I connected two machines via a network cable. I need to get an ARP request data via Wireshark. When I pinged the IP of the other machine, I get the ARP request on Wireshark. But, it is not broadcasting a message. It targets pinged IP address directly. I think a LAN with only two machines does not need to do a broadcast. Am I right? Can any one explain this to me?
Always in ARP packet, MAC address will be broadcast not IP. As it is used to learn MAC address of other host whose IP address is known, ARP packet needs to have valid IP address rather than broadcast IP. You can check ARP packet example at below path:
http://wiki.wireshark.org/AddressResolutionProtocol
Hope this clears your doubt.
Related
I'm writting a simple network sniffer that should be able to reconstruct network structure.
When an interface has set up a DHCP, I can easily read interface settings such as client IP address, subnet mask, DNS server etc. by catching a DHCP packet and analysing it.
When an interface has a static IP, I'm catching ARP Announcement packet to get static IP address and then ARP request from the gateway, to get geteway IP address. I'm also saving MAC addresses.
My problem is: how to get subnet mask from one or more static IPs in the network and the gateway address. Or by caching some packets. I didn't see packets that could have such informations.
I also need DNS address, but it's less important.
The program should work in OpenWRT (C++).
My problem is: how to get subnet mask from one or more static IPs in the network and the gateway address.
Possibly, you can't.
If the sniffed network uses DHCP then you can monitor the DHCP requests (which should be broadcast) for their subnet mask and router fields which mirror the server's offer.
Without DHCP, all you can do is take an educated guess. If your passive sniffer registers broadcasts from addresses 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.29, you know that the prefix length is at most /27. It could also be anything shorter, down to /16, with potential addresses being (currently) absent or silent. The prefix could be even short than /16 if the network admin is ignoring RFC 1918. With public addresses you're mostly on your own.
If you can scan actively you could send ARP requests and see which ones get answered - you'd also see nodes that don't originate any traffic/broadcasts.
The gateway is also just a guess. In a network with mostly Internet-bound traffic, the default gateway is most likely the one being ARPed most often. If the network traffic is mostly server-centric, ARP requests for their addresses outnumber the ones for any gateway.
Your sniffer is severely limited when it is just attached to a switch and listening to broadcast packets only. If the sniffer manages to listen to all traffic on the network (via a monitoring/mirroring switch port) then you can easily identify the gateway by its MAC address that packets for arbitrary IP addresses is sent to and vice versa.
As above, if you can actively send probe packets you could test the gateway(s) with packets that they accept (and hopefully forward) and which ones they reject.
Consider the following figure:
Now, suppose that the host with IP address 111.111.111.111 has to send a packet to 222.222.222.222. Here is what I think will happen:
The sending host will determine that the destination machine is on some other subnet, and hence there won't be an entry for it in it's ARP table. This is done by ANDing the destination IP address with the mask of the sending host's subnet, and then checking for the subnet address.
If it is determined that the destination host is determined to be off the host's subnet, then it will send the frame with the destination address MAC address of the left interface of the middle gateway. My first question: How does the host know the MAC address of this interface?
The gateway will receive the frame, and send it to it's interface on the right. In the frame, the destination and source IP addresses will remain the same, but the source MAC address will be of the left interface, and the destination MAC address will be of the right interface.
The interface to the right will receive the frame, and then will replace the source MAC address with the interface address, and the destination MAC address as the MAC address of??? The router or will be consult its ARP table to find the destination MAC address.
What is the use of the routers in between? Are frames also sent to them using their interfaces' MAC address? For example, the host with IP 111.111.111.111 would first send the frame to the router using its MAC, and then the frame is routed forward.
I am so confused right now. Can someone clear these things up?
Thanks!
Here are some comments/answers:
How does the host know the MAC address of this interface?
It uses ARP for that, but instead of MAC of the destination IP address it requests MAC of the middle gateway.
and the destination MAC address as the MAC address of???
The right host uses the same technique: it sends the ARP request to get a MAC of the middle gateway.
What is the use of the routers in between?
There is just one router and two switches in the picture. Switches are used to split collision domains, while routers are used to split broadcast domains. More on that on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_domain
I recently found that packets are encapsulated within ethernet frames. Packets use IP addresses, frames use MAC addresses.
Why aren't IP addresses used in ethernet frames for routing? I understand that when trying to access a basic website, the computer goes to a DNS to find the IP address relevant to the user-entered domain name. How do computers find the correct MAC address?
Really, how are MAC addresses used in routing internet traffic?
Thanks
IP packets aren't always encapsulated in Ethernet frames. There are other physical media such as ISDN, etc. When packets are routed, IP addresses are used to determine the next hop and the physical address is used to physically identify the interface serving as the next hop. Only the former (determining next-hop) is usually called routing.
To answer your second part, MAC addresses are discovered through ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) in IPv4 & ND6 (Neighbor Discovery) in IPv6.
Update:
The destination IP address in the IP header is the final destination. In the process of routing (at each hop), you get the next hop's IP address to (eventually) reach the final destination from the routing table (this could be a default gateway's IP address). To send the packet to the next hop, you need its MAC address. While hopping through intermediate links, the IP address in the IP header don't change - only the MAC addresses change.
