The Internet Stream Protocol ( ST ) is a family of experimental protocols first defined in Internet Experiment Note IEN-119 in 1979, and later substantially revised in RFC 1190 (ST-II) and RFC 1819 (ST2+). The protocol uses the version number 5 in the version field of the Internet Protocol header, but was never known as IPv5. The successor to IPv4 was thus named IPv6 to eliminate any possible confusion about the actual protocol in use.
86-582: An Internet Protocol address ( IP address ) is a numerical label such as 192.0.2.1 that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface identification , and location addressing . Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) was the first standalone specification for the IP address, and has been in use since 1983. IPv4 addresses are defined as
172-589: A de facto standard in the industry. In May 2005, the IETF defined a formal standard for it. An IP address conflict occurs when two devices on the same local physical or wireless network claim to have the same IP address. A second assignment of an address generally stops the IP functionality of one or both of the devices. Many modern operating systems notify the administrator of IP address conflicts. When IP addresses are assigned by multiple people and systems with differing methods, any of them may be at fault. If one of
258-414: A 32-bit number, which became too small to provide enough addresses as the internet grew, leading to IPv4 address exhaustion over the 2010s. Its designated successor, IPv6 , uses 128 bits for the IP address, giving it a larger address space . Although IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s, both IPv4 and IPv6 are still used side-by-side as of 2024. IPv4 addresses are usually displayed in
344-482: A human-readable notation, but systems may use them in various different computer number formats . CIDR notation can also be used to designate how much of the address should be treated as a routing prefix. For example, 192.0.2.1 / 24 indicates that 24 significant bits of the address are the prefix, with the remaining 8 bits used for host addressing. This is equivalent to the historically used subnet mask (in this case, 255.255.255.0 ). The IP address space
430-756: A protocol stack , often constructed per the OSI model, communications functions are divided up into protocol layers, where each layer leverages the services of the layer below it until the lowest layer controls the hardware that sends information across the media. The use of protocol layering is ubiquitous across the field of computer networking. An important example of a protocol stack is HTTP (the World Wide Web protocol) running over TCP over IP (the Internet protocols) over IEEE 802.11 (the Wi-Fi protocol). This stack
516-690: A residential gateway . In this scenario, the computers connected to the router have private IP addresses and the router has a public address on its external interface to communicate on the Internet. The internal computers appear to share one public IP address. Computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes . Computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are made up of telecommunication network technologies based on physically wired, optical , and wireless radio-frequency methods that may be arranged in
602-407: A static IP address . In contrast, when a computer's IP address is assigned each time it restarts, this is known as using a dynamic IP address . Dynamic IP addresses are assigned by network using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). DHCP is the most frequently used technology for assigning addresses. It avoids the administrative burden of assigning specific static addresses to each device on
688-503: A diverse set of networking capabilities. The protocols have a flat addressing scheme. They operate mostly at layers 1 and 2 of the OSI model. For example, MAC bridging ( IEEE 802.1D ) deals with the routing of Ethernet packets using a Spanning Tree Protocol . IEEE 802.1Q describes VLANs , and IEEE 802.1X defines a port-based network access control protocol, which forms the basis for the authentication mechanisms used in VLANs (but it
774-400: A dynamically assigned IP address that seldom changes. IPv4 addresses, for example, are usually assigned with DHCP, and a DHCP service can use rules that maximize the chance of assigning the same address each time a client asks for an assignment. In IPv6, a prefix delegation can be handled similarly, to make changes as rare as feasible. In a typical home or small-office setup, a single router
860-529: A group of 8 bits (an octet ) of the address. In some cases of technical writing, IPv4 addresses may be presented in various hexadecimal , octal , or binary representations. In the early stages of development of the Internet Protocol, the network number was always the highest order octet (most significant eight bits). Because this method allowed for only 256 networks, it soon proved inadequate as additional networks developed that were independent of
946-455: A home network an unchanging address, it is more likely to be abused by customers who host websites from home, or by hackers who can try the same IP address over and over until they breach a network. Multiple client devices can appear to share an IP address, either because they are part of a shared web hosting service environment or because an IPv4 network address translator (NAT) or proxy server acts as an intermediary agent on behalf of
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#17327916721651032-672: A large address space, there is no need to have complex address conservation methods as used in CIDR. All modern desktop and enterprise server operating systems include native support for IPv6 , but it is not yet widely deployed in other devices, such as residential networking routers, voice over IP (VoIP) and multimedia equipment, and some networking hardware . Just as IPv4 reserves addresses for private networks, blocks of addresses are set aside in IPv6. In IPv6, these are referred to as unique local addresses (ULAs). The routing prefix fc00:: / 7
