The bits and bytes of

computer networking
Coursera
Introduction
As humans communicate with each other, computer also communicate
with each other, as same as humans they also have some rules and
semantics for effective communication which we call as Protocols.
Lot of computers together connected for effective communication
comprise a network.
Networking involves ensuring that computers can hear each other.
In this presentation, only five-layer model is considered for better
understanding.
TCP/IP five layer model
The TCP/IP protocol stack models a series of protocol layers for networks and
systems that allows communications between any types of devices. The model
consists of five separate but related layers. The Internet protocol suite is based on
these five layers. TCP/IP says most about the network and transport layers, and a
lot about the application layer. TCP/IP also defines how to interface the network
layer with the data link and physical layers, but is not directly concerned with these
two layers themselves.
Various layers in TCP/IP model
• The Physical layer represents the physical devices that interconnect computers. This includes
the specifications for the networking cables and the connectors that join devices together
along with specifications describing how signals are sent over these connections.
• The Data link layer, in this layer first protocols were introduced, in this layer the signals are
interpreted for further processing. It is also known as network interface or network access
layer.
• The third layer, the network layer is also sometimes called the Internet layer. It's this layer
that allows different networks to communicate with each other through devices known as
routers. A collection of networks connected together through routers is an internetwork or
Internet.
While the data link layer is responsible for getting data across a single link, the network layer is
responsible for getting data delivered across a collection of networks. The most common
protocol used at this layer is known as IP or Internet Protocol.
• The transport layer, while the network layer delivers data between
two individual nodes, the transport layer sorts out which client and
server programs are supposed to get that data.
• The last layer is the application layer, which we also call it as user
interface layer, whatever we have searched for, or whatever we’re
going to receive is in this layer only.
So these all were components of TCP/IP five layer model, for info on OSI
seven layer model, check
https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/standards/osi-model
-overview-543
The network layer
Network layer in the TCP-IP five layer model represents how to get to a
particular address, even though we have MAC addresses for specific
identity but still it’s not ideal solution for the transmission of data
across the globe, it works good in small network but we need some
complicated systems to get things in this ever growing world.
So yeah! In the next few slides, We’ll deep dive into the networking
concepts and will understand how internet works at the core.
IP address
It is a 32 bit long number made of 4 octets each 8 bits long and each octet can
represent the numbers for 0-255, in any case if the number in any octet gets
greater or lower than the specified length then it’s not a valid IP address. Each
octet is separated by a dot this representation is known as dotted decimal
notation.
The most important thing to notice is that IP addresses are not assigned to any
specific device it is assigned to the whole network and any device getting
connected to the network get assigned a address. The address is assigned
automatically to any device this tech is known as dynamic host configuration
protocol or DHCP and the way of doing this is known as dynamic IP address, the
opposite of this is static IP which is generally assigned to the servers and
dynamics for clients.
IP datagram
Since at every level the data packets have their own name, so do the
data packet have it’s name in IP level, IP datagram. The two primary
fields in any datagram is it’s header and payload.
Various components in a datagram
• Version: This is 4 bits long number which specifies the version of the IP datagram basically it’s IPv4 but nowadays it’s IPv6.
• Header length field: This field is also a 4 bits long number and it tells the length of the header.
• Type of service: This field tells us the quality of service or QoS tech. which is essential for the routers to make preference orders and it is
of 8 bits.
• Total length field: This is 16 bit long field which tells us the total length of the datagram it’s attached to. The maximum size of the
datagram is the maximum which one represent with 16 bits long number i.e., 65536.
• Identification number: what if the datagram’s size exceeds the specified max. length then it has to be split into fragments and now it’s
the need of identification number and it assigns a common value to all the fragments and this is a 16 bits long number.
• Flag field: This field represents whether a datagram is fragmented or not and it is 4 bits long.
• Fragmentation offset field: This field is used at the receiving end to get the fragments in order and it is a 12 bits long.
• Time to live field or TTL field: This field represents how many times routers hops the datagram every time when it get hopped the value
gets decremented by value 1 and when the value becomes 0 the router knows that it doesn’t have to hop anymore. It is 8 bits long
number.
• Protocol field: This field is represent the protocol used in the transport layer and it is a 8 bits long number.