Bit late but still here is my answer :) ...
To send data you need two address, the MAC address and the IP address.
Basically the sending host will ARP for a MAC address, this occurs when the local host doesn't know the MAC address of the host it has an IP address for or it will ARP for the default gateway MAC address (if it doesn't already know it) if the IP address in on a different subnet/ network. Once it obtains a MAC address the IP packet is encapsulated in a L2 frame and sent across the media. If the IP packet is meant for a host on a different subnet/ network, it will be sent to the default gateway, this router will de-encapsulate the L2 frame (remove and discard it) check the IP address and will forward it. For the router to do this it needs a MAC address to send it over the media, It will look up the next hop in it's routing table, encapsulate the IP packet with the same source and destination IP address that was sent from the original host into a new L2 frame. This time the MAC address for the source address will be that of the forwarding interface of the router, and the receiving interface of the next hop will be the destination MAC address. This will continue from hop to hop until it reaches the final host, each time the MAC addresses will change, but the original IP address will remain the same.
Here's the key point -- there can be more types of packets than INTERNET traffic. You could be using IPX, which is non-routable. How do clients identify each other? By the MAC address.
Routing != Addressing, which is really where the MAC comes into play.
In order to be routed, the OSI model adds a layer to allow for path discovery to the next gateway. This layer is responsible for routing, but knows nothing about the MAC address.
As a side note, at the hardware level, MAC addresses ARE used by switches, but not for routing. From How Stuff Works:
The switch gets the first packet of data from Node A. It reads the MAC
address and saves it to the lookup table for Segment A. The switch now
knows where to find Node A anytime a packet is addressed to it. This
process is called learning.
In this way, a switch can make sure that traffic is only outputted to the correct port. This isn't accomplishing routing so much as reducing network congestion. Only broadcasts and traffic destined specifically for that MAC address should be sent out the port.
Recently I have been thinking about the same and came upon this question. Here is my answer to this question. Actually MAC address is needed for correctly sending the packet to right destination. This is specially true when packet is needed to sent over a VLAN. There can be multiple switches/routes connected on that VLAN over multiple physical interfaces. However IP Routing is unaware of these physical interface. It only knows about the logical connectivity. For example, route 10.10.10.0/24 is reachable via VE/VIF0.10(logical VLAN interface) and/or nexthop neighbor is 20.20.20.1. There could be multiple interfaces under VLAN 10. Then to which interface packet is sent out? This is where ARP comes in the picture. ARP helps to discover the MAC address associated with the next-hop IP address. When switch/router learns the nexthop MAC. along with that it learns the physical interface also via which that MAC is reachable. Hence while routing packet, firstly MAC corresponding to the destination IP is searched and then the physical interface associated with that MAC is searched. Finally packet is sent out via that physical interface. The MAC corresponding to that destination IP is used as destination MAC. In absence of this, routed packets will always be flooded in the outgoing VLAN.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Answer: MAC addresses are not used in the process of routing of a packet.
segment -> transport layer (TCP ports)
packets -> network layer (IP addresses)
frame -> data link layer (MAC addresses)
bits -> physical layer (electric/optical signals)
Create your own packet/segment visit http://wirefloss.com/wireit/
There are 2 models (TCP/IP and ISO/OSI)
In detail:
Your app has some data. This is encapsulated by mentioned layers. Encapsulation means that a header with fields is added at each layer. If your data never leave the local network the MAC address will be the same. Once your data needs to be delivered outside your network the frame header is stripped by router and is replaced by router fields.
UPDATE 2021: Some people seems never heard of ISO OSI model and put this answer as incorrect.
I am given to understand that in order to send data using the TCP/IP protocol suite you need two IP addresses (sender and receiver). My question is, how does communication happen on an isolated LAN. Say I have two PCs connected with an ethernet cable (There is no DHCP sever and IP addresses weren't set manually), do they choose random IP addresses (to please the TCP/IP suite), or do they send IP packets with emtpy TO and FROM fields? or something else?
If you want to use IP, you must have an IP address. Most devices will auto-assign themselves an address in the 169.254.0.0/16 block if a DHCP server is unavailable.
You should also note though that there are many other protocols available, such as IPX/SPX, but most of them are not used these days.
Working on Cisco ASA 5510 device I tried to use the broadcast IP address of a Public Network for NAT Static configuration and IOS allowed me to do it, but from outside it didn't work. After a while I changed the broadcast IP to an usable IP and it started to work.
I understand that on a physical interface we can't configured a broadcast IP address, but for NAT we have to do it, otherwise we loose many Public IP addresses from networks with /29 prefix.
I understand you need to squeeze one more IP address for you to use, however most routers don't support forwarding broadcast traffic, for a simple fact, if that is allowed, anyone can send a ping to someone's broadcast address and every host in that subnet has to reply, that is not acceptable.
Other Internet routers may not tell that IP address is broadcast or not, but think about your ISP router for your access circuit, it has to know that IP address is a broadcast, it has to know your ip range in order to set it up. And when someone send you a ping, the router will say: hey, that is a broadcast address on my client's interface, first thing I know as a router, I must not forward a broadcast, thus drop it.
Hope it helps.