1118-440: A large, congested network into an aggregation of smaller, more efficient networks. A router is an internetworking device that forwards packets between networks by processing the addressing or routing information included in the packet. The routing information is often processed in conjunction with the routing table . A router uses its routing table to determine where to forward packets and does not require broadcasting packets which
1204-489: A link. This feature is used in the lower layers of IPv6 network administration, such as for the Neighbor Discovery Protocol . Private and link-local address prefixes may not be routed on the public Internet. IP addresses are assigned to a host either dynamically as they join the network, or persistently by configuration of the host hardware or software. Persistent configuration is also known as using
1290-440: A multi-port bridge. Switches normally have numerous ports, facilitating a star topology for devices, and for cascading additional switches. Bridges and switches operate at the data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model and bridge traffic between two or more network segments to form a single local network. Both are devices that forward frames of data between ports based on the destination MAC address in each frame. They learn
1376-492: A network in one transmission operation as an all-hosts broadcast . All receivers capture the network packet. The address 255.255.255.255 is used for network broadcast. In addition, a more limited directed broadcast uses the all-ones host address with the network prefix. For example, the destination address used for directed broadcast to devices on the network 192.0.2.0 / 24 is 192.0.2.255 . IPv6 does not implement broadcast addressing and replaces it with multicast to
1462-410: A network, the network administrator assigns an IP address to each device. Such assignments may be on a static (fixed or permanent) or dynamic basis, depending on network practices and software features. Some jurisdictions consider IP addresses to be personal data . An IP address serves two principal functions: it identifies the host, or more specifically, its network interface , and it provides
1548-478: A network. It also allows devices to share the limited address space on a network if only some of them are online at a particular time. Typically, dynamic IP configuration is enabled by default in modern desktop operating systems. The address assigned with DHCP is associated with a lease and usually has an expiration period. If the lease is not renewed by the host before expiry, the address may be assigned to another device. Some DHCP implementations attempt to reassign
1634-457: A repeater hub assists with collision detection and fault isolation for the network. Hubs and repeaters in LANs have been largely obsoleted by modern network switches. Network bridges and network switches are distinct from a hub in that they only forward frames to the ports involved in the communication whereas a hub forwards to all ports. Bridges only have two ports but a switch can be thought of as
1720-418: A single failure can cause the network to fail entirely. In general, the more interconnections there are, the more robust the network is; but the more expensive it is to install. Therefore, most network diagrams are arranged by their network topology which is the map of logical interconnections of network hosts. Common topologies are: The physical layout of the nodes in a network may not necessarily reflect
1806-513: A single sender or a single receiver, and can be used for both sending and receiving. Usually, a unicast address is associated with a single device or host, but a device or host may have more than one unicast address. Sending the same data to multiple unicast addresses requires the sender to send all the data many times over, once for each recipient. Broadcasting is an addressing technique available in IPv4 to address data to all possible destinations on
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#17327916721651892-403: A standard voice telephone line. Modems are still commonly used for telephone lines, using a digital subscriber line technology and cable television systems using DOCSIS technology. A firewall is a network device or software for controlling network security and access rules. Firewalls are inserted in connections between secure internal networks and potentially insecure external networks such as
1978-877: A transmission medium. Power line communication uses a building's power cabling to transmit data. The following classes of wired technologies are used in computer networking. Network connections can be established wirelessly using radio or other electromagnetic means of communication. The last two cases have a large round-trip delay time , which gives slow two-way communication but does not prevent sending large amounts of information (they can have high throughput). Apart from any physical transmission media, networks are built from additional basic system building blocks, such as network interface controllers , repeaters , hubs , bridges , switches , routers , modems, and firewalls . Any particular piece of equipment will frequently contain multiple building blocks and so may perform multiple functions. A network interface controller (NIC)
2064-406: A variety of network topologies . The nodes of a computer network can include personal computers , servers , networking hardware , or other specialized or general-purpose hosts . They are identified by network addresses and may have hostnames . Hostnames serve as memorable labels for the nodes and are rarely changed after initial assignment. Network addresses serve for locating and identifying
