Term Paper 2

Network Layer
What is Network Layer?
The network layer is concerned with getting packets from the source all the way to
the destination. The packets may require to make many hops at the intermediate
routers while reaching the destination. This is the lowest layer that deals with end to
end transmission. In order to achieve its goals, the network layer must know about
the topology of the communication network. It must also take care to choose routes
to avoid overloading of some of the communication lines while leaving others idle.
The network layer-transport layer interface frequently is the interface between the
carrier and the customer, that is the boundary of the subnet. The functions of this
layer include :

1. Routing - The process of transferring packets received from the Data Link Layer
of the source network to the Data Link Layer of the correct destination
network is called routing. Involves decision making at each intermediate node
on where to send the packet next so that it eventually reaches its destination.
2. Inter-networking - The network layer is the same across all physical networks
(such as Token-Ring and Ethernet). Thus, if two physically different networks
have to communicate, the packets that arrive at the Data Link Layer of the
node which connects these two physically different networks, would be
stripped of their headers and passed to the Network Layer. network layer
would then pass this data to the Data Link Layer of the other physical network.
3. Congestion Control -If the incoming rate of the packets arriving at any router is
more than the outgoing rate, then congestion is said to occur. Congestion may
be caused by many factors. If suddenly, packets begin arriving on many input
lines and all need the same output line, then a queue will build up. If there is
insufficient memory to hold all of them, packets will be lost. But even if routers
have an infinite amount of memory, congestion gets worse, because by the
time packets reach to the front of the queue, they have already timed out
(repeatedly), and duplicates have been sent. All these packets are dutifully
forwarded to the next router, increasing the load all the way to the
destination. Another reason for congestion are slow processors. If the router's
CPUs are slow at performing the bookkeeping tasks required of them, queues
can build up, even though there is excess line capacity. Similarly, low-
bandwidth lines can also cause congestion.
4. Addressing Scheme
IP addresses are of 4 bytes and consist of :
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i) The network address, followed by

ii) The host address

The first part identifies a network on which the host resides and the second
part identifies the particular host on the given network. Some nodes which have
more than one interface to a network must be assigned separate internet
addresses for each interface. This multi-layer addressing makes it easier to find
and deliver data to the destination. A fixed size for each of these would lead to
wastage or under-usage that is either there will be too many network addresses
and few hosts in each (which causes problems for routers who route based on the
network address) or there will be very few network addresses and lots of hosts
(which will be a waste for small network requirements). Thus, we do away with
any notion of fixed sizes for the network and host addresses.
We classify networks as follows:

1. Large Networks : 8-bit network address and 24-bit host address. There are
approximately 16 million hosts per network and a maximum of 126 ( 2^7 - 2 )
Class A networks can be defined. The calculation requires that 2 be subtracted
because 0.0.0.0 is reserved for use as the default route and 127.0.0.0 be
reserved for the loop back function. Moreover each Class A network can
support a maximum of 16,777,214 (2^24 - 2) hosts per network.
2. Medium Networks : 16-bit network address and 16-bit host address. There are
approximately 65000 hosts per network and a maximum of 16,384 (2^14) Class
B networks can be defined with up to (2^16-2) hosts per network.
3. Small networks : 24-bit network address and 8-bit host address. There are
approximately 250 hosts per network.

You might think that Large and Medium networks are sort of a waste as few
corporations/organizations are large enough to have 65000 different hosts. (By the
way, there are very few corporations in the world with even close to 65000
employees, and even in these corporations it is highly unlikely that each employee
has his/her own computer connected to the network.) Well, if you think so, you're
right. This decision seems to have been a mistake

Address Classes

The IP specifications divide addresses into the following classes :

 Class A - For large networks

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 Class B - For medium networks

 Class C - For small networks
 Class D - For multi-cast messages ( multi-cast to a "group" of networks )
 Class E - Currently unused, reserved for potential uses in the future

Internet Protocol
Special Addresses : There are some special IP addresses :

1. Broadcast Addresses They are of two types :

(i) Limited Broadcast : It consists of all 1's, i.e., the address is 255.255.255.255 .
It is used only on the LAN, and not for any external network.
(ii) Directed Broadcast : It consists of the network number + all other bits as1's.
It reaches the router corresponding to the network number, and from there it
broadcasts to all the nodes in the network. This method is a major security
problem, and is not used anymore. So now if we find that all the bits are 1 in
the host no. field, then the packet is simply dropped. Therefore, now we can
only do broadcast in our own network using Limited Broadcast.
2. Network ID = 0
It means we are referring to this network and for local broadcast we make the
host ID zero.
3. Host ID = 0
This is used to refer to the entire network in the routing table.
4. Loop-back Address
Here we have addresses of the type 127.x.y.z It goes down way upto the IP
layer and comes back to the application layer on the same host. This is used to
test network applications before they are used commercially.

Subnetting:
Sub netting means organizing hierarchies within the network by dividing the host ID
as per our network. For example consider the network ID : 150.29.x.y
We could organize the remaining 16 bits in any way, like :
4 bits - department
4 bits - LAN
8 bits - host
This gives some structure to the host IDs. This division is not visible to the outside
world. They still see just the network number, and host number (as a whole). The
network will have an internal routing table which stores information about which
router to send an address to. Now consider the case where we have : 8 bits - subnet
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number, and 8 bits - host number. Each router on the network must know about all
subnet numbers. This is called the subnet mask.
Supernetting
This is moving towards class-less addressing. We could say that the network
number is 21 bits ( for 8 class C networks ) or say that it is 24 bits and 7 numbers
following that. For example : a.b.c.d / 21 This means only look at the first 21 bits as
the network address.