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7.1: Prelude to IP version 4

  • Page ID
    11163
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    Currently the Internet uses (mostly, but no longer quite exclusively) IP version 4, with its 32-bit address size. As the Internet has run out of new large blocks of IPv4 addresses (1.10 IP - Internet Protocol), there is increasing pressure to convert to IPv6, with its 128-bit address size. Progress has been slow, however, and delaying tactics such as IPv4-address markets and NAT (7.7 Network Address Translation) – by which multiple hosts can share a single public IPv4 address – have allowed IPv4 to continue. Aside from the major change in address structure, there are relatively few differences in the routing models of IPv4 and IPv6. We will study IPv4 in this chapter and IPv6 in the following; at points where the IPv4/IPv6 difference doesn’t much matter we will simply write “IP”.

    IPv4 (and IPv6) is, in effect, a universal routing and addressing protocol. Routing and addressing are developed together; every node has an IP address and every router knows how to handle IP addresses. IP was originally seen as a way to interconnect multiple LANs, but it may make more sense now to view IP as a virtual LAN overlaying all the physical LANs.

    A crucial aspect of IP is its scalability. As the Internet has grown to ~109 hosts, the forwarding tables are not much larger than 105 (perhaps now 105.5). Ethernet, in comparison, scales poorly.

    Furthermore, IP, unlike Ethernet, offers excellent support for multiple redundant links. If the network below were an IP network, each node would communicate with each immediate neighbor via their shared direct link. If, on the other hand, this were an Ethernet network with the spanning-tree algorithm, then one of the four links would simply be disabled completely.

    4loop.svg

    The IP network service model is to act like a giant LAN. That is, there are no acknowledgments; delivery is generally described as best-effort. This design choice is perhaps surprising, but it has also been quite fruitful.

    If you want to provide a universal service for delivering any packet anywhere, what else do you need besides routing and addressing? Every network (LAN) needs to be able to carry any packet. The protocols spell out the use of octets (bytes), so the only possible compatibility issue is that a packet is too large for a given network. IPv4 handles this by supporting fragmentation: a network may break a too-large packet up into units it can transport successfully. While IPv4 fragmentation is inefficient and clumsy, it does guarantee that any packet can potentially be delivered to any node. (Note, however, that IPv6 has given up on universal fragmentation; 8.5.4 IPv6 Fragment Header.)


    This page titled 7.1: Prelude to IP version 4 is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Peter Lars Dordal.

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