Question

One student has designed a new transport-layer protocol, NTLP, that is completely different from the TCP or UDP. He then creates a packet that has a physical-layer header, a data-link-layer header, and an IP header. This packet contains the NTLP header and the application data payload. The packet is sent to the destination IP address as indicated in the IP header. Will this packet be delivered to the destination IP address indicated in the IP header? Please justify your answer.

Answer 1

Network layer is responsible for delivering packets from one network node to a node present on a different network, by making different routing decisions at various hops in between and choosing the optimal path. Logical addressing (IP address) is also also done by this layer.

Now, the question asks that physical layer header, data link layer header and network layer header has been added, then it will be delivered to destination IP address or not?? Of course, it will be delivered, because to deliver a packet to the destination IP address, all the headers are present in the packet required in this situation. To deliver a packet to the destination IP, we need headers upto layer 3 i.e. network layer only. Transport layer header is required to deliver the datagram to the application listening on a specific port, to which the datagram is destined. In this case, we will need the structure of NTLP header, which is not required for this questio. This question is about delivery of message to IP address only.

So the answer is yes.