2150-495: A variety of different sources, primarily to support circuit-switched digital telephony . However, due to its protocol neutrality and transport-oriented features, SONET/SDH also was the obvious choice for transporting Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) frames. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a switching technique for telecommunication networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing and encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells . This differs from other protocols such as
2236-657: A virtual system of links that run on top of the Internet . Overlay networks have been used since the early days of networking, back when computers were connected via telephone lines using modems, even before data networks were developed. The most striking example of an overlay network is the Internet itself. The Internet itself was initially built as an overlay on the telephone network . Even today, each Internet node can communicate with virtually any other through an underlying mesh of sub-networks of wildly different topologies and technologies. Address resolution and routing are
2322-522: Is computer hardware that connects the computer to the network media and has the ability to process low-level network information. For example, the NIC may have a connector for plugging in a cable, or an aerial for wireless transmission and reception, and the associated circuitry. In Ethernet networks, each NIC has a unique Media Access Control (MAC) address —usually stored in the controller's permanent memory. To avoid address conflicts between network devices,
2408-422: Is a built-in feature of IPv6. In IPv4, anycast addressing is implemented with Border Gateway Protocol using the shortest-path metric to choose destinations. Anycast methods are useful for global load balancing and are commonly used in distributed DNS systems. A host may use geolocation to deduce the geographic position of its communicating peer. This is typically done by retrieving geolocation info about
2494-422: Is a virtual network that is built on top of another network. Nodes in the overlay network are connected by virtual or logical links. Each link corresponds to a path, perhaps through many physical links, in the underlying network. The topology of the overlay network may (and often does) differ from that of the underlying one. For example, many peer-to-peer networks are overlay networks. They are organized as nodes of
2580-566: Is also found in WLANs ) – it is what the home user sees when the user has to enter a "wireless access key". Ethernet is a family of technologies used in wired LANs. It is described by a set of standards together called IEEE 802.3 published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Wireless LAN based on the IEEE 802.11 standards, also widely known as WLAN or WiFi, is probably
2666-478: Is an electronic device that receives a network signal , cleans it of unnecessary noise and regenerates it. The signal is retransmitted at a higher power level, or to the other side of obstruction so that the signal can cover longer distances without degradation. In most twisted-pair Ethernet configurations, repeaters are required for cable that runs longer than 100 meters. With fiber optics, repeaters can be tens or even hundreds of kilometers apart. Repeaters work on
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2752-433: Is defined for the special use of link-local addressing for IPv4 networks. In IPv6, every interface, whether using static or dynamic addresses, also receives a link-local address automatically in the block fe80:: / 10 . These addresses are only valid on the link, such as a local network segment or point-to-point connection, to which a host is connected. These addresses are not routable and, like private addresses, cannot be
2838-412: Is inefficient for very big networks. Modems (modulator-demodulator) are used to connect network nodes via wire not originally designed for digital network traffic, or for wireless. To do this one or more carrier signals are modulated by the digital signal to produce an analog signal that can be tailored to give the required properties for transmission. Early modems modulated audio signals sent over
2924-562: Is managed globally by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and the five regional Internet registries (RIRs). IANA assigns blocks of IP addresses to the RIRs, which are responsible for distributing them to local Internet registries in their region such as internet service providers (ISPs) and large institutions. Some addresses are reserved for private networks and are not globally unique. Within
3010-404: Is not sending packets, the link can be filled with packets from other users, and so the cost can be shared, with relatively little interference, provided the link is not overused. Often the route a packet needs to take through a network is not immediately available. In that case, the packet is queued and waits until a link is free. The physical link technologies of packet networks typically limit
3096-415: Is recognized as consisting of two parts: the network prefix in the high-order bits and the remaining bits called the rest field , host identifier , or interface identifier (IPv6), used for host numbering within a network. The subnet mask or CIDR notation determines how the IP address is divided into network and host parts. The term subnet mask is only used within IPv4. Both IP versions however use
3182-419: Is reserved for this block, which is divided into two / 8 blocks with different implied policies. The addresses include a 40-bit pseudorandom number that minimizes the risk of address collisions if sites merge or packets are misrouted. Early practices used a different block for this purpose ( fec0:: ), dubbed site-local addresses. However, the definition of what constituted a site remained unclear and
