Ethernet

Ethernet is a way to connect computer networks together. It allows different devices to communicate with
each other and share data. Ethernet is used in many different types of networks, including home, small
office/home office, and enterprise networks.

What is Ethernet in Computer Networks?

Ethernet is one of the most popular and commonly used technologies for connecting devices in computer
networks. It is a standard protocol that is used in many different types of networks, including local area
networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), and metropolitan area networks (MANs). Ethernet is a very
versatile technology that can be used to connect devices of all types, including PCs, servers, printers, and
more.

Why is Ethernet Required?

Ethernet is a standard technology for computer networking that allows devices to connect to each other. It
is the most common type of connection used in homes and businesses. Ethernet is required for many
applications, including file sharing, printing, and gaming.

Advantages of Ethernet:

There are many advantages of using Ethernet in computer networks:

 The main advantage is that Ethernet is very fast and can handle large amounts of data.

 It is very reliable and can be used in a variety of different settings.

 Ethernet is very easy to install and use, making it a great option for both home and business users.

Disadvantages of Ethernet:

Ethernet is the most common type of computer network today, but it has several disadvantages:

 One major disadvantage of Ethernet is that it is subject to collisions. When two devices on an
Ethernet network attempt to transmit at the same time, their packets collide and are lost. This can
result in decreased performance on the network.

 It is not very scalable. As the number of devices on an Ethernet network increases, so does the
likelihood of collisions.

 Ethernet is not very secure. Because it uses a shared medium (the cable), any device on the
network can listen in on other devices’ traffic. This makes it easy for someone to snoop on others’
traffic or even inject malicious packets onto the network.

Token Ring

Definition:
  Token Ring is a type of local area network (LAN) architecture that uses a physical and logical ring
topology. It was developed by IBM in the 1980s and uses a token-passing method for managing
network access.

Key Concepts:

1. Topology:

o Devices are arranged in a physical ring.

o Data travels in one direction around the ring.

2. Access Method:

o Token Passing: A special data frame called a "token" circulates around the ring.

o Token: The token is the only way to send data. A device can only transmit data when it has
the token. If a device does not have the token, it must wait.

o Only the device holding the token can transmit data.

3. Frame Format:

o Token Ring uses specific frame formats, which include the token frame and data frames.

o Data frames contain the address of the sender and receiver.

4. Data Transmission:

o When a device wants to send data, it waits for the token.

o Upon receiving the token, the device sends its data along with the destination address.

o The data circulates the network and is eventually received by the destination device.

5. Error Handling:

o The token ring protocol has mechanisms for error detection and correction.

o If a device detects an error, it can remove itself from the network and signal other devices.

6. Advantages:

o Deterministic: Token passing ensures that only one device transmits at a time, avoiding
collisions.

o Predictable performance: Fixed token rotation time leads to more predictable and stable
network performance.

7. Disadvantages:
 o Failure point: If one device or cable in the ring fails, it can disrupt the entire network.

o Slower speeds: Token Ring networks are typically slower than Ethernet.

o Maintenance Complexity: Troubleshooting issues in a ring topology can be more complex

than in a bus or star topology.

8. Standard:

o IEEE 802.5 defines the Token Ring standards.

Wireless LAN (802.11)

Definition:

 802.11 refers to a family of wireless network standards developed by the IEEE for local area
networks (LANs), allowing devices to connect wirelessly.

Key Concepts:

1. Standards:

o The 802.11 family of standards consists of different versions with varying speeds and
ranges:

 802.11a: 5 GHz, up to 54 Mbps.

 802.11b: 2.4 GHz, up to 11 Mbps.

 802.11g: 2.4 GHz, up to 54 Mbps.

 802.11n: 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz, up to 600 Mbps.

 802.11ac: 5 GHz, up to several Gbps.

 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6): 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz / 6 GHz, faster speeds, better performance in
dense environments.

2. Access Points (APs):

o Devices communicate through access points, which are connected to a wired network or
the internet.

o APs can support multiple devices, and each AP typically covers a specific area.

3. Basic Service Set (BSS):

o The basic unit of an 802.11 wireless network is the BSS.

 o A BSS consists of a single AP and the devices associated with it.

o Extended Service Set (ESS): When multiple APs are connected to form a larger network.

4. Wireless Frames:

o Beacon Frames: Sent periodically by APs to announce the network and provide
synchronization.

o Data Frames: Carry data between devices and APs.

o Control Frames: Manage the connection and error handling.

5. Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocol:

o 802.11 uses the Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA)
protocol for medium access.

o Devices listen to the channel before transmitting to avoid collisions.

o If the channel is idle, the device sends data; if it’s busy, it waits.

6. Security:

o Early versions of 802.11 had limited security, but newer standards (802.11i, WPA, WPA2,
WPA3) have significantly improved wireless security.

o Common encryption methods include WEP, WPA, and WPA2.

o WPA3 is the latest, offering stronger encryption and protection against dictionary attacks.

7. Advantages:

o Flexibility: Wireless networks provide mobility and ease of installation, as they do not
require physical cabling.

o Scalability: It is easier to expand a wireless network, adding new devices without significant
changes to the physical infrastructure.

8. Disadvantages:

o Interference: Wireless networks are susceptible to interference from other devices (e.g.,
microwaves, Bluetooth, and other wireless networks).

o Range limitations: The signal strength decreases as you move further from the AP.

o Security concerns: Wireless networks are more vulnerable to attacks than wired ones if not
properly secured.

9. 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) and 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5):

o 802.11n introduced MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technology, allowing for
multiple antennas to improve throughput.

o 802.11ac improved upon this by supporting wider channels, higher data rates, and better
overall performance in high-density areas.

10. 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6):

o Designed for more efficient use of spectrum and better performance in high-density
environments (e.g., stadiums, airports).

o Features include OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access), MU-MIMO

(Multi-User MIMO), and better handling of interference.
Comparison of Token Ring and Wireless (802.11):

Feature Token Ring Wireless (802.11)

Topology Physical ring, logical ring Star topology with access points

Access Method Token passing CSMA/CA

Transmission
Typically 4 Mbps, up to 16 Mbps Varies from 11 Mbps to several Gbps
Speed

Reliability Single point of failure (in ring) Susceptible to interference, range issues

Security Moderate (via network access control) High (with WPA2/WPA3, etc.)

Complex and requires specialized

Installation Easy to install, no physical wiring needed
equipment

Widely used in homes, businesses, and public

Modern Use Rarely used today
spaces

Network infrastructure

Network infrastructure refers to the physical devices and components that make up a computer network.
This includes routers, switches, firewalls, and other networking equipment. It also consists of the cabling

and wiring connecting all these devices.

Network Infrastructure:

Network Infrastructure is about the physical component of a network, including hardware and software,
which ultimately helps enable network connectivity and communication between users, devices, the
internet, and more. It also includes the cabling and additional wiring that connect these devices. A network
framework is critical to the functioning of any network, and it is essential to carefully plan and design it to
ensure optimal performance.