• Header checksum field: This field is used to represent the checksum value of the contents of entire IP datagram header, it is 8 bits long.
• IP options field: This is optional and is used to set special characteristics to a datagram.
• Paddling field: This is set of zeroes which is used to represent ensure the header is of correct size.
IP address classes
A IP address is divided into two parts, network ID and host ID. Basically,
the address class is divided into three classes, class A, class B and class
C. In class A, the first octet represents network ID and the next three
octets represents the host ID, class B has first two octets as network ID
and next two has two octets as host ID and class C has first three octets
as network ID and the last represents host ID. In class A represents the
numbers from 0-127, class B represents 128-191 and class C represents
the numbers from 192-223 in their first octets.
Address resolution protocol is used to send the data using MAC address
and IP address using ARP table.
Subnetting
Subnetting is the process of dividing a network into various small
networks(or into various subnets). Gateway routers are the routers
which act as an entry or exit gate for any network. And we know that
many (16777216 individual devices) devices can be connected to a
single network thus a network has to be divided into subnets to
overcome this type of difficulty. And it will also be easy for the gateway
routers to forward the data in that subnet with lower no. of deviecs.
Subnet masks
Basically subnet masks are used to identify the network ID and the host
ID in a IP address. To identify a network ID one need to write the IP
address in octal form and combine it with subnet mask, now the
corresponding 1’s represent the network ID and the corresponding 0’s
represent the host ID. This makes life easier to find the destination
machine and to get the datagram delivered in that network easily.
CIDR stands for classless inter domain routing makes everything easy in
identifying the destination machine what it does is it combines the
subnet mask and network ID to make life easier.
Routing
Data can be transmitted to devices all over the globe because of this
extraordinary devices, routers. Basically, a router contains at least two
interfaces since it’s on two networks, and what it does is first it receives
the data packet next step it examines the destination IP, thereafter it
looks for the destination IP in it’s routing table and last it forwards the
data packet to the destiny.
Now comes the routing table, it is record where the router searches for
the destination MAC address, it contains destination network, next hop,
total hops and interface as it’s rows but a core router may contain a lot
of rows in their routing table.
Interior gateway protocol
The real magic in routing is in the way routing tables are always updated with the information to the destination
via quickest path. Routers use routing protocols to communicate with each other by sending data between
them. There are two routing protocols: interior gateway protocol and exterior gateway protocol. Interior
gateway is further split into two categories: link state routing protocol and distance vector protocol.
Now interior gateway protocols are those which communicate in a single autonomous network. A autonomous
network is a collection of networks operated from a single operator.
And we know that interior gateway protocols are divided into two categories: link state routing and distance
vector, in link state routing protocols each routers advertises the state of the link of their own interfaces the
information about each router is propagated to every other router in the autonomous system, thus routers
using these protocols is supposed to have a larger memory and larger processor. And interior gateway protocol
is OSPF(or open shortest path first). Now the distance vector protocol is an old technique in which a router
sends the routing table which is a list of addresses in terms of hops to it’s every neighbor and in return they give
the distance to that destination via them. In computer science, a list is known as a vector, and thus a router
sends a list of distances so it is named as distance vectors. Some of the distance vector protocols are RIPs(or
routing information protocol) and EIGRPs(or enhanced interior gateway routing protocols)
Exterior gateway protocol
Exterior gateway protocols are used to communicate data between
routers representing the edges of an autonomous system. Since routers
sharing data using interior gateway protocols are all under control of
the same organization. Routers use exterior gateway protocols when
they need to share information across different organizations. Exterior
gateway protocols are really key to the Internet operating how it does
today. So, thanks exterior gateway protocols. A exterior gateway
protocol uses a single protocol for it’s entire network that is, Border
gateway protocol(or BGP).
Non-routable address space
Non-routable address space allows for nodes on such a network to
communicate with each other but no gateway router will attempt to
forward traffic to this type of network.
RFC stands for request for comments and IETF stands for internet
engineering task force.
Introduction to transport and application layer
Till now we have discussed how nodes can transmit data to each other
but we haven’t discussed in that single computer so this is where we
introduce transport and application layer. In short, the transport layer
allows traffic to be directed to specific network applications and the
application layer allows this applications to communicate in a way they
understand.