3268-662: Is the only device visible to an Internet service provider (ISP), and the ISP may try to provide a configuration that is as stable as feasible, i.e. sticky . On the local network of the home or business, a local DHCP server may be designed to provide sticky IPv4 configurations, and the ISP may provide a sticky IPv6 prefix delegation, giving clients the option to use sticky IPv6 addresses. Sticky should not be confused with static ; sticky configurations have no guarantee of stability, while static configurations are used indefinitely and only changed deliberately. Address block 169.254.0.0 / 16
3354-634: Is the process of selecting network paths to carry network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including circuit switching networks and packet switched networks. Internet Stream Protocol The Internet Stream Protocol family was never introduced for public use, but many of the concepts available in ST are similar to later Asynchronous Transfer Mode protocols and can be found in Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). They also presaged voice over IP . ST arose as
3440-459: Is used between the wireless router and the home user's personal computer when the user is surfing the web. There are many communication protocols, a few of which are described below. The Internet protocol suite , also called TCP/IP, is the foundation of all modern networking. It offers connection-less and connection-oriented services over an inherently unreliable network traversed by datagram transmission using Internet protocol (IP). At its core,
3526-462: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) maintains and administers MAC address uniqueness. The size of an Ethernet MAC address is six octets . The three most significant octets are reserved to identify NIC manufacturers. These manufacturers, using only their assigned prefixes, uniquely assign the three least-significant octets of every Ethernet interface they produce. A repeater
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3612-477: The Point-to-Point Protocol . Computers and equipment used for the network infrastructure, such as routers and mail servers, are typically configured with static addressing. In the absence or failure of static or dynamic address configurations, an operating system may assign a link-local address to a host using stateless address autoconfiguration. Sticky is an informal term used to describe
3698-477: The World Wide Web , digital video and audio , shared use of application and storage servers , printers and fax machines , and use of email and instant messaging applications. Computer networking may be considered a branch of computer science , computer engineering , and telecommunications , since it relies on the theoretical and practical application of the related disciplines. Computer networking
3784-415: The CIDR concept and notation. In this, the IP address is followed by a slash and the number (in decimal) of bits used for the network part, also called the routing prefix . For example, an IPv4 address and its subnet mask may be 192.0.2.1 and 255.255.255.0 , respectively. The CIDR notation for the same IP address and subnet is 192.0.2.1 / 24 , because the first 24 bits of the IP address indicate
3870-421: The IP address of the other node from a database. A public IP address is a globally routable unicast IP address, meaning that the address is not an address reserved for use in private networks , such as those reserved by RFC 1918 , or the various IPv6 address formats of local scope or site-local scope, for example for link-local addressing. Public IP addresses may be used for communication between hosts on
3956-440: The Internet protocol suite or Ethernet that use variable-sized packets or frames . ATM has similarities with both circuit and packet switched networking. This makes it a good choice for a network that must handle both traditional high-throughput data traffic, and real-time, low-latency content such as voice and video. ATM uses a connection-oriented model in which a virtual circuit must be established between two endpoints before
4042-597: The Internet today. The original version of the Internet Protocol that was first deployed in 1983 in the ARPANET , the predecessor of the Internet, is Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). By the early 1990s, the rapid exhaustion of IPv4 address space available for assignment to Internet service providers and end-user organizations prompted the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to explore new technologies to expand addressing capability on
4128-468: The Internet, but it lacked scalability in the face of the rapid expansion of networking in the 1990s. The class system of the address space was replaced with Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) in 1993. CIDR is based on variable-length subnet masking (VLSM) to allow allocation and routing based on arbitrary-length prefixes. Today, remnants of classful network concepts function only in a limited scope as
4214-499: The Internet, such as factory machines that communicate only with each other via TCP/IP , need not have globally unique IP addresses. Today, such private networks are widely used and typically connect to the Internet with network address translation (NAT), when needed. Three non-overlapping ranges of IPv4 addresses for private networks are reserved. These addresses are not routed on the Internet and thus their use need not be coordinated with an IP address registry. Any user may use any of