Types of Network Infrastructure:

The network infrastructure of a business is the collection of hardware and software that enables the flow of
information between different parts of the organization. The three main types of network infrastructure are
given below:

 Local Area Networks (LAN)

 Wide Area Networks (WAN)

 Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN)

A LAN is a private, high-speed network that connects computers and other devices in a limited geographical
area, such as an office or home. A WAN is a more extensive, slower network that spans greater distances,
such as across cities or countries. Finally, a MAN is a type of WAN that covers a larger geographical area
than a typical WAN, such as a city or region.
Benefits:

Network infrastructure is the backbone of any modern organization. It provides how data and information
are transmitted between different parts of the organization and forms the foundation upon which all other
business operations are built. A well-designed network framework can provide several benefits to an
organization, including:

 Improved efficiency

 Improved communication

 Increased security

 Scalability

 Cost-Effectiveness

Cellular Networks
A Cellular Network is formed of some cells. The cell covers a geographical region and has a base station
analogous to 802.11 AP which helps mobile users attach to the network and there is an air interface of
physical and data link layer protocol between mobile and base station. All these base stations are connected
to the Mobile Switching Center which connects cells to a wide-area net, manages call setup, and handles
mobility.

There is a certain radio spectrum that is allocated to the base station and to a particular region and that
now needs to be shared. There are two techniques for sharing mobile-to-base station radio spectrum:

 Combined FDMA/TDMA: It divides the spectrum into frequency channels and divides each channel
into time slots.

 Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA): It allows the reuse of the same spectrum over all cells. Net
capacity improvement. Two frequency bands are used one of which is for the forwarding channel
(cell-site to subscriber) and one for the reverse channel (sub to cell-site).

Cell Fundamentals

In practice, cells are of arbitrary shape(close to a circle) because it has the same power on all sides and has
same sensitivity on all sides, but putting up two-three circles together may result in interleaving gaps or
may intersect each other so order to solve this problem we can use equilateral triangle, square or a regular
hexagon in which hexagonal cell is close to a circle used for a system design. Co-channel reuse ratio is given
by:

DL/RL = Square root of (3N)

Where,

DL = Distance between co-channel cells

RL = Cell Radius

N = Cluster Size

The number of cells in cluster N determines the amount of co-channel interference and also the number of
frequency channels available per cell.

Cell Splitting

When the number of subscribers in a given area increases allocation of more channels covered by that
channel is necessary, which is done by cell splitting. A single small cell midway between two co-channel
cells is introduced.
Need for Cellular Hierarchy

Extending the coverage to the areas that are difficult to cover by a large cell. Increasing the capacity of the
network for those areas that have a higher density of users. An increasing number of wireless devices and
the communication between them.

Cellular Hierarchy

 Femtocells: The smallest unit of the hierarchy, these cells need to cover only a few meters where all
devices are in the physical range of the uses.

 Picocells: The size of these networks is in the range of a few tens of meters, e.g., WLANs.

 Microcells: Cover a range of hundreds of meters e.g. in urban areas to support PCS which is another
kind of mobile technology.

 Macrocells: Cover areas in the order of several kilometers, e.g., cover metropolitan areas.

 Mega cells: Cover nationwide areas with ranges of hundreds of kilometers, e.g., used with
satellites.

Fixed Channel Allocation

For a particular channel, the frequency band which is associated is fixed. The total number of channels is
given by

Nc = W/B Where, W = Bandwidth of the available spectrum,

B = Bandwidth needed by each channels per cell,

Cc = Nc/N where N is the cluster size

Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications

GSM uses 124 frequency channels, each of which uses an 8-slot Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) system.
There is a frequency band that is also fixed. Transmitting and receiving do not happen in the same time slot
because the GSM radios cannot transmit and receive at the same time and it takes time to switch from one
to the other. A data frame is transmitted in 547 microseconds, but a transmitter is only allowed to send one
data frame every 4.615 microseconds since it is sharing the channel with seven other stations. The gross
rate of each channel is 270, 833 bps divided among eight users, which gives 33.854 kbps gross.

Control Channel (CC): Apart from user channels, there are some control channels which is used to manage
the system.

1. The broadcast control channel (BCC): It is a continuous stream of output from the base station’s
identity and the channel status. All mobile stations monitor their signal strength to see when they
move into a new cell.

2. The dedicated control channel (DCC): It is used for location updating, registration, and call setup. In
particular, each base station maintains a database of mobile stations. Information needed to
maintain this database is sent to the dedicated control channel.

Advantages of Cellular Networks

 Mobile and fixed users can connect using it. Voice and data services also provided.
  Has increased capacity & easy to maintain.

 Easy to upgrade the equipment & has consumes less power.

 It is used in place where cables can not be laid out because of its wireless existence.

 To use the features & functions of mainly all private and public networks.

 Can be distributed to the larger coverage of areas.

Disadvantages of Cellular Networks

 It provides a lower data rate than wired networks like fiber optics and DSL. The data rate changes
depending on wireless technologies like GSM, CDMA, LTE, etc.

 Macrophage cells are impacted by multipath signal loss.

 To service customers, there is a limited capacity that depends on the channels and different access
techniques.

 Due to the wireless nature of the connection, security issues exist.

 For the construction of antennas for cellular networks, a foundation tower and space are required.
It takes a lot of time and labor to do this.

Mobile Internet Protocol (or Mobile IP)

Mobile IP is a communication protocol (created by extending Internet Protocol, IP) that allows users to
move from one network to another with the same IP address. It ensures that the communication will
continue without the user’s sessions or connections being dropped. Imagine having a phone number that
stays the same no matter where you go. Mobile IP works similarly, ensuring that even if your device changes
its network connection, it can still communicate without interruption.

This is particularly useful for mobile devices like smartphones, laptops, and tablets, which frequently switch
between different networks, such as Wi-Fi and cellular. Mobile IP helps keep internet connections stable
and reliable, making it easier to stay connected while on the move.

Basic Terminologies Related to Mobile IP

 A Mobile Node (MN): It is the hand-held communication device that the user carries e.g. Cell
phone.

 A Home Network: It is a network to which the mobile node originally belongs as per its assigned IP
address (home address).

 Home Agent (HA): It is a router in-home network to which the mobile node was originally
connected

 Home Address: It is the permanent IP address assigned to the mobile node (within its home
network).

 Foreign Network: It is the current network to which the mobile node is visiting (away from its home
network).

 A Foreign Agent (FA): It is a router in a foreign network to which the mobile node is currently
connected. The packets from the home agent are sent to the foreign agent which delivers them to
the mobile node.

 The Correspondent Node (CN): It is a device on the internet communicating to the mobile node.

 Care-of Address (COA): It is the temporary address used by a mobile node while it is moving away
from its home network.
  Foreign Agent COA: The COA could be located at the FA, i.e., the COA is an IP address of the FA. The
FA is the tunnel end-point and forwards packets to the MN. Many MN using the FA can share this
COA as a common COA.

 Co-Located COA: The COA is co-located if the MN temporarily acquires an additional IP address
that acts as a COA. This address is now topologically correct, and the tunnel endpoint is at the MN.
Co-located addresses can be acquired using services such as DHCP.