Here on we’ll discuss about the transport and application layers in the
TCP-IP layer.
The transport layer
Multiplexing and De-multiplexing are the two concepts which makes the
transport layer different from all other layers in the TCP-IP model. Multiplexing
means forwarding of data to many devices at the same time and De-
multiplexing is just the reverse, many devices forward data to a single device.
The transport layer handles these two concepts using ports. A port is 16 bit
number that’s used to traffic data to specific servers connected on the
computer network. Different network services run while listening on specific
ports for incoming requests.
For example, the traditional port for HTTP or unencrypted web traffic is port
80. And for FTP it is port 21.
Ports are normally denoted by a colon after the IP address
TCP segment
As we know that IP datagram is inside a ethernet frame, similarly a TCP
is also in a IP datagram and however there’s another section in TCP
segment’s payload which is the application segment. A TCP segment
consists of a TCP header and TCP payload, a TCP header consist many
other parts we’ll all those parts here.
Dissecting a TCP segment
First of all, the leading parts in a TCP segment are the source and destination ports,
both have their own importance. Thereafter, it comes sequence number which tells
the TCP fragments sequence if they are split into. Then, acknowledgement number
which is almost similar to sequence number but what it’s function is tell what is
expected next to a segment’s fragment. The data offset field comes next, it is a four bit
number which communicates how long the TCP header is for that segment. Then we
have six bits reserved for the TCP flags. The next field is the TCP window which is a 16
bit number and it tells the range of sequence numbers which might be sent before an
acknowledgement is required. Next is 16-bit checksum number. And then we have the
urgent pointer which is used to tell if a fragment is more important than other but it is
not used anywhere in today’s world, and then we have the option field which is used
for complicated flow control protocols. Finally we have the padding section which is
just set of zeroes to ensure data payload section starts at the specified location.
TCP control flags
TCP control flags are used to establish a connection.
• The first is a URG flag, short for urgent, the value of one is considered as the segment to be urgent
here.
• Next is ACK flag, short for acknowledge, the value of one here is to convey that the
acknowledgement number should be examined.
• The third flag is the PSH flag, short for push, in this flag the transmitting wants the receiving end to
push the currently-buffered data to the application on the receiving end as soon as possible.
• The Fourth flag is RST, short for Reset. This means, that one of the sides in a TCP connection hasn't
been able to properly recover from a series of missing or malformed segments.
• The fifth flag is SYN, short for synchronize. This is used at the beginning of the establishment of a
connection and to ensure that the receiving end knows how to examine the sequence number field.
• At last the sixth flag is FIN, short for finish, when this is set to one then it tells the receiving end that
the transmitting end don’t have anything else to send, so the connection can be terminated
Three way hand-shake
The exchange of the SYN, SYN/ACK and ACK sets in a establishing a
connection is known as three way hand shake. A three way hand shake
is to ensure that the both the nodes in the connection can understand
themselves and hence they can send data between them.
And for closing the connection a four way hand shake is done.
TCP socket states
• A socket is the instantiation of an endpoint of the potential TCP connection. LISTEN. Listen means that a TCP
socket is ready and listening for incoming connections. You'd see this on the server side only.
• SYN_SENT. This means that a synchronization request has been sent, but the connection hasn't been established
yet. You'd see this on the client side only.
• SYN_RECEIVED. This means that a socket previously in a listener state, has received a synchronization request and
sent a SYN_ACK back. But it hasn't received the final ACK from the client yet. You'd see this on the server side only.
• ESTABLISHED. This means that the TCP connection is in working order, and both sides are free to send each other
data. You'd see this state on both the client and server sides of the connection. This will be true of all the
following socket states, 
• FIN_WAIT. This means that a FIN has been sent, but the corresponding ACK from the other end hasn't been
received yet. 
• CLOSE_WAIT. This means that the connection has been closed at the TCP layer, but that the application that
opened the socket hasn't released its hold on the socket yet. 
• CLOSED. This means that the connection has been fully terminated, and that no further communication is
possible.
Connection-oriented and connectionless
protocol and Firewalls
A connection-oriented protocol is one that establishes a connection,
and uses this to ensure all the data has been transmitted properly.