4300-574: The Internet. Firewalls are typically configured to reject access requests from unrecognized sources while allowing actions from recognized ones. The vital role firewalls play in network security grows in parallel with the constant increase in cyber attacks . A communication protocol is a set of rules for exchanging information over a network. Communication protocols have various characteristics. They may be connection-oriented or connectionless , they may use circuit mode or packet switching, and they may use hierarchical addressing or flat addressing. In
4386-437: The Internet. The result was a redesign of the Internet Protocol which became eventually known as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) in 1995. IPv6 technology was in various testing stages until the mid-2000s when commercial production deployment commenced. Today, these two versions of the Internet Protocol are in simultaneous use. Among other technical changes, each version defines the format of addresses differently. Because of
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#17327916721654472-627: The actual data exchange begins. ATM still plays a role in the last mile , which is the connection between an Internet service provider and the home user. There are a number of different digital cellular standards, including: Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), cdmaOne , CDMA2000 , Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO), Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT), Digital AMPS (IS-136/TDMA), and Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN). Routing
4558-468: The association of physical ports to MAC addresses by examining the source addresses of received frames and only forward the frame when necessary. If an unknown destination MAC is targeted, the device broadcasts the request to all ports except the source, and discovers the location from the reply. Bridges and switches divide the network's collision domain but maintain a single broadcast domain. Network segmentation through bridging and switching helps break down
4644-401: The class derived, the network identification was based on octet boundary segments of the entire address. Each class used successively additional octets in the network identifier, thus reducing the possible number of hosts in the higher order classes ( B and C ). The following table gives an overview of this now-obsolete system. Classful network design served its purpose in the startup stage of
4730-508: The client, in which case the real originating IP address is masked from the server receiving a request. A common practice is to have a NAT mask many devices in a private network. Only the public interface(s) of the NAT needs to have an Internet-routable address. The NAT device maps different IP addresses on the private network to different TCP or UDP port numbers on the public network. In residential networks, NAT functions are usually implemented in
4816-505: The default configuration parameters of some network software and hardware components (e.g. netmask), and in the technical jargon used in network administrators' discussions. Early network design, when global end-to-end connectivity was envisioned for communications with all Internet hosts, intended that IP addresses be globally unique. However, it was found that this was not always necessary as private networks developed and public address space needed to be conserved. Computers not connected to
4902-452: The devices involved in the conflict is the default gateway access beyond the LAN for all devices on the LAN, all devices may be impaired. IP addresses are classified into several classes of operational characteristics: unicast, multicast, anycast and broadcast addressing. The most common concept of an IP address is in unicast addressing, available in both IPv4 and IPv6. It normally refers to
4988-501: The existing networks already designated by a network number. In 1981, the addressing specification was revised with the introduction of classful network architecture. Classful network design allowed for a larger number of individual network assignments and fine-grained subnetwork design. The first three bits of the most significant octet of an IP address were defined as the class of the address. Three classes ( A , B , and C ) were defined for universal unicast addressing. Depending on
5074-543: The foreseeable future. The intent of the new design was not to provide just a sufficient quantity of addresses, but also redesign routing in the Internet by allowing more efficient aggregation of subnetwork routing prefixes. This resulted in slower growth of routing tables in routers. The smallest possible individual allocation is a subnet for 2 hosts, which is the square of the size of the entire IPv4 Internet. At these levels, actual address utilization ratios will be small on any IPv6 network segment. The new design also provides
5160-451: The global Internet. In a home situation, a public IP address is the IP address assigned to the home's network by the ISP . In this case, it is also locally visible by logging into the router configuration. Most public IP addresses change, and relatively often. Any type of IP address that changes is called a dynamic IP address. In home networks, the ISP usually assigns a dynamic IP. If an ISP gave
5246-469: The historical prevalence of IPv4, the generic term IP address typically still refers to the addresses defined by IPv4. The gap in version sequence between IPv4 and IPv6 resulted from the assignment of version 5 to the experimental Internet Stream Protocol in 1979, which however was never referred to as IPv5. Other versions v1 to v9 were defined, but only v4 and v6 ever gained widespread use. v1 and v2 were names for TCP protocols in 1974 and 1977, as there