The correspondent node sends the data to the mobile node. Data packets contain the correspondent node’s
address (Source) and home address (Destination). Packets reach the home agent. But now mobile node is
not in the home network, it has moved into the foreign network. The foreign agent sends the care-of-
address to the home agent to which all the packets should be sent. Now, a tunnel will be established
between the home agent and the foreign agent by the process of tunneling.

Tunneling establishes a virtual pipe for the packets available between a tunnel entry and an endpoint. It is
the process of sending a packet via a tunnel and it is achieved by a mechanism called encapsulation.

Now, the home agent encapsulates the data packets into new packets in which the source address is the
home address and the destination is the care-of-address and sends it through the tunnel to the foreign
agent. Foreign agent, on another side of the tunnel, receives the data packets, decapsulates them, and
sends them to the mobile node. The mobile node in response to the data packets received sends a reply in
response to the foreign agent. The foreign agent directly sends the reply to the correspondent node.

Key Mechanisms in Mobile IP

 Agent Discovery: Agents advertise their presence by periodically broadcasting their agent
advertisement messages. The mobile node receiving the agent advertisement messages observes
whether the message is from its own home agent and determines whether it is in the home
network or foreign network.

 Agent Registration: Mobile node after discovering the foreign agent sends a Registration Request
(RREQ) to the foreign agent. The foreign agent, in turn, sends the registration request to the home
agent with the care-of-address. The home agent sends a Registration Reply (RREP) to the foreign
agent. Then it forwards the registration reply to the mobile node and completes the process of
registration.

 Tunneling: It establishes a virtual pipe for the packets available between a tunnel entry and an
endpoint. It is the process of sending a packet via a tunnel and it is achieved by a mechanism
called encapsulation. It takes place to forward an IP datagram from the home agent to the care-of-
address. Whenever the home agent receives a packet from the correspondent node, it encapsulates
the packet with source address as home address and destination as care-of-address.

Network Layer 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 [Link] 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

 Metric

 Prefix-length

 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 [Link] 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

ROUTING

Unicast Routing:

In unicast routing, a packet is routed, hop by hop, from its source to its destination
bythe help of forwarding tables. The source host needs no forwarding table because
itdelivers its packet to the default router in its local network.

The destination host needsno forwarding table because it receives the packet from its
default router in itslocal network.

Routing a packet from its source to its destination means routing the packet from a
source router to a destination router.

Least-Cost Routing:

When an internet is modeled as a weighted graph, one of the ways to interpret the
best route from the source router to the destination router is to find the least cost
between the two.

That is, the source router chooses a route to the destination router insuch a way that
the total cost for the route is the least cost among all possible routes.

In Figure (below) the best route between A and E is A-B-E, with the cost of 6.

This meansthat each router needs to find the least-cost route between itself and all the
other routersto be able to route a packet towards the destination.
Fig: Internet with graph. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz
A. Forouzan]

Least-Cost Trees

If there are N routers in an internet, there are (N - 1) least-cost paths from each router
to any other router.

This means we need N  (N - 1) least-cost paths for the whole internet.

For example, If we have only 10 routers in an internet, we need 90 least-cost paths.

A least-cost treeis a tree with the source router as the root that spans the whole graph
(visits all other nodes) and in which the path between the root and any other node is
the shortest.

In this way, we can have only one shortest-path tree for each node; we have N least-
cost trees for the whole internet.

Figure (below) shows the seven least-cost trees for the internet

Fig: Seven least-cost trees for the internet .[Source : Data Communications and
Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan].

1. The least-cost route from X to Y in X’s tree is the inverse of the least-cost route
from Y to X in Y’s tree; the cost in both directions is the same.

For example, inFigure, the route from A to F in A’s tree is (A - B- E- F), but
the routefrom F to A in F’s tree is (F - E- B- A), which is the inverse of the first
[Link] cost is 8 in each case.
 2. Instead of travelling from X to Z using X’s tree, we can travel from X to Y
using X’s tree and continue from Y to Z using Y’s tree.
For example, in Figure , we can go from A to G in A’s tree using the route (A -
B- E - F - G). We can also go from A to E in A’s tree (A - B- E) and then
continue in E’s tree using the route (E - F- G).

The combination of the two routes in the second case is the same route as in
the first case. The cost in the first case is 9; the cost in the second case is also 9
(6  3).

ROUTING ALGORITHMS

Distance-Vector Routing
In distance-vector routing, a router continuously tells all of its neighbors what
it knows about the whole internet.

Bellman-Ford Equation

In distance-vector routing Bellman-Ford equationis used to find the least cost

(shortest distance) between a source node, x, and a destinationnode, y, through some
intermediary nodes (a, b, c,   ) when the costs between thesource and the
intermediary nodes and the least costs between the intermediary nodes andthe
destination are given.

The following shows the general case in which Dijis the shortest distance and cijis the
cost between nodes i and j.

In distance-vector routing, we want to update an existing least cost with aleast cost
through an intermediary node, such as z, ie,if the intermediate node is shorter.

In this case,the equation can be written as:

 Graphical idea behind Bellman-Ford equation

Fig: Graphical idea .[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.

Forouzan].

Bellman-Ford equation help us to build a new least-cost pathfrom previously

established least-cost paths.

In the Figure (above), we can think of (a-y),(b-y), and (c-y) as previously established
least-cost paths and (x-y) as the newleast-cost path.

We can even think of this equation as the builder of a new least-cost treefrom
previously established least-cost trees if we use the equation repeatedly.

Distance Vectors

The concept of a distance vector is the reason for the name distance-vector routing.A
least-cost tree is a combination of least-cost paths from the root of the tree to all
destinations.
Figure shows the tree for node A in the internet in Figure and the corresponding
distance vector.

A distance vector does not give the path to the destinations as the least-cost tree
does; itgives only the least costs to the destinations.
Note that the name of the distance vector defines the root, the indexes define the
destinations,and the value of each cell defines the least cost from the root to the
destination.

Fig: Seven least-cost trees for the internet . [Source : Data Communications and
Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan].
Each node in an internet, when it starts its function, creates a very basic distance
vector with the minimum information the node can obtain from its neighborhood. The
node sends some greeting messages out of its interfaces and discovers the identity
ofthe immediate neighbors and the distance between itself and each neighbor.

It then makes a simple distance vector by inserting the discovered distances in the
correspondingcells and leaves the value of other cells as infinity.

Fig: First distance vector for internet .[Source : Data Communications and Networking by
Behrouz A. Forouzan].

Description of above diagram

Consider (For example), Node A thinks that it is not connected to node G because the
correspondingcell shows the least cost of infinity.

To improve these vectors, the nodes in the internetneed to help each other by
exchanging information. After each node has created its vector,it sends a copy of the
vector to all its immediate neighbors. After a node receives adistance vector from a
neighbor, it updates its distance vector using the Bellman-Fordequation (second case).

The figure(below) shows two asynchronous events, happening one after another with
some time in between.

In the first event, node A has sent its vector to node B. Node B updates its vector
using the cost cBA 2. In the second event, node E has sent its vector to node
[Link] B updates its vector using the cost cEA 4.
After the first event, node B has one improvement in its vector: its least cost to
node D has changed from infinity to 5 (via node A). After the second event, node
B hasone more improvement in its vector; its least cost to node F has changed from
infinityto 6 (via node E).

