bit 1 at position 6 is 2^(6-
1) that is 2^5 that is 32. The total value of the octet is
determined by adding up the positional value of bits. The value
of 11000000 is 128+64 = 192. Some examples are shown in
the table below:
Internet Protocol hierarchy contains several classes of IP
Addresses to be used efficiently in various situations as per the
requirement of hosts per network. Broadly, the IPv4
Addressing system is divided into five classes of IP
Addresses. All the five classes are identified by the first
octet of IP Address.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is

responsible for assigning IP addresses.
The first octet referred here is the left most of all. The octets
numbered as follows depicting dotted decimal notation of IP
Address:

The number of networks and the number of hosts per

class can be derived by this formula:

When calculating hosts' IP addresses, 2 IP addresses are

decreased because they cannot be assigned to hosts, i.e. the
first IP of a network is network number and the last IP is
reserved for Broadcast IP.

Class A Address
The first bit of the first octet is always set to 0 (zero). Thus the
first octet ranges from 1 127, i.e.
Class A addresses only include IP starting from 1.x.x.x to
126.x.x.x only. The IP range 127.x.x.x is reserved for loopback
IP addresses.

The default subnet mask for Class A IP address is 255.0.0.0

which implies that Class A addressing can have 126 networks
(27-2) and 16777214 hosts (224-2).

Class A IP address format is

thus: 0NNNNNNN.HHHHHHHH.HHHHHHHH.HHHHHHHH

Class B Address
An IP address which belongs to class B has the first two bits in
the first octet set to 10, i.e.

Class B IP Addresses range from 128.0.x.x to 191.255.x.x. The

default subnet mask for Class B is 255.255.x.x.

Class B has 16384 (214) Network addresses and 65534 (216-2)

Host addresses.

Class B IP address format

is: 10NNNNNN.NNNNNNNN.HHHHHHHH.HHHHHHHH

Class C Address
The first octet of Class C IP address has its first 3 bits set to
110, that is:

Class C IP addresses range from 192.0.0.x to 223.255.255.x.

The default subnet mask for Class C is 255.255.255.x.
Class C gives 2097152 (221) Network addresses and 254 (28-2)
Host addresses.

Class C IP address format

is: 110NNNNN.NNNNNNNN.NNNNNNNN.HHHHHHHH

Class D Address
Very first four bits of the first octet in Class D IP
addresses are set to 1110, giving a range of:

Class D has IP address rage from 224.0.0.0 to

239.255.255.255. Class D is reserved for Multicasting. In
multicasting data is not destined for a particular host, that is
why there is no need to extract host address from the IP
address, and Class D does not have any subnet mask.

Class E Address
This IP Class is reserved for experimental purposes only for
R&D or Study. IP addresses in this class ranges from 240.0.0.0
to 255.255.255.254. Like Class D, this class too is not
equipped with any subnet mask.

Each IP class is equipped with its own default subnet mask

which bounds that IP class to have prefixed number of
Networks and prefixed number of Hosts per network. Classful
IP addressing does not provide any flexibility of having less
number of Hosts per Network or more Networks per IP Class.

CIDR or Classless Inter Domain Routing provides the

flexibility of borrowing bits of Host part of the IP address and
using them as Network in Network, called Subnet. By using
subnetting, one single Class A IP address can be used to have
smaller sub-networks which provides better network
management capabilities.
Class A Subnets
In Class A, only the first octet is used as Network identifier and
rest of three octets are used to be assigned to Hosts (i.e.
16777214 Hosts per Network). To make more subnet in Class
A, bits from Host part are borrowed and the subnet mask is
changed accordingly.

For example, if one MSB (Most Significant Bit) is borrowed

from host bits of second octet and added to Network address,
it creates two Subnets (21=2) with (223-2) 8388606 Hosts per
Subnet.

The Subnet mask is changed accordingly to reflect subnetting.

