CS 382: Network-Centric Computing

Overview of the Internet

Dr. Zafar Ayyub Qazi

Spring 2020

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ACK: Slides use some material from Scott Shenker (UC Berkeley)
 Goal of Today’s Lecture
l To introduce you to basic networking language

l Understand the challenges the Internet is solving

l Without explaining the solutions. We will study the
solutions in subsequent classes.

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 Basic Networking Components
l End systems: they send/receive packets
l Will also sometimes use the term hosts for end-systems

l Switchers/routers: they forward packets

l Routing decisions ensure packets reach destination
l Will use terms switch and router interchangeably

l Links: connect end systems to switches, and

switches to each other

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 car navigator

heart pacemaker

smartphone
end-system

iPad
Linux server MAC laptop
Windows PC
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end-system switch

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 link
phone
lines

end-system switch
fibers
wireless
cable TV links
lines

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 Who runs the network?

link

phone company
end-system switch

university net
cable company

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 What’s the purpose of the Internet?

link

end-system switch
path
packet

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 Underlying purpose of networks…
l Allow two programs on two different end-systems to
exchange data

l Programs (Applications) figure what to do with data

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 Why Does This Matter?
l Separation of concerns design principle:
l Separating a computer program into distinct sections
such that each section addresses a separate concern

l Clean separation of concerns:

l Networking delivers data
l Applications figure what to do with data

l Keeps network fully general (any app works!)

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 Variety of applications
facebook
server world of
warcraft server

instant
messaging
instant messaging

world of warcraft firefox accessing

client facebook
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 Using the network….

while (...) {
while (...) { message = receive( ... );
message = ...; }
send ( message, ... );
}

Talal

Taimoor

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 The Core Task of Internet
l Delivers packets between programs (applications)
on different hosts
l This involves both the network and network stack

l Network: Routers/switches and links

l Network stack: networking software on end-systems

l Stack replicates some router/switch functionality
l Then adds some additional networking functionality…
l ...before handing body of packet to application

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 Packets
l Packets are bags of bits with:
l Header: meaningful to network (and network stack)
l Can be more than one header!
l Body: meaningful only to application

Header Body

Used By Network Used By App

l Body can be bits in a file, image, whatever

l What information goes in a header?

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 Packets Must Be Sent Along Path

link

end-system switch
path
packet

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What Must Header Contain For This?
l Packet must describe where it should be sent

l Requires an address for the destination host

l That’s the only way a router/switch can know

what to do with the packet

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 Packets Must Be Sent Along Path

link

end-system switch
path
packet

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 Fundamental Challenge #1
l Route packets through network to destination

l Given destination address, how does each

switch/router forward packets so that packet
reaches destination?

l When a packet arrives at a router, the routing

table determines which outgoing link the packet
is sent on
l Outgoing link is often referred to as a port
l The word port has two meanings in this lecture
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 Two Meanings of “Port”
l Switches/routers have physical ports:
l Places where links connect to switches

l Network stacks have logical ports:

l Logical places where applications connect to stack
l More about this later …

l Back to routing tables…

l Where do they come from?

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 Routing Protocols (Conceptually)
l Distributed algorithm run between routers

l Gather information about the network topology

l Compute paths through that topology

l Store forwarding information in each router:

l If packet is destined for X, send out this port
l If packet is destined for Y, send out that port
l …

l We call this a routing table

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 Control Plane vs Data Plane
l Control plane: mechanisms used to compute
routing tables (and other forwarding information)
l Inherently global: must know topology to compute
l Routing algorithm is part of the control plane
l Time scale: per network event

l Data plane: using those tables to actually

forward packets
l Inherently local: depends only on arriving packet and
local routing table
l Forwarding mechanism is part of data plane
l Time scale: per packet arrival 21
 Fundamental Challenge #2
l How do you deliver packets reliably?

l Packets can be dropped along the way

l Buffers in router can overflow
l Routers can crash while buffering packets
l Links can garble packets

l How do you make sure packets arrive safely on

an unreliable network?
l Or at least know if they are not delivered….
l Want no false positives, and high chance of success
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 Two Questions about Reliability
l Who is responsible for this? (architecture)
l Network?
l Host?

l How is it implemented? (engineering)

l We will consider both perspectives….

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 Other Important Challenge
l Congestion control
l Hosts on the Internet independently decide at what
rate they will send packets
l How can you make sure that these independent
decisions don’t overload various links?

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 What Have We Missed?
l Consider when you access a web page
l Insert URL into browser (e.g., cnn.com)
l Packets sent to web site (reliably)
l Packets reach application on destination host

l How do you get to the web site?

l URL is user-level name (e.g., cnn.com)
l Network needs address (e.g., where is cnn.com?)

l Must map names to addresses….

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 Mapping Names to Addresses
l URLs are based on the name of the host containing
the content (i.e., cnn.com names a host)

l Before you can send packets to cnn.com, you must

resolve names into the host’s address

l Done by the Domain Name System (DNS)

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 Finishing Our Story
l We now have the address of the web site
l So we can send packets to host
l Are we done?

l When a packet arrives at a host, what does the

host do with it?
l To which program (app) should the packet be sent?

l If the packet header only has the destination

address, how does the host know where to
deliver packet?
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 Of Sockets and Ports
l When a process wants access to the network, it
opens a socket, which is associated with a port
l This is not a physical port, just a logical one

l Socket: an Operating System (OS) mechanism

that connects processes to the networking stack

l Port: number that identifies that particular socket

l The port number is used by the OS to direct

incoming packets
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 Implications for Packet Header
l Packer header includes:
l Destination address and port

l When a packet arrives, packet is delivered to

socket associated with the destination port

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 Separation of Concerns
l Network
l Deliver packets from host to host (based on address)

l Network Stack (OS)

l Deliver packets to appropriate socket (based on port)

l Applications
l Send and receive packets
l Understand content of packet bodies

l Secret of the Internet’s success is getting these

and other abstractions right… 30
 Review of Important Issues
l Routing

l Reliable transport

l Congestion control

l Mapping names to addresses

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Questions?

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