By exchanging the vectors,we can stabilize the system and allows all nodes to find
the ultimate least costbetween themselves and any other node.

After updating a node, it immediately sends its updated vector to all neighbors.

Fig:Updating distance vector.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz

A. Forouzan].
Link-State Routing

A routing algorithm that directly creates least-cost trees andforwarding tables is link-
state (LS) routing. This method uses the term link-state to define the characteristic of
a link (an edge) that represents a network in the internet.

Link-State Database (LSDB)

To create a least-cost tree with this method, each node needs to have a complete
map ofthe network, which means it needs to know the state of each link. The
collection of statesfor all links is called the link-state database (LSDB).

Example for LSDB

Fig: Example Link state data base.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by
Behrouz A. Forouzan].
This method is called flooding.
Each node cansend some greeting messages to all its immediate neighbors (those
nodes to which it is connected directly) to collect two pieces of information for each
neighboring node: theidentity of the node and the cost of the link.

The combination of these two pieces ofinformation is called the LS packet (LSP); the
LSP is sent out of each interface, asshown in Figure .

When a node receives an LSPfrom one of its interfaces, it compares the LSP with the
copy it may already have. If thenewly arrived LSP is older than the one it has (found
by checking the sequence number),it discards the LSP.
After receiving all new LSPs, each node creates the comprehensiveLSDB as shown
in Figure(below). This LSDB is the same for each node and shows thewhole map of
the internet.

In other words, a node can make the whole map if it needsto, using this LSDB.

Fig:Creation of LSP.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.

Forouzan].

Note:
In the distance-vector routing algorithm, each router tells its neighbors what it
knows about the whole internet; in the link-state routing algorithm, each
router tellsthe whole internet what it knows about its neighbors.

Formation of Least-Cost Trees

To create a least-cost tree for itself, using the shared LSDB, each node needs to run
thefamous Dijkstra Algorithm.

This algorithm uses the following steps:

1. The node chooses itself as the root of the tree, creating a tree with a single
node, and sets the total cost of each node based on the information in the
LSDB.
2. The node selects one node, among all nodes not in the tree, which is closest
to the root, and adds this to the tree. After this node is added to the tree, the
cost of all other nodes not in the tree needs to be updated because the paths
may have been changed.

3. The node repeats step 2 until all nodes are added to the tree.
 UNICAST ROUTING PROTOCOLS

Hierarchical Routing in Internet

The Internet today is made of a huge number of networks and routers that
connectthem.

Routing in the Internet cannot be done using a single protocolfor two reasons:

A scalability problem and an administrative issue.

Scalability problem means that the size of the forwarding tables becomes huge,
searching for a destination in a forwarding table becomes time-consuming, and
updating creates a huge amount of traffic.

The administrative issue is related to the Internet structure .

Each ISP is run by an administrative authority. The administrator

needs to have control in its system.

Hierarchical routing means considering each ISP as an autonomous system (AS).

Each AS can run a routing protocol that meets its needs, but the global Internet runs
a global protocol to join and connect all ASs together.

The routing protocol run in each AS is referred to as intra-AS routing protocol,

intradomain routing protocol, or interior gateway protocol (IGP);

The global routing protocol is referred to as inter-AS routing protocol, interdomain

routing protocol, or exterior gateway protocol (EGP).

Routing Information Protocol (RIP)

The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is one of the most widely used
intradomainrouting protocols based on the distance-vector routing algorithm.

Hop Count
A router in this protocol implements the distance-vector routing algorithm.
First, since a router in an AS needs to know how to forward a packet to different
networks(subnets) in an AS, RIP routers advertise the cost of reaching
differentnetworks instead of reaching other nodes in a theoretical graph.

The cost is defined between a router and the network in which the destination host
islocated.

Second, to make the implementation of the cost simpler (independent

fromperformance factors of the routers and links, such as delay, bandwidth, and so
on), the cost is defined asthe number of hops, which means the number of networks
(subnets)a packet needs to travel through from the source router to the final
destinationhost.

Note that the network in which the source host is connected is not counted inthis
calculation because the source host does not use a forwarding table; the packet
isdelivered to the default router.

Figure (below) shows the concept of hop count advertisedby three routers from a
source host to a destination host.

In RIP, the maximumcost of a path can be 15, which means 16 is considered as

infinity (no connection).

For this reason, RIP can be used only in autonomous systems in which the diameterof
the AS is not more than 15 hops.

Fig: Hop counts in RIP .[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan].

Forwarding Table

A forwarding table in RIP is a three-column table in which the first column

is the address of the destination network, the second column is the address of thenext
router to which the packet should be forwarded, and the third column is the cost(the
number of hops) to reach the destination network.
Figure shows the three forwarding tables for the routers in Figure (above).

Note that the first and the third columnstogether convey the same information as does
a distance vector, but the costshows the number of hops to the destination networks.

Fig:Forwarding tables in RIP.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz

A. Forouzan].

For example, R1 definesthat the next router for the path to N4 is R2; R2 defines that
the next router to N4 isR3; R3 defines that there is no next router for this path. The
tree is then R1 - R2- R3- N4.

What is the use of the third column in the forwarding table?.

The third column is not needed for forwarding the packet, but it is needed for
updating the forwarding table when there is a change in the route.

RIP Implementation

RIP is implemented as a process that uses the service of UDP on the portnumber 520.

RIP is a routing protocol to help IP route its datagrams through the AS,the RIP
messages are encapsulated inside UDP user datagrams, which in turn areencapsulated
inside IP datagrams.

That is, RIP runs at the application layer, butcreates forwarding tables for IP at the
network layer.

RIP Messages

Two RIP processes, a client and a server, need to exchange messages.

RIP-2 defines the format of the message, as shown in Figure .

The message Entry, can be repeated as needed in a message. Each entry carries the
information related to one line in the forwarding table of the router that sends the
message.
Fig: RIP message format.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan].

RIP has two types of messages:

Request and response. A request message is sentby a router that has just come up or
by a router that has some time-out entries.
Arequest message can ask about specific entries or all entries.

A response (or update)message can be either solicited or unsolicited. A solicited

response message is sentonly in answer to a request message. It contains information
about the destinationspecified in the corresponding request message.

RIP Algorithm

RIP implements the same algorithm as the distance-vector routing algorithm.

 Instead of sending only distance vectors, a router needs to send the

whole contents of its forwarding table in a response message.

 The receiver adds one hop to each cost and changes the next router field to the
address of the sending router.

 The received router selects the old routes as the new ones except in the
followingthree cases:

1. If the received route does not exist in the old forwarding table, it should be addedto
the route.
2. If the cost of the received route is lower than the cost of the old one, the
receivedroute should be selected as the new one.
3. If the cost of the received route is higher than the cost of the old one, but the
value of the next router is the same in both routes, the received route should be
selected as the new one.

Timers in RIP
RIP uses three timers to support its operation.

The periodic timer controls the advertisingof regular update messages. Each router
has one periodic timer that is randomly setto a number between 25 and 35 seconds (to
prevent all routers sending their messagesat the same time and creating excess traffic).
The timer counts down; when zero isreached, the update message is sent, and the
timer is randomly set once again.