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#17327916721655332-668: The literature as the physical medium ) used to link devices to form a computer network include electrical cable , optical fiber , and free space. In the OSI model , the software to handle the media is defined at layers 1 and 2 — the physical layer and the data link layer. A widely adopted family that uses copper and fiber media in local area network (LAN) technology are collectively known as Ethernet. The media and protocol standards that enable communication between networked devices over Ethernet are defined by IEEE 802.3 . Wireless LAN standards use radio waves , others use infrared signals as
5418-423: The location of the host in the network, and thus, the capability of establishing a path to that host. Its role has been characterized as follows: "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to get there." The header of each IP packet contains the IP address of the sending host and that of the destination host. Two versions of the Internet Protocol are in common use on
5504-665: The means that allow mapping of a fully connected IP overlay network to its underlying network. Another example of an overlay network is a distributed hash table , which maps keys to nodes in the network. In this case, the underlying network is an IP network, and the overlay network is a table (actually a map ) indexed by keys. Overlay networks have also been proposed as a way to improve Internet routing, such as through quality of service guarantees achieve higher-quality streaming media . Previous proposals such as IntServ , DiffServ , and IP multicast have not seen wide acceptance largely because they require modification of all routers in
5590-415: The most well-known member of the IEEE 802 protocol family for home users today. IEEE 802.11 shares many properties with wired Ethernet. Synchronous optical networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are standardized multiplexing protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams over optical fiber using lasers. They were originally designed to transport circuit mode communications from
5676-411: The multicast group address and the intermediary routers take care of making copies and sending them to all interested receivers (those that have joined the corresponding multicast group). Like broadcast and multicast, anycast is a one-to-many routing topology. However, the data stream is not transmitted to all receivers, just the one which the router decides is closest in the network. Anycast addressing
5762-508: The network and subnet. An IPv4 address has a size of 32 bits, which limits the address space to 4 294 967 296 (2) addresses. Of this number, some addresses are reserved for special purposes such as private networks (≈18 million addresses) and multicast addressing (≈270 million addresses). IPv4 addresses are usually represented in dot-decimal notation , consisting of four decimal numbers, each ranging from 0 to 255, separated by dots, e.g., 192.0.2.1 . Each part represents
5848-412: The network needs to deliver the user data, for example, source and destination network addresses , error detection codes, and sequencing information. Typically, control information is found in packet headers and trailers , with payload data in between. With packets, the bandwidth of the transmission medium can be better shared among users than if the network were circuit switched . When one user
5934-420: The network topology. As an example, with FDDI , the network topology is a ring, but the physical topology is often a star, because all neighboring connections can be routed via a central physical location. Physical layout is not completely irrelevant, however, as common ducting and equipment locations can represent single points of failure due to issues like fires, power failures and flooding. An overlay network
6020-729: The network. On the other hand, an overlay network can be incrementally deployed on end-hosts running the overlay protocol software, without cooperation from Internet service providers . The overlay network has no control over how packets are routed in the underlying network between two overlay nodes, but it can control, for example, the sequence of overlay nodes that a message traverses before it reaches its destination . For example, Akamai Technologies manages an overlay network that provides reliable, efficient content delivery (a kind of multicast ). Academic research includes end system multicast, resilient routing and quality of service studies, among others. The transmission media (often referred to in
6106-427: The nodes by communication protocols such as the Internet Protocol . Computer networks may be classified by many criteria, including the transmission medium used to carry signals, bandwidth , communications protocols to organize network traffic , the network size, the topology, traffic control mechanisms, and organizational intent. Computer networks support many applications and services , such as access to
6192-593: The opportunity to separate the addressing infrastructure of a network segment, i.e. the local administration of the segment's available space, from the addressing prefix used to route traffic to and from external networks. IPv6 has facilities that automatically change the routing prefix of entire networks, should the global connectivity or the routing policy change, without requiring internal redesign or manual renumbering. The large number of IPv6 addresses allows large blocks to be assigned for specific purposes and, where appropriate, to be aggregated for efficient routing. With
6278-520: The physical layer of the OSI model but still require a small amount of time to regenerate the signal. This can cause a propagation delay that affects network performance and may affect proper function. As a result, many network architectures limit the number of repeaters used in a network, e.g., the Ethernet 5-4-3 rule . An Ethernet repeater with multiple ports is known as an Ethernet hub . In addition to reconditioning and distributing network signals,
