COT4713 - Chapter 4

R22. What is the 32-bit binary equivalent of the IP address 223.1.3.27?

Answer: 11011111 00000001 00000011 00011100

R13. What is HOL blocking? Does it occur in input ports or output ports?

Head-of-the-line(HOL) blocking is when a queued packet in an input queue must wait for transfer through the fabric(even though its output port is free) because it is blocked by another packet at the head of the line. This occurs in input ports.

R4. What is the role of the forwarding table within a router?

routing- determines the end -to routes between source and destinations (software) forwarding - moving packets from within router I/O

R16. What is an essential different between RR and WFQ packet scheduling? Is there a case (Hint: Consider the WFQ weights) where RR and WFQ will behave exactly the same?

(Hint: Consider the WFQ weights) where RR and WFQ will behave exactly the same? In RR (Round Robin) scheduling, the pckets are classified into classes and rotates the scheduler between these classes in order to avoid starvation of packet - in round robin, all packets get equal priority. In WFQ (Weighted Fair Queueing) scheduling, packets are classified into classes and the scheduler will rotate among them, based on a weight assigned to them. The case where RR and WFQ behave equally is when the scheduler operating under WFQ assigns equal weights to all packets, thus emulating a RR-type scheduling system.

R15. Give an example showing why a network operator might want one class of packets to be given priority over another class of packets.

A packet carrying network management information should be prioritized over regular use traffic.

R29. What is a private network address? Should a datagram with a private network address ever be present in the larger public Internet? Explain.

A private network address is its own private address assigned by an ISP, these addresses can be assigned to a particular organization or to an individual. Datagrams with private network addresses cannot directly be sent through to the public internet as they would not be capable of escaping the network - on the contrary, messages from the outside coming into the private network would be able to reach the devices on the network just fine.

R28. What is meant by a "plug-and-play" or "zeroconf" protocol?

A protocol in which the host in helped by being assigned IP addresses. When the protocol connects a host to a network, they may receive the same IP all the time or receive a temporary one for each access, this is what is known as the "plug and play" protocol.

R9. Suppose that an arriving packet matches two or more entries in a router's forwarding table. With traditional destination-based forwarding, what rule does a router apply to determine which of these rules should be applied to determine the output port to which the arriving packet should be switched?

A router uses longest prefix matching to determine which link interface a packet will be forwarded to if the packet's destination address matches two or more entries in the forwarding table. In this case, the packet that has the longest prefix match with the packet's destination will be the one forwarded to the link interface.

R25. Suppose an application generates chunks of 40 bytes of data every 20 msec, and each chunk gets encapsulated in a TCP segment and then an IP datagram. What percentage of each datagram will be overhead, and what percentage will be application data?

Answer: 50% overhead

R24. Suppose there are three routers between a source host and a destination host. Ignoring fragmentation, an IP datagram sent from the source host to the destination host will travel over how many interfaces? How many forwarding tables will be indexed to move the datagram from the source to the destination?

Answer: 8 interfaces and 3 forwarding tables.

R20. When a large datagram is fragmented into multiple smaller datagrams, where are these smaller datagrams reassembled into a single larger datagram?

Answer: Datagrams are reassembled at the destination host before being passed to the transport layer.

R19. Recall that we saw the Internet checksum being used in both transport-layer segment (in UDP and TCP headers, Figures 3.7 and 3.29 respectively) and in network-layer datagrams (IP header, Figure 4.16 ). Now consider a transport layer segment encapsulated in an IP datagram. Are the checksums in the segment header and datagram header computed over any common bytes in the IP datagram? Explain your answer.

Answer: No, the IP header checksum only computer's the checksum of an IS packet's IP header fields, which does not share any common bytes with the IP datagrams's transport layer segment part.

SECTION 4.3 R17. Suppose Host A sends Host B a TCP segment encapsulated in an IP datagram. When Host B receives the datagram, how does the network layer in Host B know it should pass the segment (that is, the payload of the datagram) to TCP rather than to UDP or to some other upper-layer protocol?

Answer: The 8-bit protocol field in the IP datagram contains information about which transport layer protocol destination host should pass the segment to.

R18. What field in the IP header can be used to ensure that a packet is forwarded through no more than N routers?

Answer: Time-to-live

R23. Visit a host that uses DHCP to obtain its IP address, network mask, default router, and IP address of its local DNS server. List these values.

Answer: To get info enter the following in the command line ipconfig/all

R26. Suppose you purchase a wireless router and connect it to your cable modem. Also suppose that your ISP dynamically assigns your connected device (that is, your wireless router) one IP address. Also suppose that you have five PCs at home that use 802.11 to wirelessly connect to your wireless router. How are IP addresses assigned to the five PCs? Does the wireless router use NAT? Why or why not?

Answer: Usually the wireless router includes a DHCP server. DHCP is used to assign IP addresses to the five PCs and as well to the router interface. Yes the wireless router also uses NAT as it gets only one IP address from the ISP.

R21. Do routers have IP addresses? If so, how many?

