The Upward Migration Essay, Research Paper

The Upward Migration

Whether or not it has anything to say, the world wants to be connected. Royal Messengers, Pony Express riders, door-to-door mailmen, radio, and television all had their glory days, and now it’s the internet’s turn. At a very rapid rate, the internet’s population is increasing, and our available address base is shrinking.

Every device connected to the internet needs an address, currently an IP address: a 32 bit logical address broken up into octets, for example:

127.0.0.1

This number is a representation of the binary address that the internet device will actually use:

127 = 01111111

0 = 00000000

0 = 00000000

1 = 00000001

or 01111111000000000000000000000001

(Graham)

It isn’t difficult to see why the octet quartering is necessary for human comprehension. These addresses are split into classes, which gives structure to the way they (the IP address ranges) are dispersed. Class A addresses are the largest group, providing for 16.7 million (224) contiguous addresses, identified by a first bit of “1”. The next largest class is Class B, allowing for 65.5 thousand (216) contiguous addresses, identified by the first two bits, “10”. The last (common) network is Class C, allowing for 256 (28) contiguous addresses, and is identified by the first three bits “110”.

Class A Class B Class C Class D

Addresses Avail. 16,777,216 65,563 256 Variable

Networks Avail. 128 16,384 2,097,152 268,435,456

Bit Identifier 0xxxxxxx 10xxxxxx 110xxxxx 1110xxxx

These IP addresses are 32 bits in length, and the bits are divided up as follows:

Version:

Currently, this can be assumed to be 4, but this will be changed by the IP6 migration. Other values are in this chart:

Decimal Denotation Version

0 Reserved

1-3 Unassigned

4 IP Internet Protocol

5 ST ST Datagram

6 IP6 Internet Protocol version 6 [formerly SIP]

7 TP/IX Transport Protocol/Internet “Next”

8 PIP The “P” Internet Protocol

9 TUBA “TCP and UDP over Bigger Addresses”

10-14 Unassigned

15 Reserved

Header Length:

Necessary to specify where the header ends and begins, since the Options bit area is of variable length.

Type Of Service:

Contains flags for Delay, Throughput, Reliability, and Cost, which make routing possible.

Total Length:

The length of the IP datagram.

Flags:

These flags are for “Fragment” or “Don’t Fragment.” Allows or prevents breaking up of IP packets.

Fragment Offset:

Controls the defragmentation the IP packet.

Time To Live:

The TTL flag accounts for a packet’s mortality. Each hop the packet experiences reduces the TTL flag by one. Upon reaching 0, a packet is dropped.

Protocol:

The two most common are UDP and TCP.

Header checksum:

Data integrity.

Source Address:

Source of the datagram

Destination Address:

Intended recipient of the datagram.

Options:

Variable length items such as security, source route, record route, and timestamp.

Data:

Variable length- the content of the datagram.

The version 6 header looks like this:

The IP6 header is somewhat minimalist in comparison to the IP4 header, but the new features are these:

Priority:

Permits administration of many packets from the same source based on “priority,” based on this scale:

0 Uncharacterized Traffic

1 Filler Traffic [news, banners, etc.]

2 Unattended data transfer [e-mail]

3 Reserved

4 Unattended Bulk Transfer [FTP, NFS, CODA]

5 Reserved

6 Interactive traffic [Telnet, Archie]

7 Internet Control Traffic [routing, SNMP]

8-15 Used for prioritization from a source that transmits without specifying Priorities. Currently no recommendations.

Flow Label:

An experimental attempt at sending datagrams with preferred routes.

Payload Length:

Specifies the length of the datagram itself, not including the header.

Hop Limit:

TTL with a more direct name.

Source Address:

128 bit specification of source.

Destination Address:

128 bit specification of recipient.

This new addressing scheme allows for 3.4 X 1038 unique addresses, with no specified method of subnetting or supernetting. But with this many addresses, it shouldn’t be necessary.

W o r k s C i t e d

Black, Uyless. Emerging Communication Technologies. Prentice Hall : New Jersey (1997).

Clarke, David James IV. CNE Study guide for NetWare 5. Novell Press: San Jose (1999).

Graham, Buck. TCP/IP Addressing. Academic Press: New York (1997).

Halabi, Bassam. Internet Routing Architectures. New Riders Press: Indianapolis (1997).

Stallings, William; Van Slyke, Richard. Business Data Communications. Prentice Hall: New Jersey (1998).

Header representations from Graham’s TCP/IP Addressing.