When a computer X sends data through a network to computer Y the data goes down through the OSI layer. This is ok. I understand. But once the data is put on the media as eletric signals then how does the computer Y know what to reassmble, given the headers and trailers of the data model generated in OSI, once it is put on the electric media at layer 1 does not exist any more?
The physical layer is just 1's and 0's as you say - the trick is that there is a pattern that tells the receiver that this is the start of a packet. This is usual referred to as 'Framing'.
Once the receiver knows that, it simply reads in as many bits as its needs for the Layer 2 header and it then has that and so on.
The headers are clear in a typical OSI or networking diagrams, e.g. (https://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=2738463):
So the way the first two layers work on the receiver is:
layer 1 just recognises whether the signal is a one or a zero and creates the stream of ones and zeros.
layer 2 reads this stream and when it recognises the start pattern it then know the following bits are the header and so on and hence it can identify the frames.
You can see examples of start and stop patterns online e.g. (http://sinauonline.50webs.com/Cisco/Cisco%20Exploration%20Sem1Chap7.html):
Related
I am studying VLAN. After hours of searching, I know 802.1Q doesn't encapsulate the original frame, instead it adds a 32-bit field between the source MAC address and the“EtherType” field of the original frame. But I can't figure out why. Can somebody explain to me why 802.1Q doesn't encapsulate the original frame? Thanks a lot.
The predecessor to 802.1q was Cisco's ISL. ISL did fully encapsulate the frame. Which means when any device was receiving an ISL frame, it must be able to understand the ISL tag, or else the whole frame is considered malformed.
In 802.1q, the first 12 bytes of the frame, whether it is tagged or not, is always the same.
To illustrate exactly what the tag modifies, here is the Packet Capture of a frame without the tag, then the same frame with the tag:
The bracketed portion in orange is all from the original frame. The bracketed portion in green is what the 802.1q tag adds to the frame.
Notice that in both cases, the first 12 bytes are the Destination MAC address and the Source MAC address.
Moreover, in both cases, the next 2 bytes of the frame are a "EtherType" field, which indicate the next protocol encapsulated in the datagram.
This means that whether a transit device understands 802.1q tags or not, the processing for that frame does not change. Which means 802.1q tags will still "work" through a device that...
is older, and doesn't support or understand 802.1q tags
is not configured to read/look for a particular tag
is built to only inspect the first 12 bytes of any frame so it can make a line-speed decision on how to forward the packet, which is the strategy in Cut-Through switching.
Overall, it allows the implementation and standardization of VLANs and VLAN Tagging without having to patch every device ever created that does Layer 2 processing to teach them how to interpret a "fully encapsulated VLAN tagging strategy" (like ISL). Instead, the devices that need to support VLANs can be patched to understand 802.1q, and all the other devices in transit can simply continue to operate without any fuss.
Granted, these days it is pretty rare to come across a host or switch that doesn't understand VLANs, but consider it from the perspective from when the concept of VLANs and Tagging were first invented.
Two words commonly used in networking world - Packets and frames.
Can anyone please give the detail difference between these two words?
Hope it might sounds silly but does it mean as below
A packet is the PDU(Protocol Data Unit) at layer 3 (network layer - ip packet) of the networking OSI model.
A frame is the PDU of layer 2 (data link) of the OSI model.
Packets and Frames are the names given to Protocol data units (PDUs) at different network layers
Segments/Datagrams are units of data in the Transport Layer.
In the case of the internet, the term Segment typically refers to TCP, while Datagram typically refers to UDP. However Datagram can also be used in a more general sense and refer to other layers (link):
Datagram
A self-contained, independent entity of data carrying sufficient information to be routed from the source to the destination computer without reliance on earlier exchanges between this source and destination computer andthe transporting network.
Packets are units of data in the Network Layer (IP in case of the Internet)
Frames are units of data in the Link Layer (e.g. Wifi,
Bluetooth, Ethernet, etc).
A packet is a general term for a formatted unit of data carried by a network. It is not necessarily connected to a specific OSI model layer.
For example, in the Ethernet protocol on the physical layer (layer 1), the unit of data is called an "Ethernet packet", which has an Ethernet frame (layer 2) as its payload. But the unit of data of the Network layer (layer 3) is also called a "packet".
A frame is also a unit of data transmission. In computer networking the term is only used in the context of the Data link layer (layer 2).
Another semantical difference between packet and frame is that a frame envelops your payload with a header and a trailer, just like a painting in a frame, while a packet usually only has a header.
But in the end they mean roughly the same thing and the distinction is used to avoid confusion and repetition when talking about the different layers.
Actually, there are five words commonly used when we talk about layers of reference models (or protocol stacks): data, segment, packet, frame and bit. And the term PDU (Protocol Data Unit) is a generic term used to refer to the packets in different layers of the OSI model. Thus PDU gives an abstract idea of the data packets. The PDU has a different meaning in different layers still we can use it as a common term.
When we come to your question, we can call all of them by using the general term PDU, but if you want to call them specifically at a given layer:
Data: PDU of Application, Presentation and Session Layers
Segment: PDU of Transport Layer
Packet: PDU of network Layer
Frame: PDU of data-link Layer
Bit: PDU of physical Layer
Here is a diagram, since a picture is worth a thousand words:
Consider TCP over ATM. ATM uses 48 byte frames, but clearly TCP packets can be bigger than that. A frame is the chunk of data sent as a unit over the data link (Ethernet, ATM). A packet is the chunk of data sent as a unit over the layer above it (IP). If the data link is made specifically for IP, as Ethernet and WiFi are, these will be the same size and packets will correspond to frames.