A connectionless protocol does what it sounds like, it don’t establish
any connection for the transfer of data. And it is useful when a larger
bandwidth is required.
A firewall is just a device which blocks the data which meets certain
criteria.
Introduction to Networking Services
The work of this section is what it sounds like, it is responsible for the
user at it’s interface, i.e., at the user level. If anything goes wrong one
have to contact the guy in this section. So, in the next few slides we’ll
learn how DNS, DHCP works and how NAT secures the internet.
Importance of DNS
Since we can’t remember IP addresses for every website we want to
visit this is the place where DNS finds it’s job. DNS stands for domain
name system, it is a global and highly distributed network that resolves
strings into IP addresses for everyone. Another job of DNS is that it lets
the administrative changes happen behind the scenes without a user
get to know about these changes. And job isn’t over yet, it also resolves
into IP address depending on the geographic location.
The many steps of name resolution
The process of using DNS to resolve a string of letters into IP addresses is known as name resolution. Let’s dive in, the first
thing is that a DNS server, should be specifically configured at a node on a network.
The four things in modern network configuration are IP addresses, subnet masks, gateway and DNS server.
There are five types of primary DNS servers: caching, recursive, TLD, root and authoritative name servers.
Caching and recursive name servers are generally provided by ISP or your local network. Their purpose is to store domain
name lookups for certain amount of time. Recursive name servers are the ones which perform the whole DNS resolution
requests.
All domain names in global domain system have a TTL, this value is in seconds.
Now we know that caching name server stores the DNS for sometime, let’s dive into the works of recursive name servers,
since it performs the full name resolution, let’s look what happens behind the scenes, the first is contacting a root server
and there are 13 root servers in the globe the root servers will respond to a DNS lookup with TLD server that should
queried and it stands for top level domain.  The TLD name servers will respond again with a redirect, this time informing the
computer performing the name lookup with what authoritative name server to contact. Authoritative name servers are
responsible for the last two parts of any domain name which is the resolution at which a single organization may be
responsible for DNS lookups. Finally the authoritative could be redirected to the authoritative servers of the institution
which in return gives the IP address, to avoid this much of redirections we need caching name servers.
DNS uses UDP at it’s transport layer since it’s a connection less protocol so it won’t encounter much traffic TCP.
Resource record types
DNS in practice operates with a set of defined resource record types. This allows
different kinds of DNS resolutions to take place. The most basic record in DNS is
‘A’ record which is used to store a single address. A record may have a single
domain name but a domain name may have multiple records. Another record
which is becoming popular is quad ‘A’ record, it is almost similar to the ‘A’ record
but it returns a IPv6 address instead of IPv4 address which is stored by ‘A’
record. CNAME record is used to redirect traffic from one domain to another and
it’s short for canonical name. Next important record is the MX record which is
short for mail exchange and this record is used in order to deliver a e-mail to a
server. Then, SRV record which is short for service record, defines the location of
various specific services. Thereafter we have TXT record short for text, is used to
give additional information intended for other computers to process.
Fully qualified domain name
The last part of a domain name is known as the TLD, top level domain,
the second part is the domain name and the first part is known as
subdomain. A TLD is assigned by ICANN, internet corporation for
assigned names and numbers. Each section can be at max. of 63
characters and a FQDN 255 characters long.
Overview of DHCP
DHCP stands for dynamic host configuration protocol. DHCP is an application
layer protocol which automates the process of configuration of hosts on a
network. Not only it reduces of administrative overhead of configuration but
it also helps in choosing what IP should be assigned on what machine.
There are few standard ways in which a DHCP can operate, Dynamic
allocation, in this way IP addresses are kept aside for sometime and if any
client asks for IP, then it gets assigned through their collection. Automatic
allocation works in the same way as dynamic, but since the DHCP server
keeps track of the IP addresses of the devices, so it assigns the IP to the same
device if possible. At last, fixed allocation, it requires a manually specified list
of MAC addresses and their corresponding IP addresses.