The expiration timer governs the validity of a route. When a router receives update
informationfor a route, the expiration timer is set to 180 seconds for that particular
route. Everytime a new update for the route is received, the timer is reset.

If there is a problem on aninternet and no update is received within the allotted 180
seconds, the route is consideredexpired and the hop count of the route is set to 16,
which means the destination isunreachable.

Every route has its own expiration timer. The garbage collection timer isused to purge
a route from the forwarding table.

The garbage collection timer isused to purge a route from the forwarding table. When
the information about a routebecomes invalid, the router does not immediately purge
that route from its table.

Instead, it continues to advertise the route with a metric value of 16. At the same
time,a garbage collection timer is set to 120 seconds for that route. When the count
reacheszero, the route is purged from the table.

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is an intradomain routing protocol like [Link] is based
on the link-state routing protocol.

Metric

In OSPF, like RIP, the cost of reaching a destination from the host is calculated
fromthe source router to the destination network.

However, each link (network) can beassigned a weight based on the

throughput, round-trip time, reliability, and so on

Figure (below) shows the idea of the cost from a router to the destination
hostnetwork.
Fig:Metric in OSPF.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan].

Forwarding Tables
Each OSPF router can create a forwarding table after finding the shortest-path
treebetween itself and the destination using Dijkstra’s algorithm.

Fig:Forwading table in OSPF.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.

Forouzan].

Areas

OSPF was designed to handle routing in a small or large autonomous system.

The formationof shortest-path trees in OSPF requires that all routers flood the whole
AS with theirLSPs to create the global LSDB.

This may not create a problem in a small AS, but create traffic in large AS.

To prevent this, the ASneeds to be divided into small sections called areas.

Each area acts as a small independentdomain for flooding .

Each router in an area needs to know the information about the link states
not only in its area but also in other areas.

For this reason, one of the areas in the AS isdesignated as the backbone area,
responsible for gluing the areas together.

The routers in the backbone area are responsible for passing the information
collected by each areato all other areas. In this way, a router in an area can receive all
LSPs generated in other
areas. For the purpose of communication, each area has an area identification.

Fig:Areas in AS.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan].

OSPF Implementation

OSPF is implemented as a program in the network layer, using the service of the IP
forpropagation. An IP datagram that carries a message from OSPF sets the value of
theprotocol field to 89. This means that, the OSPF messages are encapsulated
inside datagrams.

OSPF has two versions: version 1 and version 2.

OSPF Messages
OSPF is a very complex protocol; it has five different types of messages.
Fig: OSPF message format .[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan].

The hello message (type 1) isused by a router to introduce itself to the neighbors.

The database description message (type 2) is sent in responseto the hello message to
allow a newly joined router to acquire the full LSDB.

The link state request message (type 3) is sent by a router that needs information
about a specificLS.

The link-state update message (type 4) is the main OSPF message used for buildingthe
LSDB. This message, has five different versions (router link, networklink, summary
link to network, summary link to AS border router, and external link).

The link-state acknowledgment message (type 5) is used to createreliability in OSPF;

each router that receives a link-state update message needs toacknowledge it.
OSPF Algorithm

OSPF implements the link-state routing algorithm .

After each router has created the shortest-path tree, the algorithm needs to use it
tocreate the corresponding routing algorithm.

The algorithm needs to be augmented to handle sending and receiving all five
types of messages.

Border Gateway Protocol Version 4 (BGP4)

The Border Gateway Protocol version 4 (BGP4) is the only inter domain routing
protocol used in the Internet today.

Consider an example of an internet with four autonomous systems. AS2,

AS3, and AS4 are stub autonomous systems; AS1 is a transient one.

Here,data exchange between AS2, AS3, and AS4 should pass through AS1.

Fig:Sample internet with four AS.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by

Behrouz A. Forouzan].

Each router in each AS knows how to reach a network that isin its own AS, but it does
not know how to reach a network in another AS.
To enable each router to route a packet to any network in the internet, we first
install a variation of BGP4, called external BGP (eBGP), on each border router
(theone at the edge of each AS which is connected to a router at another AS).

We theninstall the second variation of BGP, called internal BGP (iBGP), on all
routers.

The border routers will be running three routing protocols (intradomain,

eBGP, and iBGP), but other routers are running two protocols (intradomain and
iBGP).

Operation of External BGP (eBGP)

BGP is a point-to-point protocol. When the software is installed

on two routers, they try to create a TCP connection using the well-known port 179.

The two routers that run the BGP processes are calledBGP peers or BGP speakers.

The eBGP variation of BGP allows two physically connected border routers in
twodifferent ASs to form pairs of eBGP speakers and exchange messages.

The routers that we use in Figure has three pairs: R1-R5, R2-R6, and R4-R9.

The connection between these pairs is established over three physical WANs (N5,N6,
and N7). There is a need for a logical TCP connection to be created overthe physical
connection to make the exchange of information possible.

Each logical connection in BGP is referred to as a session. This means that we need
threesessions, as shown in Figure (below).
Fig: EBGP operation .[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan].

The circled number defines the sending router in each case.

For example, message number 1 is sent by router R1 and tells router R5 that N1, N2,
N3,and N4 can be reached through router R1 (R1 gets this information from the
correspondingintradomain forwarding table).

Router R5 can now add these pieces ofinformation at the end of its forwarding table.
When R5 receives any packet destinedfor these four networks, it can use its
forwarding table and find that the next router is R1.

Messages
BGP four types of messages for communication between the BGP speakers acrossthe
ASs and inside an AS:

Four messages are

open, update, keepalive, and notification .

All BGP packets share the same common header.

Open Message. To create a neighborhood relationship, a router running BGP

opens a TCP connection with a neighbor and sends an open message.

Update Message.

The update message is usedby a router to withdraw destinations that have been
advertised previously, toannounce a route to a new destination, or both.

Note that BGP can withdraw severaldestinations that were advertised before, but it
can only advertise one new destinationin a single update
message.

Keepalive Message. The BGP peers that are running exchange keepalive
messagesregularly (before their hold time expires) to tell each other that they are alive.

Notification.A notification message is sent by a router whenever an error conditionis

detected or a router wants to close the session.
Performance

BGP performance can be compared with RIP. BGP speakers exchange a lot of
messagesto create forwarding tables, but BGP is free from loops and count-to-infinity.

Multicasting

In multicasting, there is one source and a group of destinations. The relationship

isone to many.

In this type of communication, the source address is a unicast address,but the

destination address is a group address, a group of one or more destinationnetworks in
which there is at least one member of the group that is interested inreceiving the
multicast datagram.

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.

Note thatonly a single copy of the packet travels between any two routers.

Multicast Applications Multicasting

has many applications. Access to

Distributed Databases.

Most of the large databases today are [Link] is, the information is stored in
more than one location, usually at the time ofproduction.

The user who needs to access the database does not know the location of the
information. A user’s request is multicast to all the database locations, andthe location
that has the information responds.

Information Dissemination.

Businesses often need to send information to their [Link] the nature of the
information is the same for each customer, it can be [Link] this way a business
can send one message that can reach many customers.
[Link] involves multicasting. The individuals attendinga
teleconference all need to receive the same information at the same time.