Given below is a list of all possible combination of Class A
subnets:
In case of subnetting too, the very first and last IP address of
every subnet is used for Subnet Number and Subnet Broadcast
IP address respectively. Because these two IP addresses
cannot be assigned to hosts, sub-netting cannot be
implemented by using more than 30 bits as Network Bits,
which provides less than two hosts per subnet.

Class B Subnets
By default, using Classful Networking, 14 bits are used as
Network bits providing (214) 16384 Networks and (216-2)
65534 Hosts. Class B IP Addresses can be subnetted the same
way as Class A addresses, by borrowing bits from Host bits.
Below is given all possible combination of Class B subnetting:

Class C Subnets
Class C IP addresses are normally assigned to a very small
size network because it can only have 254 hosts in a network.
Given below is a list of all possible combination of subnetted
Class B IP address:
Internet Service Providers may face a situation where they
need to allocate IP subnets of different sizes as per the
requirement of customer. One customer may ask Class C
subnet of 3 IP addresses and another may ask for 10 IPs. For
an ISP, it is not feasible to divide the IP addresses into fixed
size subnets, rather he may want to subnet the subnets in
such a way which results in minimum wastage of IP addresses.

For example, an administrator have 192.168.1.0/24 network.

The suffix /24 (pronounced as "slash 24") tells the number of
bits used for network address. In this example, the
administrator has three different departments with different
number of hosts. Sales department has 100 computers,
Purchase department has 50 computers, Accounts has 25
computers and Management has 5 computers. In CIDR, the
subnets are of fixed size. Using the same methodology the
administrator cannot fulfill all the requirements of the network.

The following procedure shows how VLSM (variable length

subnet mask)can be used in order to allocate department-wise
IP addresses as mentioned in the example.

Step - 1
Make a list of Subnets possible.

Step - 2
Sort the requirements of IPs in descending order (Highest to
Lowest).

Sales 100

Purchase 50

Accounts 25

Management 5

Step - 3
Allocate the highest range of IPs to the highest requirement,
so let's assign 192.168.1.0 /25 (255.255.255.128) to the
Sales department. This IP subnet with Network number
192.168.1.0 has 126 valid Host IP addresses which satisfy the
requirement of the Sales department. The subnet mask used
for this subnet has 10000000 as the last octet.

Step - 4
Allocate the next highest range, so let's assign
192.168.1.128 /26 (255.255.255.192) to the Purchase
department. This IP subnet with Network number
192.168.1.128 has 62 valid Host IP Addresses which can be
easily assigned to all the PCs of the Purchase department. The
subnet mask used has 11000000 in the last octet.

Step - 5
Allocate the next highest range, i.e. Accounts. The
requirement of 25 IPs can be fulfilled with 192.168.1.192 /27
(255.255.255.224) IP subnet, which contains 30 valid host IPs.
The network number of Accounts department will be
192.168.1.192. The last octet of subnet mask is 11100000.

Step - 6
Allocate the next highest range to Management. The
Management department contains only 5 computers. The
subnet 192.168.1.224 /29 with the Mask 255.255.255.248 has
exactly 6 valid host IP addresses. So this can be assigned to
Management. The last octet of the subnet mask will contain
11111000.

By using VLSM, the administrator can subnet the IP subnet in

such a way that least number of IP addresses are wasted.
Even after assigning IPs to every department, the
administrator, in this example, is still left with plenty of IP
addresses which was not possible if he has used CIDR.

There are a few reserved IPv4 address spaces which cannot be

used on the internet. These addresses serve special purpose
and cannot be routed outside the Local Area Network.

Private IP Addresses
Every class of IP, (A, B & C) has some addresses reserved as
Private IP addresses. These IPs can be used within a network,
campus, company and are private to it. These addresses
cannot be routed on the Internet, so packets containing these
private addresses are dropped by the Routers.

In order to communicate with the outside world, these IP

addresses must have to be translated to some public IP
addresses using NAT(network address translation) process, or
Web Proxy server can be used.

