Question

What kind of network management protocols are available? What information can these protocols provide? Explain it with example.

Answer 1

In networking, a protocol is a set of rules for formatting and processing data. Network protocols are like a common language for computers. The computers within a network may use vastly different software and hardware; however, the use of protocols enables them to communicate with each other regardless.

1. TCP and UDP

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) are used to transmit network data to and from server and client applications. The main difference between the two protocols is that TCP uses a connection-oriented transport, while UDP uses a connectionless type of communication. When the TCP protocol is used, a special connection is opened up between two network devices, and the channel remains open to transmit data until it is closed.

Some common TCP/IP applications are shown with the type of protocol they use.

• FTP(file transfer protocol):It is the standard network protocol used for the transfer of computer files between a client and server on a computer network.

• SSH (Secure Shell): It is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. The best known example application is for remote login to computer systems by users.

• SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol): It  is an Internet standard for electronic mail (email) transmission. First defined by RFC 821 in 1982, it was last updated in 2008 with Extended SMTP additions by RFC 5321, which is the protocol in widespread use today.

• DNS (Domain Name Service): It  is a hierarchical decentralized naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network.

• HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol): It is an application protocol for distributed, collaborative, and hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web.

• HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure): It is an adaptation of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is encrypted by Transport Layer Security (TLS), or formerly, its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). The protocol is therefore also often referred to as HTTP over TLS, or HTTP over SSL

   2. DNS

TCP/IP networks communicate with hosts using their IP addresses. It would be very difficult for someone to have to memorize the different IP addresses for the hosts they want to connect to on the network. A Domain Name Service (DNS) makes it easier to identify a host by a domain name. A domain name uses words rather than numbers to identify Internet hosts.

3. NAT (Network Address Translation)

NAT translates one IP address to another. This can be a source address or a destination address. Two basic implementations of NAT can be used: static and dynamic

• Static NAT

With static NAT, a manual translation is performed by an address translation device, translating one IP address to a different one. Typically, static NAT is used to translate destination IP addresses in packets as they come into your network, but you can translate source addresses also.

• Dynamic NAT

With static address translation, you need to build the translations manually. If you have 1000 devices, you need to create 1000 static entries in the address translation table, which is a lot of work. Typically, static translation is done for inside resources that outside people want to access. When inside users access outside resources, dynamic translation is typically used. In this situation, the global address assigned to the internal user isn’t that important, since outside devices don’t directly connect to your internal users—they just return traffic to them that the inside user requested.

What information can these protocols provide? Explain it with example.

The amount of protocol information that must be transmitted in a data communication network to keep track of source and receiver addresses and of the starting and stopping of messages. Assuming Poisson message arrivals between each communicating source-receiver pair, we find a lower bound on the required protocol information per message. This lower bound is the sum of two terms, one for the message length information, which depends only on the distribution of message lengths, and the other for the message start information, which depends only on the product of the source-receiver pair arrival rate and the expected delay for transmitting the message. Two strategies are developed which, in the limit of large numbers of sources and receivers, almost meet the lower bound on protocol information.

1. The message would start at the top of the protocol stack on your computer and work it's way downward.
2. If the message to be sent is long, each stack layer that the message passes through may break the message up into smaller chunks of data. This is because data sent over the Internet (and most computer networks) are sent in manageable chunks. On the Internet, these chunks of data are known as packets.
3. The packets would go through the Application Layer and continue to the TCP layer. Each packet is assigned a port number. Ports will be explained later, but suffice to say that many programs may be using the TCP/IP stack and sending messages. We need to know which program on the destination computer needs to receive the message because it will be listening on a specific port.
4. After going through the TCP layer, the packets proceed to the IP layer. This is where each packet receives it's destination address, 5.6.7.8.
5. Now that our message packets have a port number and an IP address, they are ready to be sent over the Internet. The hardware layer takes care of turning our packets containing the alphabetic text of our message into electronic signals and transmitting them over the phone line.
6. On the other end of the phone line your ISP has a direct connection to the Internet. The ISPs router examines the destination address in each packet and determines where to send it. Often, the packet's next stop is another router. More on routers and Internet infrastructure later.
7. Eventually, the packets reach computer 5.6.7.8. Here, the packets start at the bottom of the destination computer's TCP/IP stack and work upwards.
8. As the packets go upwards through the stack, all routing data that the sending computer's stack added (such as IP address and port number) is stripped from the packets.
9. When the data reaches the top of the stack, the packets have been re-assembled into their original form, "Hello computer 5.6.7.8!"