Basics of NAT
NAT stands for network address translation. And it works as the same
way as it sounds like, it takes one IP and converts into other, well this
process of hiding a computer’s IP is known as IP masquerading, this has
a lot of security measures and it can be achieved to protect even all the
nodes in a network or in other words it can hide the whole network
too. The translation is usually done by a router. Two techniques are
used by NAT at the transport layer: port preservation and port
forwarding, port preservation is accomplished when the source port
chosen by the client is same as the router, and port forwarding is a
technique where the specific destination ports are reserved for specific
nodes only.
VPN
A virtual private network, or VPN, is an encrypted connection over the
Internet from a device to a network. The encrypted connection helps
ensure that sensitive data is safely transmitted. It prevents
unauthorized people from eavesdropping on the traffic and allows the
user to conduct work remotely.  VPN technology is widely used in
corporate environments.
Proxy service
A proxy service is a server that acts on behalf of a client in order
to access another service. Proxies sit between clients and other servers,
providing some additional benefit, anonymity, security, content
filtering, increased performance, a couple other things.
Another concept that is important is reverse proxy in which server
seems like a single serving but behind the scenes lots of other servers
are there in the company.
Introduction to connecting to the Internet
We know how we are connected nowadays, internet, whatever we
talked earlier was establishing a connection and then having all the
conversations among the nodes, these were all done via physical
connections, but hereafter we’ll study wireless and cellular is
established to get the conversation done. So let’s dive in into these
things.
POTS and Dial-up
In the past years, when there is no ethernet, TCP or IP, the computers
used to transfer data across them using the telephone networks, the
PSTN or public switched telephone network also called as POTS or plain
old telephone service. Then for transfer of files between institutions
introduced a dial up connection. A dial up connection uses POTS to
setup a connection between them, we have to dial the telephone
number of the receiver we want to establish the connection with, and
the device used in transferring of data is a MODEM. Baud rate is the
amount of bits transferred in a second.
Broadband and T-carrier tech
In terms of internet connectivity, a broadband connectivity is
something which do not use a dial-up connection. A broadband
connection is way faster than the dial-up connection. Another tech.
which is becoming more influencing is T-carrier technology it is used by
business offices to transfer data at a more faster rate. First of all, this
tech. is used to connect a more than single phone call (24 phone calls
simultaneously) in a cable, then after internet become important to
transfer data, T1 transmission tech. started to transfer data in these
cables with each of a speed of 64 kbps, with 24 channels comprising a
faster total rate of 1.544 mbps. And for more speed T3 transmission
were established with 28 T1’s with a total speed of 44.736 mbps.
Digital subscriber lines
A DSL is used to transfer data and allow phone calls at the same time
the data can be transferred at a speed of 1.544 mbps. DSL use their
own modem tech. known as DSLAM or digital subscriber line access
multiplexers, a connection is generally established when DSLAM is
turned ON which means it is long connection. Two most common types
of DSL are ADSL and SDSL, ADSL stands for asymmetric digital
subscriber line which has different upload and download speeds and
SDSL stands for symmetric digital subscriber line which has the upload
and download speed. For more faster data transfer HDSL were
introduced which stands for high bit-rate digital subscriber line with a
speed more than 1.544 mbps.
Cable broadband and fiber connections
One of the main differences in how cable internet access works when compared to
other broadband solutions is that cable is generally what’s known as shared bandwidth
technology. Cable internet connections are generally managed by cable modems. This
is a device that sits at the edge of a consumer's network and connects it to the cable
modem termination system, or CMTS. The CMTS is what connects lots of different
cable connections to an ISP's core network.
The core of the internet has long used fiber for its connection both due to higher speed
and to travel a long distance without degradation. FTTN stands for fiber to the
neighborhood, FTTH stands for fiber to the house, FTTB stands for fiber to the building
and FTTP stands for fiber to the premises. Instead of a modem, the demarcation point
for fiber technologies is known as Optical Network Terminator, or ONT. An ONT
converts data from protocols the fiber network can understand to those that are more
traditional twisted pair copper networks can understand.
Introduction to wireless technologies
Wireless connection, is exactly what it sounds like, a way to network without cables.
The most common specifications for how wireless networking devices should
communicate, are defined by the IEEE 802.11 standards. This set of
specifications, also called the 802.11 family, make up the set of technologies we call
Wi-Fi. Wireless networking devices communicate with each other by radio waves.
Different 802.11 standards generally use the same basic protocol but might operate
at different frequency bands. A frequency band is a certain section of the radio
spectrum that's been agreed upon to be used for certain communications. The
specific frequency band is known as FM broadcast band. Wi-Fi networks operate on
a few different frequency bands. Most commonly, the 2.4 gigahertz and 5 gigahertz
bands. There are lots of 802.11 specifications including some that exist just
experimentally or for testing. The most common specifications you might run into
are 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11n, and 802.11ac. 
Wireless technologies
Each newer version of the 802.11 specifications has generally seen some
improvement, whether it's higher access speeds, or the ability for more devices to use the
network simultaneously. In terms of our networking model, you should think of 802.11
protocols as defining how we operate at both the physical and the data link layers. An
802.11 frame has several fields. The first is called the frame control field. This field is 16 bits
long and contains several sub-fields that are used to describe how the frame itself should
be processed. This includes things like what version of the 802.11 was used. The next field
is called a duration field. It specifies how long the total frame is. So, the receiver knows how
long it should expect to have to listen to the transmission. After this, are four address fields.
A wireless access point is a point that bridges the wireless and wired portions of a network.
The sequence control field is 16 bits long and mainly contains a sequence number used to
keep track of ordering the frames. After this is the data payload section which has all of the
data of the protocols further up the stack. Finally, we have a frame check sequence
field which contains a checksum used for a cyclical redundancy check.
Contd…
So, the receiver knows how long it should expect to have to listen to the
transmission. After this, are four address fields. A wireless access point is a point
that bridges the wireless and wired portions of a network. The sequence control
field is 16 bits long and mainly contains a sequence number used to keep track of
ordering the frames. After this is the data payload section which has all of the data
of the protocols further up the stack. Finally, we have a frame check sequence
field which contains a checksum used for a cyclical redundancy check.
Wireless network configurations
There ae three type of network configurations, ad-hoc, WLAN and
mesh network. In ad-hoc networking, Every device involved with the
network communicates with every other device within range, and all
nodes help pass along messages.  
WLAN
A wireless LAN consist of one or more access points which act as
bridges between the wireless and wired networks. The wired LAN
contains the outbound internet link. In order to access resources
outside of the WLAN, wireless devices would communicate with access
points. They then forward traffic along to the Gateway router, where
everything proceeds like normal. 
Mesh network
Lots of the devices communicate with each other wirelessly forming a mesh if you
were to draw lines for all the links between all the nodes. Most Mesh networks
you'll run into are made up of only wireless access points and will still be connected
to a wired network. This kind of network lets you deploy more access points to the
Mesh without having to run a cable to each of them. With this kind of setup, you
can really increase the performance and range of a wireless network.
Wireless channels
Channels are individual, smaller sections of the overall frequency band
used by the wireless techs. The main idea of the channel is to reduce
collision, since collision makes the data transfer slower and, in some
cases, it makes the data transfer to cancel. In other it acts as a switch in
a wireless world using less overlapping of channels.
Wireless security
Now comes how can we secure our data in any wireless world where any
one can get the data even if they are not like intended for, for this we have
created WEP, wired equivalent privacy, it is a encryption tech which
provides a very low level of security. Using WEP one can secure a little data,
it’s like sending a data in any unencrypted wired connection. It is important
to note that, larger the no. of bits in an encryption key corresponds to more
security. A WEP uses 40 bits. For more security, WPA was invented which
stands for Wi-fi protected access and it comes with 128 bits, next is WPA2
with 256 bits. Then we have MAC filtering, With MAC filtering, you
configure your access points to only allow for connections from a specific
set of MAC addresses belonging to devices you trust.
Introduction to troubleshooting and the future
of networking
Even though, we have a lot troubleshooting techniques already
available in our job but still there are some situations where we run
into errors. Error-detection is the ability for a protocol or a program to
determine whether something went wrong. Error-recovery is the ability
for a protocol or a program to fix it. Hereafter we’ll study some
troubleshooting tech that are being used today to avoid such and get
the data transferred quickly.
Ping: The internet control message protocol
When network problem comes up, the most common issue one will run into is inability in
establishing a connection to something.  When a network error occurs, the device that detects it
needs some way to communicate this to the source of the problematic traffic. It could be that a
router doesn't know how to route to a destination or that a certain port isn't reachable. It could
even be that the TTL of an IP datagram expired and no further router hops will be attempted. For all
of these situations and more, ICMP or internet control message protocol is used to communicate
these issues. ICMP is mainly used by router or remote hosts to communicate while transmission has
failed back to the origin of the transmission. The makeup of an ICMP packet is pretty simple. It has a
header with a few fields and a data section that's used by host to figure out which of their
transmissions generated the error. The first field is the type field, eight bits long which specifies
what type of message is being delivered. Some examples are destination unreachable or time
exceeded. Immediately after this is the code field which indicates a more specific reason for the
message than just the type. For example, of the destination unreachable type, there are individual
codes for things like destination network unreachable and destination port unreachable. After this is
a 16 bit checksum that works like every other checksum field we've covered so far.
ICMP and ping
The next field is rest of the header field which includes some more info
on the codes and type field. The payload for an ICMP packet exists
entirely so that the recipient of the message knows which of their
transmissions caused the error being reported. It contains the entire IP
header and the first eight bytes of the data payload section of the
offending packet. This ICMP work is done automatically in the internet
but there is something which we can use to diagnose the connection
using the command Ping in our command prompt this is mainly used to
check if there is source or not through an echo request message and if
there is the source it replies with a echo reply message.
Traceroute
Traceroute are used to find a way to get to a node. It uses a clever tech.
to get the job first, it sets the TTL to 1, after a hop it receives a message
of time exceeded from the destination computer, this is done
simultaneously until it reaches the destination. Two more tools that are
like traceroute are mtr on Linux and MacOS and pathping on Windows. 

For testing we have netcat(nc) for Linux and macOS, but for windows it
is Test-NetConnection
Name resolution tools
Name resolution is an important part on how internet works. Mostly, all the look ups are done
by one’s system only but as an IT support specialist one should be able diagnose the problems
by themselves, and we have a built command for that too, nslookup, which operates on all the
operating systems. One execute the nslookup command with the host name following it. And
the output displays what server was used to perform the request and the resolution result.
The IP addresses for Level 3s public DNS servers are 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6. 
Registrar is an organization which assigns individual domain names for organizations or
individuals. Registering a domain name for use is simple. Basically, you create an account with
the registrar, use their web UI to search for a domain name to determine if it's still
available, then you agree upon a price to pay and the length of your registration. Once you own
the domain name, you can either have the registrar's name servers act as the authoritative
name servers for the domain, or you can configure your own servers to be
authoritative. Domain names can also be transferred by one party to another and from one
registrar to another. 
Host files
The original way that numbered network addresses were correlated with
words was through hosts files. A host file is a flat file that contains on each
line a network address followed by the host name it can be referred to as. All
modern operating systems including those that power our phone and
tablets, still have hosts files. One reason, is because of a special IP address we
haven't covered yet. The loopback address. A loopback address always points
to itself. So, a loopback address is a way of sending network traffic to
yourself. Sending traffic to a loopback address bypasses all network
infrastructure itself, and traffic like that never leaves the node. The loopback
IP for IPV4 is 127.0.0.1. Finally, hosts files are a popular way for computer
viruses to disrupt and redirect user's traffic. It's not a great idea to use host
files today. 
The cloud
Basically, cloud computing is a technological approach where computing resources are
provisioned in a shareable way so that lots of users get what they need when they need
it. It's an approach that leans heavily on the idea that companies provide services for each
other using these shared resources. At the heart of cloud computing is a technology
known as hardware virtualization. Hardware virtualization is a core concept of how cloud
computing technologies work. It allows the concept of a physical machine and a logical
machine to be abstracted away from each other. With virtualization, a single physical
machine called a host could run many individual virtual instances called guests. An
operating system expects to be able to communicate with the underlying hardware in
certain ways. Hardware virtualization platforms employ what's called a hypervisor. A
hypervisor is a piece of software that runs and manages virtual machines while
also offering these guests a virtual operating platform that's indistinguishable from actual
hardware. With virtualization, a single physical computer can act as the host for many
independent virtual instances.