Answer: Yes they have one address for each interface.

R2. We noted that network layer functionality can be broadly divided into data plane functionality and control plane functionality. What are the main functions of the data plane? Of the control plane?

Data Plane - forwards traffic - switching - go through router Control plane - makes decisions where traffic is sent - routing protocols

R8. What is meant by destination-based forwarding? How does this differ from generalized forwarding (assuming you've read Section 4.4 , which of the two approaches are adopted by Software-Defined Networking)?

Destination-based formatting means that a datagram arriving at a router will be forwarded to an output interface based only on the final destination of the datagram. Generalized forwarding means that besides its final destination, other factors associated with a datagram are also considered when a router determines the output interface for the datagram. Software-Defined Networking adopts generalized forwarding. For example, forwarding decision can be based on a datagram's TCP/UDP source or destination port numbers, besides its destination IP address.

SECTION 4.4 R32. How does generalized forwarding differ from destination-based forwarding?

Generalized forwarding differs from destination-based forwarding in many ways: to begin, destination based forwarding takes an approach where data packets are forwarded based on destination addressed within header fields. Routes are established from destination to source based to destination address and utilization of forwarding tables. Looking up IP addresses in destination-based forwarding is done through a forwarding table which packets are then forwarded from. On the other hand, generalized forwarding does not have a set decision when it comes to forwarding based simply on a destination address. Remote controllers or network administrators install match plus action tables in place of forwarding tales, and packets are routed through a switch look up system where entries must pass through a flow table and find an appropriate match before being forwarded.

R30. Compare and contrast the IPv4 and the IPv6 header fields. Do they have any fields in common?

IPv4 and IPv6 header fields contain quite a few differences and similarities. IPv4 datagrams consists of plenty of optional fields while IPv6 trends towards the minimum number of fields possible, IPv4 also maintains a total header size of 20-byte while IPv6 remains a fixed 40-byte. IPv4 source and destination addresses are 32-bits while IPv6 can be up to 128-bits in length. Fields that both IPv4 and IPv6 have in common are the following: Version, Service Type, Time to Live, Upper-layer protocol, source IP, destination IP, data.

SECTION 4.2 R6. In Section 4.2 , we saw that a router typically consists of input ports, output ports, a switching fabric and a routing processor. Which of these are implemented in hardware and which are implemented in software? Why? Returning to the notion of the network layer's data plane and control plane, which are implemented in hardware and which are implemented in software? Why?

Input ports, output ports and switching fabric are implemented in hardware; routing processors are implemented in software. Those implemented in hardware are done so because their datagram-processing functionality is too fast for software implementation. Software is used for routing processors(in a traditional router) to execute routing protocols, to maintain routing tables and attached link state information, and to compute the forwarding table of a router. A routing processor(in a SDN router) relies on software for communication with a remote controller in order to receive forwarding table entries and install them in the router's input ports. Data plane is usually implemented in hardware due to the requirement of fast processing, as it operates at the nanosecond time scale. Control plane is usually implemented in software and operates at the millisecond or second timescale, for example, for executing routing protocols, responding to attached links that go up or down, communicating with remote controllers, and performing management functions.

R34. What is meant by the "match plus action" operation of a router or switch? In the case of destination-based forwarding packet switch, what is matched and what is the action taken? In the case of an SDN, name three fields that can be matched, and three actions that can be taken.

Match plus action means to match the header fields of incoming packets and taking the appropriate action according to the result. In destination-based forwarding, a packet arrives at a router or a switch and is forwarded based on the destination address of the packet. In destination-based forward packet switch, the packet destination address is matched with the entries in the appropriate forwarding table if the match is found. In SDN, three fields which can be matched are IP address, destination IP address, and protocol field -- three actions that can be taken is forwarding, modifying a header, or dropping a packet.

R14. In Section 4.2 , we studied FIFO, Priority, Round Robin (RR), and Weighted Fair Queueing (WFQ) packet scheduling disciplines. Which of these queueing disciplines ensure that all packets depart in the order in which they arrived?

Only FIFO ensures that all packets depart in the order in which they arrived.

R12. Describe how packet loss can occur at output ports. Can this loss be prevented by increasing the switch fabric speed?

Packet loss can occur if the rate at which packets arrive to a single output port exceed the line speed, regardless if both input and output line speeds are the same. As with input ports, excessive queueing can eventually overflow the output port buffers, causing packet loss. Increasing switch fabric speed would not prevent this from occurring.

R11. Describe how packet loss can occur at input ports. Describe how packet loss at input ports can be eliminated (without using infinite buffers).

Should the rate at which packets arrive at the fabric exceed the switching fabric rate, then packets will need to queue at the input ports. Continuation of this queueing would cause overflow in the input port buffers leading to packet loss. This can be eliminated if the switching speed is at least n times as fast as the input line speed, where n is the number of input ports.

R7. Discuss why each input port in a high-speed router stores a shadow copy of the forwarding table.