Distance [Link] growing area in the use of multicasting is distance learning.

Lessons taught by one professor can be received by a specific group of students.

MULTICASTING BASICS

In multicast communication, the sender is only one, but the receiver is many,
sometimes thousands or millions spread all over the world. It should be clear that
wecannot include the addresses of all recipients in the packet.

The destination address of a packet, as described in the Internet Protocol (IP) should
be only one. For this reason,we need multicast addresses. A multicast address
defines a group of recipients, not asingle one.

A multicast address is an identifier for a group. If a new group is formed with some
active members, an authority can assign an unused multicastaddress to this group
to uniquely define it.

Multicast Forwarding

Important issue in multicasting is the decision a router needs to make to

forward a multicast packet.

Forwarding in unicast and multicast communication isdifferent in two aspects:

1. In unicast communication, the destination address of the packet defines one

single destination. The packet needs to be sent only out of one of the interfaces,
the interface which is the branch in the shortest-path tree reaching the
destination with the minimum cost.

In multicast communication, the destination of the packet defines one group,

but that group may have more than one member in the internet.

To reach all of the destinations, the router may have to send the packet out of
more than one interface.
Forwarding decisions in multicast communication dependon both the destination and
the source address of the packet.

In other words, in unicasting,forwarding is based on where the packet should go; in

multicasting, forwardingis based on where the packet should go and where the packet
has comefrom.

Figure (below) shows the concept.

Fig: Forwarding depends on destination and source.[Source : Data Communications and
Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan].
In part a of the figure, the source is in a sectionof the internet where there is no group
member. In part b, the source is in asection where there is a group member.
In part a, the router needs to send out thepacket from two interfaces; in part b, the
router should send the packet only fromone interface to avoid sending a second copy
of the packet from the interface it hasarrived at.

Two Approaches to Multicasting

Source-Based Tree Approach

In the source-based tree approach to multicasting, each router needs to create a

separatetree for each source-group combination.

If there are m groupsand n sources in the internet, a router needs to create (m  n)

routing trees. In each tree,the corresponding source is the root, the members of the
group are the leaves, and therouter itself is somewhere on the tree.

Group-Shared Tree Approach

In the group-shared tree approach, a router act like a source for each group. The
designated router, which is called the core router or the rendezvouspoint router, acts as
the representative for the group.
 Any source that has a packet tosend to a member of that group sends it to the core
center (unicast communication) and the core center is responsible for multicasting.

The core center creates one single routingtree with itself as the root and any routers
with active members in the group as theleaves.

In this approach, there are m core routers (one for each group) and each corerouter
has a routing tree, for the total of m trees. Therefore the number of routingtrees is
reduced from (m * n) in the source-based tree approach to m in this approach.

INTRADOMAIN MULTICAST PROTOCOLS

Multicast Distance Vector (DVMRP)

The Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP) is the extension of

theRouting Information Protocol (RIP) which is used in unicast routing. It uses the
sourcebasedtree approach to multicasting.

Multicast tree in three steps:

1. The router uses an algorithm called reverse path forwarding (RPF) to simulate
creating part of the optimal source-based tree between the source and itself.

2. The router uses an algorithm called reverse path broadcasting (RPB) to create a
broadcast (spanning) tree whose root is the router itself and whose leaves are all
networks in the internet.

3. The router uses an algorithm called reverse path multicasting (RPM) to create a
multicast tree by cutting some branches of the tree that end in networks with no
member in the group.

Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF)

The first algorithm, reverse path forwarding (RPF), forces the router to forward
amulticast packet from one specific interface: the one which has come through the
shortestpath from the source to the router.

The router does not know the shortest path from the source to itself, but it can find
which is thenext router in the shortest path from itself to the source (reverse path).

The router simplyconsults its unicast forwarding table, pretending that it wants to send
a packet to thesource; the forwarding table gives the next router and the interface the
message that thepacket should be sent out in this reverse direction.
The router uses this information toaccept a multicast packet only if it arrives from this
interface. This is needed to preventlooping. In multicasting, a packet may arrive at the
same router that has forwarded it.

Ifthe router does not drop all arrived packets except the one, multiple copies of the
packetwill be circulating in the internet.

Reverse Path Broadcasting (RPB)

The RPF algorithm helps a router to forward only one copy received from a source
anddrop the rest.

When we think about broadcasting in the second step, we need toremember that
destinations are all the networks (LANs) in the internet. To be efficient,we need to
prevent each network from receiving more than one copy of the packet.

If anetwork is connected to more than one router, it may receive a copy of the packet
fromeach router. RPF cannot help here, because a network does not have the
intelligence toapply the RPF algorithm; we need to allow only one of the routers
attached to a networkto pass the packet to the network.

One way to do so is to designate only one router as theparent of a network related to a

specific source. When a router that is not the parent ofthe attached network receives a
multicast packet, it simply drops the packet.

There are several ways that the parent of the network related to a network can be
selected; one wayis to select the router that has the shortest path to the source (using
the unicast forwardingtable, again in the reverse direction).

In other words, after this we have ashortest-path tree with the source as the root and
all networks (LANs) as the leaves.

Every packet started from the source reaches all LANs in the internet travelling
theshortest path. Figure shows how RPB can avoid duplicate reception in a
networkby assigning a designated parent router, R1, for network N.
Fig: Reverse path broadcasting.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz
A. Forouzan].

Reverse Path Multicasting (RPM)

To increase efficiency, the multicast packet must reach only those networks that have
active members for that particular group. This is called reverse path multicasting
(RPM).

To change the broadcast shortest-path tree to a multicast shortest-path tree, each router
needs to prune (make inactive) the interfaces that do not reach a network with active
members corresponding to a particular source-group combination.

This step can be done bottom-up, from the leaves to the root. At the leaf level, the
routersconnected to the network collect the membership information using the IGMP
protocol.

The parent router of the network can then disseminate thisinformation upward using
the reverse shortest-path tree from the router to the source, thesame way as the
distance vector messages are passed from one neighbor to another.
Fig:RPB vs RPF .[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan].

Multicast Link State (MOSPF)

Multicast Open Shortest Path First (MOSPF) is the extension of the Open ShortestPath
First (OSPF) protocol, which is used in unicast routing. It uses the sourcebasedtree
approach to multicasting.

In multicasting, each router needs to have a database, as with thecase of unicast

distance-vector routing, to show which interface has an active memberin a particular
group.

A router follow these steps to forward amulticast packet received from source S and
to be sent to destination G (a group ofrecipients):

The router uses the Dijkstra algorithm to create a shortest-path tree with S as the
root and all destinations in the internet as the leaves. Note that this shortest-path
tree is different from the one the router normally uses for unicast forwarding, in
which the root of the tree is the router itself.

Here, the root of the tree is thesource of the packet defined in the source address of the
packetThe router finds itself in the shortest-path tree created in the first step. In
otherwords, the router creates a shortest-path subtree with itself as the root of the
subtree.

The shortest-path subtree is actually a broadcast subtree with the router as the root and
all networks as the leaves.

