The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is a transport layer
protocol defined for use with the IP network layer protocol.
The service provided by UDP is sometimes referred to as "unreliable"
since the protocol provides no guarantees for delivery and
no protection from duplication. A UDP is like a post card,
where you post the card and assume that it had been delivered.
The simplicity of UDP reduces the overhead from using the
protocol and the services may be adequate in many cases.
A computer may send UDP packets without first establishing
a connection with the recipient. The computer completes
the appropriate fields in the UDP header and forwards the
data together with the header for transmission by the IP
network layer.
Source Port: UDP packets from a client use this
as a service access point (SAP) to indicate the session
on the local client that originated the packet. UDP packets
from a server carry the server SAP in this field.
Destination Port: UDP packets from a client use
this as a service access point (SAP) to indicate the service
required from the remote server. UDP packets from a server
carry the client SAP in this field.
UDP length: The number of bytes comprising the combined
UDP header information and payload data.
UDP Checksum: A checksum to verify that the end to
end data has not been corrupted by routers or bridges in the
network or by the processing in an end system. The algorithm
to compute the checksum is the Standard Internet Checksum algorithm.
8. TCP (Transmission Control
Protocol)
The Transmission Control Protocol, TCP, defines a key service
provided by an Internet, namely, reliable stream delivery. TCP
provides a full duplex connection between two machines, allowing
them to exchange large volumes of data efficiently.
The above figure shows a protocol using positive acknowledgement
with retransmission in which the sender awaits an acknowledgement
for each packet sent. Vertical distance down the figure represents
increasing time and diagonal lines across the middle represent
network packet transmission.
Sliding Windows:
The Sliding window makes stream transmission efficient. This
protocol uses network bandwidth better because they allow the
sender to transmit multiple packets before waiting for an acknowledgement.
The protocol places a small, fixed-size window on the sequence
and transmits all packets that lie inside the window. The easiest
way to envision sliding window operation is to think of a sequence
of packets to be transmitted.
The above figure is an example of three packets transmitted
using a sliding window protocol. The Key concept is that the
sender can transmit all packets in the window without waiting
for an acknowledgement.
TCP Segment Format:
The unit of transfer between the TCP software on two machines
is called a segment. Segments are exchanged to establish connections,
to transfer data, to send acknowledgements, to advertise window
sizes, and to close connections. Because TCP uses Piggybacking,
n acknowledgement traveling from machine A to machine B, even
though the acknowledgement refers to data sent from B to A.
The above figure is the format of a TCP segment with a TCP
header followed by data. Segments are used to establish connections
as well as to carry data and acknowledgements.
TCP implements flow control by having the receiver advertise
the amount of data it is willing to accept. It also supports
out-of-band messages using an urgent data facility and forces
delivery using a push mechanism.
9. Routing
To ensure that all networks remain reachable with high reliability,
an Internet must provide globally consistent routing. Hosts
and most routers contain only partial routing information; they
depend on default routes to send datagrams to distant destinations.
The global Internet solves the routing problem by using a core
router architecture in which sets of core routers contain complete
information about all networks.
Routing Information Protocol (RIP):
One of the most widely used IGPs (Interior Gateway Protocol)
is the Routing Information Protocol (RIP). RIP uses distance-vector
protocol to determine the routes. There are two versions of
RIP, RIP version 1 and RIP version 2. RIP v1 uses hop-count
for determining the distance to reach a destination. Route that
has lesser number of hops is preferred to that with more number
of hops. The disadvantage of RIP is if you have a 1 Gbps route
with two hops, and another with 56Kbps with one hop away, the
router prefers the one hop route irrespective of the bandwidth
offered. Link state protocols such as Cisco proprietary EIGRP,
OSPF, and IS-IS take multiple factors into account when computing
optimal route to a destination. However, being one of the earliest
routing protocol, RIP is prevalent and explained below.
RIP Message format:
RIP messages can be broadly classified into two types: routing
information messages and messages used to request information.
Both uses the same format consists of a fixed header followed
by an optional list of network and distance pairs. The following
figure 12 shows the message format:
In the figure, field COMMAND specifies an operation according
to the following table:
Command
Meaning
1
Request for partial or full routing information
2
Response containing network-distance pairs from
sender's routing table
3
Turn on trace mode (obsolete)
4
Turn off trace mode (obsolete)
5
Reserved for Sun Microsystems internal use
Transmitting RIP Messages:
RIP messages do not contain an explicit length field. Instead,
RIP assumes that the underlying delivery mechanism will tell
the receiver the length of an incoming message. In particular,
when used with TCP/IP, RIP messages rely on UDP to tell the
receiver the message length. RIP operates on UDP port 520. Although
a RIP request can originate at other UDP ports, the destination
UDP port for requests is always 520, as is the source port from
which RIP broadcast messages originate.