The sole purpose to create a separate range of private

addresses is to control assignment of already-limited IPv4
address pool. By using a private address range within LAN, the
requirement of IPv4 addresses has globally decreased
significantly. It has also helped delaying the IPv4 address
exhaustion.

IP class, while using private address range, can be chosen as

per the size and requirement of the organization. Larger
organizations may choose class A private IP address range
where smaller organizations may opt for class C. These IP
addresses can be further sub-netted and assigned to
departments within an organization.

Loopback IP Addresses
The IP address range 127.0.0.0 127.255.255.255 is reserved
for loopback, i.e. a Hosts self-address, also known as localhost
address. This loopback IP address is managed entirely by and
within the operating system. Loopback addresses, enable the
Server and Client processes on a single system to
communicate with each other. When a process creates a
packet with destination address as loopback address, the
operating system loops it back to itself without having any
interference of NIC.

Data sent on loopback is forwarded by the operating system to

a virtual network interface within operating system. This
address is mostly used for testing purposes like client-server
architecture on a single machine. Other than that, if a host
machine can successfully ping 127.0.0.1 or any IP from
loopback range, implies that the TCP/IP software stack on the
machine is successfully loaded and working.

Link-local Addresses
In case a host is not able to acquire an IP address from the
DHCP server and it has not been assigned any IP address
manually, the host can assign itself an IP address from a range
of reserved Link-local addresses. Link local address ranges
from 169.254.0.0 -- 169.254.255.255.

Assume a network segment where all systems are configured

to acquire IP addresses from a DHCP server connected to the
same network segment. If the DHCP server is not available, no
host on the segment will be able to communicate to any other.
Windows (98 or later), and Mac OS (8.0 or later) supports this
functionality of self-configuration of Link-local IP address. In
absence of DHCP server, every host machine randomly chooses
an IP address from the above mentioned range and then
checks to ascertain by means of ARP, if some other host also
has not configured itself with the same IP address. Once all
hosts are using link local addresses of same range, they can
communicate with each other.

These IP addresses cannot help system to communicate when

they do not belong to the same physical or logical segment.
These IPs are also not routable.

This chapter describes how actual communication happens on

the Network using Internet Protocol version 4.

Packet Flow in Network

All the hosts in IPv4 environment are assigned unique logical

IP addresses. When a host wants to send some data to
another host on the network, it needs the physical (MAC)
address of the destination host. To get the MAC address, the
host an broadcasts ARP message and asks to give the MAC
address whoever is the owner of destination IP address. All the
hosts on that segment receive the ARP packet, but only the
host having its IP matching with the one in the ARP message,
replies with its MAC address. Once the sender receives the
MAC address of the receiving station, data is sent on the
physical media.

In case the IP does not belong to the local subnet, the data is
sent to the destination by means of Gateway of the subnet. To
understand the packet flow, we must first understand the
following components:

MAC Address: Media Access Control Address is 48-bit factory

hard coded physical address of network device which can
uniquely be identified. This address is assigned by device
manufacturers.

Address Resolution Protocol: Address Resolution Protocol is

used to acquire the MAC address of a host whose IP address is
known. ARP is a Broadcast packet which is received by all the
host in the network segment. But only the host whose IP is
mentioned in ARP responds to it providing its MAC address.

Proxy Server: To access the Internet, networks use a Proxy

Server which has a public IP assigned. All the PCs request the
Proxy Server for a Server on the Internet. The Proxy Server on
behalf of the PCS sends the request to the server and when it
receives a response from the Server, the Proxy Server
forwards it to the client PC. This is a way to control Internet
access in computer networks and it helps to implement web
based policies.