The IGMP protocol is used to find the information at the leaf level. The router can
now forward the received packet out of only those interfaces that correspond to the
branches of the multicast tree.
Fig: Tree formation in MOSPF.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz
A. Forouzan].

Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM)

Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) is the name given to a common protocol

thatneeds a unicast routing protocol for its operation, but the unicast protocol can be
eithera distance-vector protocol or a link-state protocol.

PIM uses theforwarding table of a unicast routing protocol to find the next router in a
path to thedestination, but it does not matter how the forwarding table is created.

Feature of PIM:

It can work in two different modes: dense and sparse.

The term dense means that the number of active members of a group in the internet is
large;the probability that a router has a member in a group is high.

For example, in a popular teleconference that has a lot of members.

The term sparse, means that only a few routers in the internet have active members
in the group; the probability that a router has a member of the group is low.

For example, in a technical teleconference where a number of members are

spreadsomewhere in the internet. When the protocol is working in the dense mode, it
isreferred to as PIM-DM; when it is working in the sparse mode, it is referred to as
PIMSM.
Protocol Independent Multicast-Dense Mode (PIM-DM)

When the number of routers with attached members is large relative to the number
ofrouters in the internet, PIM works in the dense mode and is called PIM-DM.

In thismode, the protocol uses a source-based tree approach.

PIM-DM uses only two strategies described in DVMRP: RPF and

RPM. The two steps used in PIM-DM .

1. A router that has received a multicast packet from the source S destined for the
group G first uses the RPF strategy to avoid receiving a duplicate of the
packet. It consults the forwarding table of the unicast protocol to find the next
router if it wants to send a message to the source S (in the reverse direction).

If the packet has not arrived from the next router in the reverse direction, it
drops the packet and sends a prune (remove things which are not needed)
message in that direction to prevent receiving future packets related to (S, G).

Fig: Idea behind PIM- DM.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz
A. Forouzan].

2. If the packet in the first step has arrived from the next router in the reverse
direction, the receiving router forwards the packet from all its interfaces
except the one from which the packet has arrived .

Note that this is broadcasting instead of a multicasting if the packet is the first packet
from the source S to group G.
Each router downstream that receives an unwanted packet sends a prune message to
the router upstream, and eventually the broadcasting is changed to multicasting.

Figure (above) PIM-DM. The first packet is broadcast to all networks,

which have or do not have members. After a prune message arrives from a
router with no member, the second packet is only multicast.

Protocol Independent Multicast-Sparse Mode (PIM-SM)

When the number of routers with attached members is small relative to the number
ofrouters in the internet, PIM works in the sparse mode and is called PIM-SM.

In thisenvironment, PIM-SM uses a group-shared tree approach to multicasting.

The corerouter in PIM-SM is called the rendezvous point (RP). Multicast

communication isachieved in two steps.

Any router that has a multicast packet to send to a group of destinationsfirst

encapsulates the multicast packet in a unicast packet (tunneling) andsends it to the RP.
The RP then decapsulates the unicast packet and sends the multicastpacket to its
destination.

PIM-SM uses a complex algorithm to select one router among all routers in the
internet as the RP for a specific group. This means that if we have m active groups,
weneed m RPs, although a router may serve more than one group.

After the RP for eachgroup is selected, each router creates a database and stores the
group identifier and theIP address of the RP for tunneling multicast packets to it.

PIM-SM uses a spanning multicast tree rooted at the RP with leaves pointing to
designated routers connected to each network with an active member. A very
interestingpoint in PIM-SM is the formation of the multicast tree for a group.

To create a multicast tree rooted at the RP, PIM-SM uses join and prune messages.

Figure (below) shows the operation of join and prune messages in PIM-SM.

First, threenetworks join group G1 and form a multicast tree. Later, one of the
networks leaves thegroup and the tree is pruned.

The join message is used to add possible new branches to the tree; the prune
messageis used to cut branches that are not needed.
When a designated router finds outthat a network has a new member in the
corresponding group (via IGMP), it sends ajoin message in a unicast packet destined
for the RP.

The packet travels through the unicastshortest-path tree to reach the RP. Any router in
the path receives and forwards thepacket, but at the same time, the router adds two
pieces of information to its multicastforwarding table.

Fig: Join and Prune message format .[Source : Data Communications and Networking by
Behrouz A. Forouzan].

The number of the interface through which the join message was sent to the RP is
marked(if not already marked) as the only interface through which the multicast
packet destinedfor the same group should be received.

In this way, the first join message sent by a designated router creates a path from the
RP to one of the networks with groupmembers.
To avoid sending multicast packets to networks with no members, PIM-SM uses
the prune message.

INTERDOMAIN MULTICAST PROTOCOLS

When the members of the groups are spread among different domains (ASs), we need
an interdomain multicast routing protocol.

One common protocol for interdomain multicast routing is called Multicast Border
Gateway Protocol (MBGP), which is the extension of BGP .

MBGP provides two paths between ASs: one for unicasting and one for
multicasting.

Information about multicasting is exchanged between border routersin different ASs.

MBGP is a shared-group multicast routing protocol in which onerouter in each AS is
chosen as the rendezvous point (RP).

The problem with MBGP protocol is that it is difficult to inform an RP about the
sources of groups in other ASs. The Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) is
anew suggested protocol that assigns a source representative router in each AS to
informall RPs about the existence of sources in that AS.

Switch basics

Ethernet switches link Ethernet devices together by relaying Ethernet frames between
thedevices connected to the switches. By moving Ethernet frames between the switch
ports, aswitch links the traffic carried by the individual network connections into a
larger Ethernetnetwork.
Ethernet switches perform their linking function by bridging Ethernet frames between
Ethernet segments. To do this, they copy Ethernet frames from one switch port to
another, basedon the Media Access Control (MAC) addresses in the Ethernet frames.
Ethernet bridging wasinitially defined in the 802.1D IEEE Standard for Local and
Metropolitan Area Networks: MediaAccess Control (MAC) Bridges.

The standardization of bridging operations in switches makes it possible to buy

switchesfrom different vendors that will work together when combined in a network
design. That’s theresult of lots of hard work on the part of the standards engineers to
define a set of standards thatvendors could agree upon and implement in their switch
designs.

Operation of Ethernet Switches

Networks exist to move data between computers. To perform that task, the network
software organizes the data being moved into Ethernet frames. Frames travel over
Ethernet networks, and the data field of a frame is used to carry data between
computers.

Frames are nothing more than arbitrary sequences of information whose format is
defined in a standard.
The format for an Ethernet frame includes a destination address at the beginning,
containing the address of the device to which the frame is being sent.
Next comes a source address, containing the address of the device sending the frame.
The addresses are followed by various other fields, including the data field that carries
the data being sent between computers

Global Internet Areas:

order Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol

designed toexchange routing and reachability information between autonomous
systems (AS) on theInternet. The protocol is often classified as a path vector protocol
but is sometimes also classedas a distance-vector routing protocol.

• BGP supports flexibility -- paths could be chosen by a provider based on a policy.

