As robust as the IP protocol is, it does not perform the actual transmission of the data. In this step, you will investigate the network protocol called , responsible for creation, reliability of delivery, and proper assembling of data packets.
In addition to IP, TCP is also widely used on the internet, especially for any network communication where it is essential to confirm receipt of the transmission. Many of the network protocols used to implement cloud computing use both TCP and IP. You will review TCPs workings and discuss them in your final technical report.
In general, there is no guarantee that a data packet will reach its destination. Packets can get lost or corrupted during transmission, and there are network applications where you need assurance that the packets have reached their destination. To achieve reliability, TCP establishes connections between communicating hosts, using port numbers to refer to applications on these hosts. Then, packets are created, sequenced, transmitted, acknowledged, and retransmitted if missing or containing errors. Finally, at the destination, they are reassembled into the original messages.
To synchronize the flow of packets between sender and receiver, and avoid packet congestion in case of varying speeds, TCP uses for packets remaining in processing at a given time, at both the sender and receiver ends.
In the next step, you will look into subnetting BallotOnlines IP addresses.
One of the drawbacks of IPv4 is the maximum number of network devices it can support. IPv4 addressing uses a 32-bit network address. This allows for 232,, or a little over 4 billion devices. However, today there are significantly more devices on the internet. Even though the more robust IPv6 version has been introduced and efforts are under way to assure wide adoption, IPv4 is still widely used.
One method used to more efficiently use the IPv4 network addresses is a technique to optimize the addresses by splitting them into network addresses and host addresses within designated networks. You will need to take advantage of IP address splitting so that you can efficiently use and allocate the IPv4 network addresses that have been assigned to BallotOnline.
For a given large network, rather than addressing all the hosts using the host part of the address, allows for splitting the network into several smaller ones by borrowing the host part bits and adding them to the network bits. It supports efficient management of local networks composed of multiple LANs. In this step, you will investigate subnetting conventions and discuss them in your final report in order to lay ground for the use of subnets by BallotOnline.
As the network engineer for BallotOnline, you know that subnetting a network into several smaller and variable-sized networks will be best for the organization’s needs. BallotOnline has been assigned a network address block by the .
Because BallotOnline has several offices around the world, you will need to subnet this network address to assign just the right number of addresses to each office location based on the number of systems at that office location (the network address assigned by IANA and the number of offices along with their sizes will be provided in the announcement section of this class at the beginning of Week 2).
Your task is to create the appropriate number of subnets with the right size to optimize the network.
Your technical report should include notation, which allows for specifying a variable-length network as part of the IPv4 address, leaving the rest for addressing hosts within the network.
Submit the network information in the submission box below.
Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR)
Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR) is a method to use IP addressing without being restricted to the original grouping of IPv4 (Class A, B, and C). Using CIDR, you can create a network (or subnetwork) and size it appropriately based on the needs.
For example, without CIDR, if you have a network with 500 hosts or systems, you cannot use a Class C network because Class C is limited to 254 hosts, so you are forced to use a Class B network, which leads to a waste of IP addresses.
Also, prior to CIDR, when specifying a network address, you will need to also provide the subnet mask. For example:
- Network address: 192.168.1.0
- Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
You need both to inform the size of the network.
With CIDR notation, instead of specifying the subnet mask, you note the number of bits used for the network hosts. For example, the same network as above would be written as:
- Network address: 192.168.1.0/24
For more information, review the following article:
