Protocol Review Of Telephone And Data Networks :: Networks Telecommunications

Protocol Review of Telephone and Data Networks The Internet protocol suite is a highly related collection of protocols. It is also commonly referred to as TCP/IP. TCP and IP were the first and primary protocols developed for internetworking. However, it is comprised of many other protocols that collaborate with each other to perform each distinct task required for communication on and to other network components. Based on the network topology and devices that reside on the network, the protocols that will be discussed are IMCP, TCP, IP, UDP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, IMAP4, POP3, SIP, SMTP, SNMP, SSH, and Rlogin. These protocols are integral to Ethernet networks; some are required, some optional, and some to be avoided but replaced with better solutions. The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a network layer protocol. "It is one of the core protocols of the Internet protocol suite." IMCP is primarily used in reporting network errors on the network commonly seen when pinging or using trace routes when trouble shooting connectivity. Transport Control protocol (TCP) is the interface between the application layer and the network layer. TCP provides a reliable connect between the applications and the network. Conversely, UDP does not provide a reliable connection. It sends packets without regards to delivery or sequence. However the advantage of UDP is that it is fast. "While the total amount of UDP traffic found on a typical network is often on the order of only a few percent, numerous key applications use UDP, including the Domain Name System (DNS), the simple network management protocol (SNMP), the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and the Routing Information Protocol (RIP), to name just a few."3 Internet Protocol (IP) is the protocol used for encapsulating the data into a packet, and then assigning a unique address of the source and the destination of the packet in the packet header. "Because of the abstraction provided by encapsulation, IP can be used over a heterogeneous network (i.e., a network connecting two computers can be any mix of Ethernet, ATM, FDDI, Wi-fi, Token ring, etc.) and it makes no difference to the upper layer protocols."5 This is one reason why IP is widely used and accepted in the telecommunication industry. The disadvantage of IP is that it is unreliable in of itself. However combined with the reliability of TCP and the flexibility of MPLS, it makes this disadvantage a moot point.