• To configure BGP, each AS admin picks at least one node to be the “BGP” speaker -
- a spokesperson node for the entire AS.
– The BGP speaker establishes a BGP session with other BGP speakers in
otherASes.
• In addition, there are border gateways using which packets enter/leave ASes.
• Source advertises complete paths (unlike distance vector or link state routing) --
thus loops are prevented.
-AS 2 says 128.96, 192.4.15, 192.4.32, 192.4.3 can be reached via AS 2.
• AS 1 advertises that these networks can be reached via <AS1, AS2> --note full path
description.
• Loops are avoided.

BGP Messages:
BGP has four types of messages
– OPEN: Establish a connection with a BGP peer
• Note: BGP connection is TCP based ! (Port no. 179).
– UPDATE -- advertise or withdraw routes to a destination
• Note --BGP speaker needs to be able to cancel previously advertised
paths if nodes or links fail. This form of negative advertisements are
said to advertise “withdrawn routes”.
• KEEPALIVE: Inform a peer that the sender is still alive but has no information to
send.
• NOTIFICATION: Notify that errors are detected.
• 16 byte fields.

• For more detail look at book.

Routing with BGP:

• For stub AS -- border router injects a default route into the intra-domain routing
protocol.
• If there are more than one border router, each injects specific routes that they have
learned from outside the AS.
• IBGP or Interior BGP is used to distribute the information to all other routers in
the domain (and the speaker).

IPv6 ADDRESSING

IPv4 has the small size of the address space.

An IPv6 address is 128 bits or 16 bytes(octets) long, four times the address length in
IPv4.
IPv6 address, in hexadecimal format, is very long, many of the digits
are zeros.

In this case, the leading zeros of a section canbe omitted. Using this form of
abbreviation, 0074 can be written as 74, 000F as F, and0000 as 0.

Address Space

The address space of IPv6 contains 2128 addresses. This address space is 296 times
theIPv4 address—definitely no address depletion—as shown, the size of the space is

Three Address Types

In IPv6, a destination address can be of three categories: unicast, anycast, and

multicast.

Unicast Address
A unicast address defines a single interface (computer or router). The packet sent to
aunicast address will be routed to the intended recipient (Receiver).

Anycast Address

An anycast address defines a group of computers that all share a single address.
Apacket with an anycast address is delivered to only one member of the group, the
mostreachable one.

An anycast communication is used, for example, when there are severalservers that
can respond to an inquiry. The request is sent to the one that is most reachable.

Multicast Address

A multicast address defines a group of computers.

Differencebetween anycasting and multicasting.

In anycasting, only one copy of the packet is sentto one of the members of the group;
in multicasting each member of the group receivesa copy.
Address Space Allocation
Like the address space of IPv4, the address space of IPv6 is divided into several
blocksof varying size and each block is allocated for a special purpose. Most of the
blocks are still unassigned and have been set aside for future use.

IPv6 Packet Format

The IPv6 packet is shown in Figure (below).

Each packet has a base header followedby the payload. The base header occupies 40
bytes, payload is upto 65,535 bytes of information.

The description of fields follows.

Fig: IPv6 datagram.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.

Forouzan].

[Link] 4-bit version field defines the version number of the IP. For IPv6,
thevalue is 6.

Traffic [Link] 8-bit traffic class field is used to distinguish different payloadswith
different delivery requirements. It replaces the type-of-service field in IPv4.

Flow label. The flow label is a 20-bit field that is designed to provide special
handlingfor a particular flow of data.

Payload [Link] 2-byte payload length field defines the length of the IP
datagram excluding the header.
Note that IPv4 defines two fields related to the length: header length and total length.

In IPv6, the length of the base header isfixed (40 bytes); only the length of the
payload needs to be defined.

Next [Link] next header is an 8-bit field defining the type of the first extension
header (if present) or the type of the data that follows the base header in thedatagram.

Hop limit. The 8-bit hop limit field serves the same purpose as the TTL field in IPv4.

Source and destination addresses. The source address field is a 16-byte (128-
bit)Internet address that identifies the original source of the datagram.

The destinationaddress field is a 16-byte (128-bit) Internet address that identifies the
destination ofthe datagram.

[Link] to IPv4, the payload field in IPv6 has a different format

andmeaning, as shown in Figure .

Extension Header
An IPv6 packet is made of a base header and some extension headers. The length of
thebase header is fixed at 40 bytes.

To give more functionality to the IP datagram,the base header can be followed by up

to six extension headers.

Six types of extension headers have been defined.

Theseare hop-by-hop option, source routing, fragmentation, authentication, encrypted

securitypayload, and destination option (see Figure below).

Hop-by-Hop Option

The hop-by-hop option is used when the source needs to pass information to all
routersvisited by the datagram. For example, routers must be informed about
certainmanagement, debugging, or control functions.

Destination Option
The destination option is used when the source needs to pass information to the
destinationonly.

Intermediate routers are not permitted access to this information.

Source Routing
The source routing extension header combines the concepts of the strict source route
and the loose source route options of IPv4.

Fragmentation

The concept of fragmentation in IPv6 is the same as that in IPv4.

In IPv6, only the original source can fragment. A source must use aPath MTU
Discovery technique to find the smallest MTU supported by any network
on the path. The source then fragments using this knowledge.

If the source does not use a Path MTU Discovery technique, it fragments the
datagramto a size of 1280 bytes or smaller. This is the minimum size of MTU required
foreach network connected to the Internet.

Authentication

The authentication extension header has a dual purpose:

It validates the messagesender and ensures the integrity of data. It is needed so the
receiver can besure that a message is from the genuine sender and not others.

Encrypted Security Payload

The encrypted security payload (ESP) is an extension that provides confidentiality

and guards against eavesdropping.

Fig: Extension header types.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz

A. Forouzan].

TRANSITION FROM IPv4 TO IPv6

Strategies
Three strategies are used for transition: dual stack, tunneling, and header
translation.

One or all of these three strategies can be implemented during the transition
period.

Dual Stack
It is recommended that all hosts, before migrating completely to version 6, have a
dual stack of protocols during the transition. In other words, a station must run IPv4
and IPv6 simultaneously until all the Internet uses IPv6.

Figure shows the layout of a dual-stack configuration.

Fig:Dual stack.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan].

To determine which version to use when sending a packet to a destination, the

source host queries the DNS. If the DNS returns an IPv4 address, the source host
sends an IPv4 packet. If the DNS returns an IPv6 address, the source host sends an
IPv6 packet.

Tunneling

Tunneling is a strategy used when two computers using IPv6 want to communicate
with each other and the packet must pass through a region that uses IPv4.

To pass through this region, the packet must have an IPv4 address. So the IPv6 packet
is encapsulatedin an IPv4 packet when it enters the region, and it leaves its capsule
when itexits the region.

It seems as if the IPv6 packet enters a tunnel at one end and emerges atthe other end.
To make it clear that the IPv4 packet is carrying an IPv6 packet as data,
the protocol value is set to 41.

Tunneling is shown in Figure (below).

Header Translation
Header translation is necessary when the majority of the Internet has moved to
IPv6but some systems still use IPv4.

The sender wants to use IPv6, but the receiver does notunderstand IPv6.
Tunneling does not work in this situation because the packet must bein the IPv4
format to be understood by the receiver.

Fig: Tunneling strategy.[Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.

Forouzan].

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