Dynamic Host Control Protocol: DHCP is a service by which

a host is assigned IP address from a pre-defined address pool.
DHCP server also provides necessary information such as
Gateway IP, DNS Server Address, lease assigned with the IP,
etc. By using DHCP services, a network administrator can
manage assignment of IP addresses at ease.
Domain Name System: It is very likely that a user does not
know the IP address of a remote Server he wants to connect
to. But he knows the name assigned to it, for example,
tutorialpoints.com. When the user types the name of a remote
server he wants to connect to, the localhost behind the
screens sends a DNS query. Domain Name System is a method
to acquire the IP address of the host whose Domain Name is
known.

Network Address Translation: Almost all PCs in a computer

network are assigned private IP addresses which are not
routable on the Internet. As soon as a router receives an IP
packet with a private IP address, it drops it. In order to access
servers on public private address, computer networks use an
address translation service, which translates between public
and private addresses, called Network Address Translation.
When a PC sends an IP packet out of a private network, NAT
changes the private IP address with public IP address and vice
versa.

We can now describe the packet flow. Assume that a user

wants to access www.TutorialsPoint.com from her personal
computer. She has internet connection from her ISP. The
following steps will be taken by the system to help her reach
the destination website.

Step: 1 Acquiring an IP Address (DHCP)

When the users PC boots up, it searches for a DHCP server to

acquire an IP address. For the same, the PC sends a
DHCPDISCOVER broadcast which is received by one or more
DHCP servers on the subnet and they all respond with
DHCPOFFER which includes all the necessary details such as IP,
subnet, Gateway, DNS, etc. The PC sends DHCPREQUEST
packet in order to request the offered IP address. Finally, the
DHCP sends DHCPACK packet to tell the PC that it can keep
the IP for some given amount of time that is known as IP
lease.

Alternatively, a PC can be assigned an IP address manually

without taking any help from DHCP server. When a PC is well
configured with IP address details, it can communicate other
computers all over the IP enabled network.

Step: 2 DNS Query

When a user opens a web browser and types

www.tutorialpoints.com which is a domain name and a PC does
not understand how to communicate with the server using
domain names, then the PC sends a DNS query out on the
network in order to obtain the IP address pertaining to the
domain name. The pre-configured DNS server responds to the
query with IP address of the domain name specified.

Step: 3 ARP Request

The PC finds that the destination IP address does not belong to

his own IP address range and it has to forward the request to
the Gateway. The Gateway in this scenario can be a router or a
Proxy Server. Though the Gateways IP address is known to
the client machine but computers do not exchange data on IP
addresses, rather they need the machines hardware address
which is Layer-2 factory coded MAC address. To obtain the
MAC address of the Gateway, the client PC broadcasts an ARP
request saying "Who owns this IP address?" The Gateway in
response to the ARP query sends its MAC address. Upon
receiving the MAC address, the PC sends the packets to the
Gateway.
An IP packet has both source and destination addresses and it
connects the host with a remote host logically, whereas MAC
addresses help systems on a single network segment to
transfer actual data. It is important that source and destination
MAC addresses change as they travel across the Internet
(segment by segment) but source and destination IP
addresses never change.

The Internet Protocol version 4 was designed to be allocated to

approx. imately 4.3 billion addresses. At the beginning of
Internet this was considered a much wider address space for
which there was nothing to worry about.

The sudden growth in internet users and its wide spread use
has exponentially increased the number of devices which
needs real and unique IP to be able to communicate.
Gradually, an IPS is required by almost every digital equipment
which were made to ease human life, such as Mobile Phones,
Cars and other electronic devices. The number of devices
(other than computers/routers) expanded the demand for
extra IP addresses, which were not considered earlier.

Allocation of IPv4 is globally managed by Internet Assigned

Numbers Authority (IANA) under coordination with the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN). IANA works closely with Regional Internet Registries,
which in turns are responsible for efficiently distributing IP
addresses in their territories. There are five such RIRS.
According to IANA reports, all the IPv4 address blocks have
been allocated. To cope up with the situation, the following
practices were being done:

Private IPs: Few blocks of IPs were declared for private use
within a LAN so that the requirement for public IP addresses
can be reduced.
NAT: Network address translation is a mechanism by which
multiple PCs/hosts with private IP addresses are enabled to
access using one or few public IP addresses.