Storing a shadow copy of the forwarding table allows it to be stored locally at each input port. This avoids the need to invoke the centralized routing processor, which also avoids creating a lookup processing bottleneck at a single point within the router.

R10. Three types of switching fabrics are discussed in Section 4.2 . List and briefly describe each type. Which, if any, can send multiple packets across the fabric in parallel?

Switching via memory: An input port with an arriving packet first signaled the routing processor via an interrupt. The packet was then copied from the input port into processor memory. The routing processor then extracted the destination address from the header, looked up the appropriate output port in the forwarding table, and copied the packet to the output port's buffers. Switching via bus: An input port transfers a packet directly to the output port over a shared bus, without intervention by the routing processor. This is typically done by having the input port pre-pend a switch-internal label (header) to the packet indicating the local output port to which this packet is being transferred and transmitting the packet onto the bus. All output ports receive the packet, but only the port that matches the label will keep the packet. The label is then removed at the output port, as this label is only used within the switch to cross the bus. If multiple packets arrive to the router at the same time, each at a different input port, all but one must wait since only one packet can cross the bus at a time. Switching via an interconnection network: A crossbar switch is an interconnection network consisting of 2N buses that connect N input ports to N output ports. Each vertical bus intersects each horizontal bus at a crosspoint, which can be opened or closed at any time by the switch fabric controller (whose logic is part of the switching fabric itself). When a packet arrives from port A and needs to be forwarded to port Y, the switch controller closes the crosspoint at the intersection of busses A and Y, and port A then sends the packet onto its bus, which is picked up (only) by bus Y. Because packets can use different input and output buses with this approach, crossbar switches are capable of forwarding multiple packets in parallel.

R33. What is the difference between a forwarding table that we encountered in destination- based forwarding in Section 4.1 and OpenFlow's flow table that we encountered in Section 4.4?

The difference between forwarding tables and OpenFlow tables are that forwarding tables are defined by routing processors as opposed to OpenFlow taking an approach defined by a remote controller. Forwarding tables consist of addresses or routes which can be traversed in order to arrive at the destination while a flow table is based on information such as destination IP addresses and switch ports. Packet designations in forward tables are identified via prefix, where the longest prefixes matching the packet is selected as a match, as opposed to OpenFlow's header fields which match packets and take action from there.

R3. We made a distinction between the forwarding function and the routing function performed in the network layer. What are the key differences between routing and forwarding?

The key differences between routing and forwarding is that forwarding is a router's local action of transferring packets from its input interfaces to its output interfaces, while forwarding takes place at very short timescales, which is typically implemented in hardware. Routing refers to the network-wide process that determines the end-to-end paths that packets take from sources to destinations. Routing takes place on much longer timescales, and is often implemented in software.

SECTION 4.1 R1. Let's review some of the terminology used in this textbook. Recall that the name of a transport-layer packet is segment and that the name of a link-layer packet is frame. What is the name of a network-layer packet? Recall that both routers and link-layer switches are called packet switches. What is the fundamental difference between a router and link-layer switch?

The network layer packet is called a datagram. The difference between a router and a link-layer switch is that a router forwards the packet based on the packet's IP address and a link-layer switch forwards a packet based on its MAC address.

R5. We said that a network layer's service model "defines the characteristics of end-to-end transport of packets between sending and receiving hosts." What is the service model of the Internet's network layer? What guarantees are made by the Internet's service model regarding the host-to-host delivery of datagrams?

The service model is the best-effort service. With it, there is no guarantee that packets will be received in the order they were sent. There is also no guarantee of their delivery and on its end-to-end delay, and no minimal bandwidth guarantee.

R35. Name three header fields in an IP datagram that can be "matched" in OpenFlow 1.0 generalized forwarding. What are three IP datagram header fields that cannot be "matched" in OpenFlow?

Three header fields in an IP datagram that can be matched in OpenFlow are the IP source addresses, the destination addresses for those IP's and the IP's protocol field. The three datagram headers that cannot be matched to an openflow table are version numbers, time to live, and datagram length. There is no functionality for these fields in OpenFlow.

R31. It has been said that when IPv6 tunnels through IPv4 routers, IPv6 treats the IPv4 tunnels as link-layer protocols. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?

When IPv6 traverses through an IPv4 tunnels, they're treated as link-layers because the entire diagram of what IPv6 is can be encapsulated by IPv4. Therefore on the receiving end of the tunnel, the tunnel is routing an IPv4 diagram to the remaining nodes across the destination addresses of the router. I agree with the statement that they're treated as link-layer protocols.

R27. What is meant by the term "route aggregation"? Why is it useful for a router to perform route aggregation?

When we say route aggregation, what is actually meant is a method for aggregating multiple specific routes and summarizing them into a singular route. In this method, the network layer addresses are arranged in a hierarchical fashion and each ISP is assigned a continuous block of IP addresses. It is useful to perform route aggregation in order to further subnet any addresses and assign them to organization in an organized manner. It reduces the number of routes used to access the network, the size of routing tales, and depletion of routes.