Introduction

IP addresses are virtual, maintained by SW A frame transmitted across a physical NW

must have the HW address (HWA) of the destination

SW must translate the protocol address (PRA) of the destination into an equivalent HWA This section describes three general mechanisms that are used to perform address mapping:
1st relies on a table that contains address translation information 2nd uses a mathematical function to perform the translation. 3rd makes two computers exchange messages across a NW

Protocol Addresses And Packet Delivery

SW in each host or router uses the destination PRA to select a next hop for the packet PRA cannot be used when transmitting frames across physical NW
the HW does not understand PRA

A frame must use the HW's frame format

and all addresses in the frame must be a HWA

PRA of a next hop must be translated to an equivalent HWA before a frame can be sent

Address Resolution (AR)

Mapping between a PRA and a HWA
called address resolution (AR)

A host/router uses AR when it needs to send a packet to another computer on the same physical NW
AR is local to a NW

A computer never resolves the address of a computer that attaches to a remote NW. Each computer that handles a packet resolves a nexthop address before sending

Address Resolution Techniques

Different methods needed
To resolve a PRA to an Ethernet address differs from the method used to resolve a PRA to an ATM address

AR algorithms can be grouped into three categories: Table lookup

Bindings or mappings are stored in a table in memory

Closed-form computation
HWA can be computed from the protocol address using basic Boolean and arithmetic operations

Message exchange
Computers exchange messages across a NW for AR; request and reply messages

AR With Table Lookup

Table is an array with a pair of ( P, H ) entries
P PRA H equivalent HWA

A separate binding table is used for each NW Table in next Figure corresponds to a NW with prefix 197.15.3.0 / 24. Each IP address has 197.15.3 prefix
We can save space by omitting the prefix from table entries

Chief advantage of the table lookup is generality

a table can store the address bindings for an arbitrary set arbitrary no. of PRAs can map to an arbitrary no. of HWA

AR With Table Lookup (cont)

Sequential search for a match for a given PRA For large NWs a sequential search requires excessive CPU time
For computational efficiency We can use hashing or direct indexing

Administrators may choose non-sequential numbers for PRA to help identify the purpose of a computer, e.g.
hosts with suffixes < 200 , while routers with suffixes > 200 host suffix from an IP address as an index into the array

To prevent an illegal PRA from causing a subscript error

must check to ensure the suffix is in range

AR With Closed-Form Computation

Some technologies use configurable addressing
A NW interface can be assigned a specific HWA values can be chosen to optimize the translation especially, the host portion of PRA can be chosen to be identical to the computer's HWA

HWA can be computed by a Boolean and (&) operation:

HWA = PRA & 0xFF

AR With Message Exchange

A request HWA corresponding to a PRA Reply carries the corresponding HWA Where should an AR request be sent? Most protocols choose one of two possible designs
A NW may include one or more servers
contact servers in turns broadcasts its request to all servers

Each computer on the NW participates by agreeing to answer resolution requests for its address:
broadcasts a request on the NW, all machines examine If request matches a computer's address, then responds

Centralization versus distributed mechanism ?

Address Resolution Protocol

TCP/IP can use any of the three methods depending on the addressing scheme used by HW
Table lookup to resolve PRA across a WAN Closed-form computation for configurable NWs Message exchange on LAN with static/dynamic addressing

TCP/IP has an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), which defines two message types:
A request for a HWA correspond to an PRA (namely IP address) A reply returning the HWA

ARP Message Delivery

An ARP request message should
Be placed in a HW frame and broadcast to all computers

All receive the request and examines the IP address

The computer mentioned in the request sends a response; All others discard the request

The ARP response is not broadcast

Response is sent directly back to the computer that issued the request

ARP Message Format

ARP describes the general form for messages,
and specifies how to determine the details for each type of HW

To increase the generality of ARP

the designers included an address length field for PRA and HWA

ARP is not restricted to IP addresses or specific HWA

In practice, these generality of ARP is seldom used: ARP is almost always used to bind a 32-bit IP address (a PRA) to a 48-bit Ethernet address (a HWA)

Sending An ARP Message

When sending an ARP, the message travels inside a HW frame The ARP message is treated as data being transported
the NW HW does not know about the ARP message format and does not examine the contents of individual fields

Placing a message inside a frame for transport is called encapsulation

an ARP message is encapsulated directly in a HW frame

Figure 19.7 illustrates the concept

Identifying ARP Frames

How does a host know whether an incoming frame contains an ARP message?
The type field specifies that the frame contains an ARP msg

Sender must assign the appropriate value to the type field before transmitting the frame Receiver examine the type field in each incoming frame Figure 19.8 illustrates the concept

Processing An Incoming ARP Message

Receiver perform two steps when a message arrives
extracts the sender's address binding checks to see if the sender's address is present in the cache

ARP contains a further optimization:

after a reply to an ARP request, adds to its cache for later use

Most computer communication involves two-way traffic

if a message travels from one computer to another, probability is high that a reply will travel back

Because memory constraints

only the target of an ARP request perform caching