Unused Public IPs were reclaimed by RIRs.

Internet Protocol v6 (IPv6)

IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has redesigned IP

addresses to mitigate the drawbacks of IPv4. The new IP
address is version 6 which is 128-bit address, by which every
single inch of the earth can be given millions of IP addresses.

Today majority of devices running on Internet are using IPv4

and it is not possible to shift them to IPv6 in the coming days.
There are mechanisms provided by IPv6, by which IPv4 and
IPv6 can co-exist unless the Internet entirely shifts to IPv6:

Dual IP Stack

Tunneling (6to4 and 4to6)

NAT Protocol Translation

 Routing
When a device has multiple paths to reach a destination, it
always selects one path by preferring it over others. This
selection process is termed as Routing. Routing is done by
special network devices called routers or it can be done by
means of software processes. The software based routers have
limited functionality and limited scope.

A router is always configured with some default route. A default

route tells the router where to forward a packet if there is no
route found for specific destination. In case there are multiple
path existing to reach the same destination, router can make
decision based on the following information:

Hop Count

Bandwidth

Delay

Routes can be statically configured or dynamically learnt. One

route can be configured to be preferred over others.

Unicast routing
Most of the traffic on the internet and intranets known as unicast
data or unicast traffic is sent with specified destination. Routing
unicast data over the internet is called unicast routing. It is the
simplest form of routing because the destination is already
known. Hence the router just has to look up the routing table
and forward the packet to next hop.

Broadcast routing

By default, the broadcast packets are not routed and forwarded

by the routers on any network. Routers create broadcast
domains. But it can be configured to forward broadcasts in some
special cases. A broadcast message is destined to all network
devices.

Broadcast routing can be done in two ways (algorithm):

A router creates a data packet and then sends it to each

host one by one. In this case, the router creates multiple
copies of single data packet with different destination
addresses. All packets are sent as unicast but because they
are sent to all, it simulates as if router is broadcasting.
 This method consumes lots of bandwidth and router must
destination address of each node.

Secondly, when router receives a packet that is to be

broadcasted, it simply floods those packets out of all
interfaces. All routers are configured in the same way.

This method is easy on router's CPU but may cause the

problem of duplicate packets received from peer routers.

Reverse path forwarding is a technique, in which router

knows in advance about its predecessor from where it
should receive broadcast. This technique is used to detect
and discard duplicates.

Multicast Routing

Multicast routing is special case of broadcast routing with

significance difference and challenges. In broadcast routing,
packets are sent to all nodes even if they do not want it. But in
Multicast routing, the data is sent to only nodes which wants to
receive the packets.
The router must know that there are nodes, which wish to
receive multicast packets (or stream) then only it should
forward. Multicast routing works spanning tree protocol to avoid
looping.

Multicast routing also uses reverse path Forwarding technique, to

detect and discard duplicates and loops.

Anycast Routing

Anycast packet forwarding is a mechanism where multiple hosts

can have same logical address. When a packet destined to this
logical address is received, it is sent to the host which is nearest
in routing topology.
Anycast routing is done with help of DNS server. Whenever an
Anycast packet is received it is enquired with DNS to where to
send it. DNS provides the IP address which is the nearest IP
configured on it.

Unicast Routing Protocols

There are two kinds of routing protocols available to route

unicast packets:

Distance Vector Routing Protocol

Distance Vector is simple routing protocol which takes

routing decision on the number of hops between source and
destination. A route with less number of hops is considered
as the best route. Every router advertises its set best routes
to other routers. Ultimately, all routers build up their
network topology based on the advertisements of their peer
routers,

For example Routing Information Protocol (RIP).