Packet
A packet is the unit of data that is routed between an origin and a destination on the Internet or any other packet-switched network. When any file (e-mail message, HTML file, Graphics Interchange Format file, Uniform Resource Locator request, and so forth) is sent from one place to another on the Internet, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer of TCP/IP divides the file into "chunks" of an efficient size for routing. Each of these packets is separately numbered and includes the Internet address of the destination. The individual packets for a given file may travel different routes through the Internet. When they have all arrived, they are reassembled into the original file (by the TCP layer at the receiving end).
Frame
1) In telecommunications, a frame is data that is transmitted between network points as a unit complete with addressing and necessary protocol control information. A frame is usually transmitted serial bit by bit and contains a header field and a trailer field that "frame" the data. (Some control frames contain no data.)
2) In time-division multiplexing (TDM), a frame is a complete cycle of events within the time division period.
3) In film and video recording and playback, a frame is a single image in a sequence of images that are recorded and played back.
4) In computer video display technology, a frame is the image that is sent to the display image rendering devices. It is continuously updated or refreshed from a frame buffer, a highly accessible part of video RAM.
5) In artificial intelligence (AI) applications, a frame is a set of data with information about a particular object, process, or image. An example is the iris-print visual recognition system used to identify users of certain bank automated teller machines. This system compares the frame of data for a potential user with the frames in its database of authorized users.
I have been looking for an answer regarding this issue, I know why the need to have the checksum computed at both layer 3 and 4. Layer 4 computes the checksum considering the TCP Header, Data and Pusedo header. Layer 3's checksum only is concenered about IP header, however layer 2's checksum (FCS) considers the Layer 2's header and Data (which is TCP Header, IP header and the application data). Can't we only compute the checksum for the layer 2 header only.
Corruption may occur during processing within the same layer or during passing the data as payload to the underlying layer. For the underlying layer, the received data would seem perfectly valid, since it has no information about how actually valid (layer+1) data looks like. So, every layer needs its own checksum.
There are a few things I don't understand about 64/66bit encoding, and failed to find the answers to on the web. Any help/links would be greatly appreciated:
i) how is the start of a frame recognised? I don't think it can be by the initial 10/01 bits called the preamble on wikipedia because you cannot tell them apart (if an idle link is 0, then 0000 10 and 000 01 0 look rather similar). I expect the end of a frame is indicated by a control word, with the rest of the bits perhaps used for the CRC?
ii) how do the scramblers synchronise, and how do they avoid scrambling the same packet the same way? Or to put this another way, why is not possible for a malicious user to induce substantial packet loss by carefully choosing a bad message?
iii) this might have been answered in ii), but if a packet is sent to a switch, and then onto another host, is it scrambled the same way both times?
Once again, many thanks in advance
Layers
First of all the OSI model needs to be clear.
The ethernet frame is a data link layer, while the 64b/66b encoding is part of the physical layer (More precisely the PCS of the physical layer)
The physical layer doesn't know anything about the start of a frame. It sees only data. (The start of an ethernet frame are data bytes which contain the preamble.)
64b/66b encoding
Now let's assume that the link is up and running.
In this case the idle link is not full of '0'-s. (In that case the link wouldn't be self-synchronous) Idle messages (idle characters and/or synchronization blocks ie control information) are sent over the idle link. (The control information encoded with 0b10 preamble) (This is why the emitted spectrum and power dissipation don't depend on if the link is in idle state or not)
So a start of a new frame acts like following:
The link sends idle information. (with 0b10 preamble)
Upper layer (data link layer) sends the frame (in 64bit chunks of data) to physical layer.
The physical layer sends the data (with 0b01 preamble) over the link.
(Note that physical layer frequently inserts control (sync) symbols into the raw frame even during a data burst)
Synchronization
Before data transmission 64b/66b encoded lane must be initialized. This initialization includes the lane initialization which the block synchronization. Xilinx's Aurora's specification (P34) is an example of link initialization.
Briefly receiver tries to match the sync character in different bit-position, and when it match multiple times it reports link-up.
Note, that the 64b/66b encoding uses self-synchronous scrambler. This is why the scrambler (itself) doesn't need to know anything about where we are in the data stream. If you run a self-synchronous (de-)scrambler long enough, it produces the decoded bit stream.
Maliciousness
Note, that 64b/66b encoding is not an encryption. This scrambling won't protect you from eavesdropping/tamper. (Encryption should placed at higher level of the OSI model)
Same packet multiple times
Because the scrambler is in different state/seed when you sending the same packet second time, the two encoded packet will differ. (Theoretically we can creates packets, which sets back the shift register of the scramble, but we need to consider the control symbols, so practically this is impossible.)
The Ethernet II frame format does not contain a length field, and I'd like to understand how the end of a frame can be detected without it.
Unfortunately, I have no idea of physics, but the following sounds reasonable to me: we assume that Layer 1 (Physical Layer) provides us with a way of transmitting raw bits in such a way that it is possible to distinguish between the situation where bits are being sent and the situation where nothing is sent (if digital data was coded into analog signals via phase modulation, this would be true, for example - but I don't know if this is really what's done). In this case, an ethernet card could simply wait until a certain time intervall occurs where no more bits are being transmitted, and then decide that the frame transmission has to be finished.
Is this really what's happening?
If yes: where can I find these things, and what are common values for the length of "certain time intervall"? Why does IEEE 802.3 have a length field?
If not: how is it done instead?
Thank you for your help!
Hanno
Your assumption is right. The length field inside the frame is not needed for layer1.
Layer1 uses other means to detect the end of a frame which vary depending on the type of physical layer.
with 10Base-T a frame is followed by a TP_IDL waveform. The lack of further Manchester coded data bits can be detected.
with 100Base-T a frame is ended with an End of Stream Delimiter bit pattern that may not occur in payload data (because of its 4B/5B encoding).
A rough description you can find e.g. here:
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/01120a.pdf "Ethernet Theory of Operation"