The purpose of the network layer is to help route messages between different local networks. Central to this layer is the concept of exclusive network addresses, where every terminal connected to the ...

The current IP address scheme of 32-bit words is fast becoming inadequate. It would appear that 2 32 = 4 294 967 296 combinations of addresses should be enough for everybody, but in practice this is ...

Do you remember when we used multi-protocol routing for IPX, AppleTalk, and TCP/IP running on the same network? In the 1980s and early 1990s many enterprises had multiple protocols running on the ...

The data transfer in a TCP/IP network is usually block-based. From a programmer’s point of view, sending data means issuing a series of “send data block” requests. On a system level, sending an ...

Ethernet is a layer 2 data link protocol that is widely used with the TCP/IP protocol, which resides at layers 3 and 4. To understand network communications, it is essential to learn about the ...

Getting started on designing a network is a task of formidable proportions, but all the more so if you are looking to build a secure IT network. Often, IT system administrators are not fully familiar ...

TCP wrappers are intended to provide wrapper daemons that can be installed without any changes to existing software. Most TCP/IP applications depend on the client/server model — i.e., when a client ...

Like many words in the English language, “network” and “protocol” have different meanings, depending on the context. In the context of digital communications, Merriam-Webster defines network as “a ...

You're probably familiar with the Internet Protocol. After all, it's the "IP" in IPv4 and IPv6. The set of rules that routes data across networks so that it gets to the correct destination. The ...