Link State Routing Protocol

 Link State protocol is slightly complicated protocol than
Distance Vector. It takes into account the states of links of
all the routers in a network. This technique helps routes
build a common graph of the entire network. All routers
then calculate their best path for routing purposes.for
example, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Intermediate
System to Intermediate System (ISIS).

Multicast Routing Protocols

Unicast routing protocols use graphs while Multicast routing

protocols use trees, i.e. spanning tree to avoid loops. The
optimal tree is called shortest path spanning tree.

DVMRP - Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol

MOSPF - Multicast Open Shortest Path First

CBT - Core Based Tree

PIM - Protocol independent Multicast

Protocol Independent Multicast is commonly used now. It has

two flavors:

PIM Dense Mode

This mode uses source-based trees. It is used in dense

environment such as LAN.

PIM Sparse Mode

This mode uses shared trees. It is used in sparse

environment such as WAN.

Routing Algorithms

The routing algorithms are as follows:

Flooding

Flooding is simplest method packet forwarding. When a packet is

received, the routers send it to all the interfaces except the one
on which it was received. This creates too much burden on the
network and lots of duplicate packets wandering in the network.

Time to Live (TTL) can be used to avoid infinite looping of

packets. There exists another approach for flooding, which is
called Selective Flooding to reduce the overhead on the network.
In this method, the router does not flood out on all the
interfaces, but selective ones.

Shortest Path

Routing decision in networks, are mostly taken on the basis of

cost between source and destination. Hop count plays major role
here. Shortest path is a technique which uses various algorithms
to decide a path with minimum number of hops.

Common shortest path algorithms are:

Dijkstra's algorithm

Bellman Ford algorithm

Floyd Warshall algorithm

In real world scenario, networks under same administration

are generally scattered geographically. There may exist
requirement of connecting two different networks of same
kind as well as of different kinds. Routing between two
networks is called internetworking.
Networks can be considered different based on various
parameters such as, Protocol, topology, Layer-2 network
and addressing scheme.
In internetworking, routers have knowledge of each others
address and addresses beyond them. They can be statically
 configured go on different network or they can learn by
using internetworking routing protocol.

Routing protocols which are used within an organization or

administration are called Interior Gateway Protocols or IGP.
RIP, OSPF are examples of IGP. Routing between different
organizations or administrations may have Exterior Gateway
Protocol, and there is only one EGP i.e. Border Gateway
Protocol.
Tunneling
If they are two geographically separate networks, which
want to communicate with each other, they may deploy a
dedicated line between or they have to pass their data
through intermediate networks.
Tunneling is a mechanism by which two or more same
networks communicate with each other, by passing
intermediate networking complexities. Tunneling is
configured at both ends.

When the data enters from one end of Tunnel, it is tagged.
This tagged data is then routed inside the intermediate or
transit network to reach the other end of Tunnel. When data
exists the Tunnel its tag is removed and delivered to the
other part of the network.
Both ends seem as if they are directly connected and
tagging makes data travel through transit network without
any modifications.
Packet Fragmentation
Most Ethernet segments have their maximum transmission
unit (MTU) fixed to 1500 bytes. A data packet can have
more or less packet length depending upon the application.
Devices in the transit path also have their hardware and
software capabilities which tell what amount of data that
device can handle and what size of packet it can process.
If the data packet size is less than or equal to the size of
packet the transit network can handle, it is processed
neutrally. If the packet is larger, it is broken into smaller
pieces and then forwarded. This is called packet
fragmentation. Each fragment contains the same destination
and source address and routed through transit path easily.
At the receiving end it is assembled again.
 If a packet with DF (dont fragment) bit set to 1 comes to a
router which can not handle the packet because of its
length, the packet is dropped.
When a packet is received by a router has its MF (more
fragments) bit set to 1, the router then knows that it is a
fragmented packet and parts of the original packet is on the
way.
If packet is fragmented too small, the overhead is increases.
If the packet is fragmented too large, intermediate router
may not be able to process it and it might get dropped.