chapter 21 ip encapsulation, fragmentation, and reassembly
TRANSCRIPT
Chapter 21 Chapter 21 IP Encapsulation, IP Encapsulation,
Fragmentation, and Fragmentation, and ReassemblyReassembly
EncapsulationEncapsulation Refers to embedding of data When an IP datagram is encapsulated in a frame, the
entire datagram is placed in the data area of a frame (fig 21.1)
network hardware does not care what is inside the frame data area
destination address in the frame is the physical address of the next hop to which the datagram should be sent whenever the destination computer is on a remote network.
datagram is encapsulated in a frame appropriate to the network being traversed
When the datagram crosses a router, the old frame header is discarded and a new frame header a prepended. (fig 21.2)
Maximum Transmission Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU)Unit (MTU)
a limitation placed by the network hardware technology on the size of a datagram (fig 21.3)
eg. Ethernet’s MTU is 1500 bytes
FragmentationFragmentation used by an IP router to solve the problem of
different MTUs of networks When a router sees that a datagram is larger than
the MTU of the network over which it must be sent, the router divides the datagram in smaller pieces called fragments, and sends each fragment independently (fig 21.4)
A bit in the FLAGS field in the IP header indicates whether the datagram is a fragment or a complete datagram.
FRAGMENT OFFSET field in the IP header of a fragment specifies where in the original datagram the fragment belongs.
ReassemblyReassembly process of recreating the original datagram from
fragments Fragments are forwarded to the ultimate
destination host, which reassembles them. MORE FRAMENTS bit in the FLAGS field tells
the final host to know whether all fragments have arrived
Intermediate routers need not reassemble fragments
fragments may traverse different paths, making reassembly in the intermediate routers impossible
Identifying the Datagram a Identifying the Datagram a Fragment BelongsFragment Belongs
each datagram is assigned a unique number by the source computer in the IDENTIFICATION field of IP header
A copy of this number is copied into each fragment
destination computer can reassemble the fragments to the proper datagrams by examining the source IP address, IDENTIFCATION field, and FRAGMENT OFFSET field.
Fragment LossFragment Loss
if a fragment is lost, the destination computer discards the remaining fragments corresponding to the same datagram
Sender will retransmit the entire datagram since it does not know how the datagram was fragmented
when the datagram is retransmitted, it may traverse a different routing path and be fragmented differently.
Fragmenting a FragmentFragmenting a Fragment
an intermediate router with smaller MTUs may fragment an existing fragment by modifying the FRAGMENT OFFSET field
The ultimate destination computer does not know whether an incoming fragment had be fragmented into subfragments.