6364-445: The poorly defined addressing policy created ambiguities for routing. This address type was abandoned and must not be used in new systems. Addresses starting with fe80:: , called link-local addresses , are assigned to interfaces for communication on the attached link. The addresses are automatically generated by the operating system for each network interface. This provides instant and automatic communication between all IPv6 hosts on
6450-456: The protocol suite defines the addressing, identification, and routing specifications for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and for IPv6 , the next generation of the protocol with a much enlarged addressing capability. The Internet protocol suite is the defining set of protocols for the Internet. IEEE 802 is a family of IEEE standards dealing with local area networks and metropolitan area networks. The complete IEEE 802 protocol suite provides
6536-407: The reserved blocks. Typically, a network administrator will divide a block into subnets; for example, many home routers automatically use a default address range of 192.168.0.0 through 192.168.0.255 ( 192.168.0.0 / 24 ). In IPv6, the address size was increased from 32 bits in IPv4 to 128 bits, thus providing up to 2 (approximately 3.403 × 10 ) addresses. This is deemed sufficient for
6622-405: The same IP address to a host, based on its MAC address , each time it joins the network. A network administrator may configure DHCP by allocating specific IP addresses based on MAC address. DHCP is not the only technology used to assign IP addresses dynamically. Bootstrap Protocol is a similar protocol and predecessor to DHCP. Dialup and some broadband networks use dynamic address features of
6708-437: The same level, but using a different header format from that used for IP datagrams. According to IEN-119, its concepts were formulated by Danny Cohen, Estil Hoversten, and James W. Forgie. The protocol was notable for introducing the concepts of packetized voice (as used by voice over IP), a talkspurt (a continuous segment of speech between silent intervals), and specified delay and drop-rate requirements for packet services. It
6794-515: The sharing of files and information, giving authorized users access to data stored on other computers. Distributed computing leverages resources from multiple computers across a network to perform tasks collaboratively. Most modern computer networks use protocols based on packet-mode transmission. A network packet is a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-switched network . Packets consist of two types of data: control information and user data (payload). The control information provides data
6880-493: The size of packets to a certain maximum transmission unit (MTU). A longer message may be fragmented before it is transferred and once the packets arrive, they are reassembled to construct the original message. The physical or geographic locations of network nodes and links generally have relatively little effect on a network, but the topology of interconnections of a network can significantly affect its throughput and reliability. With many technologies, such as bus or star networks,
6966-456: The source or destination of packets traversing the Internet. When the link-local IPv4 address block was reserved, no standards existed for mechanisms of address autoconfiguration. Filling the void, Microsoft developed a protocol called Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA), whose first public implementation appeared in Windows 98 . APIPA has been deployed on millions of machines and became
7052-419: The specially defined all-nodes multicast address. A multicast address is associated with a group of interested receivers. In IPv4, addresses 224.0.0.0 through 239.255.255.255 (the former Class D addresses) are designated as multicast addresses. IPv6 uses the address block with the prefix ff00:: / 8 for multicast. In either case, the sender sends a single datagram from its unicast address to
7138-668: The transport protocol of the Network Voice Protocol , a pioneering computer network protocol for transporting human speech over packetized communications networks, first implemented in December 1973 by Internet researcher Danny Cohen of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) as part of ARPA 's Network Secure Communications (NSC) project. First specified in 1979, ST was envisioned as a connection-oriented complement to IPv4 , operating on
7224-826: Was implemented in the Voice Funnel . Its second version, known variously as ST-II or ST2, was drafted by Claudio Topolcic and others in 1987 and specified in 1990. It was implemented in the Terrestrial Wideband Network and its successor, the Defense Simulation Internet , where it was used extensively for distributed simulations and videoconferencing. This version later formed the core technology for transporting voice calls and other realtime streams within Canada's Iris Digital Communications System . The final version of ST2, which
7310-462: Was influenced by a wide array of technological developments and historical milestones. Computer networks enhance how users communicate with each other by using various electronic methods like email, instant messaging, online chat, voice and video calls, and video conferencing. Networks also enable the sharing of computing resources. For example, a user can print a document on a shared printer or use shared storage devices. Additionally, networks allow for
7396-435: Was no separate IP specification at the time. v3 was defined in 1978, and v3.1 is the first version where TCP is separated from IP. v6 is a synthesis of several suggested versions, v6 Simple Internet Protocol , v7 TP/IX: The Next Internet , v8 PIP — The P Internet Protocol , and v9 TUBA — Tcp & Udp with Big Addresses . IP networks may be divided into subnetworks in both IPv4 and IPv6 . For this purpose, an IP address
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