:

Now that you know the basics of how every layer of our network model works, let's
go through an exercise to look at how everything works at every step of the way.
Spoiler alert, things are about to get a little geeky in a good way. Imagine three
networks. Network A will contain address space 10.1.1.0 slash 24. Network B will
contain address space 192.168.1.0 slash 24. And network C. will be 172.16.1.0 slash
24. Router A sits between network A and network B, with an interface configured
with an IP of 10.1.1.1 on network A, and an interface at 192.168.1.254 on network
B. There's a second router, router B, which connects networks B and C. It has an
interface on network B with an IP address of 192.168.1.1, and an interface on
network C with an IP address of 172.16.1.1. Now, let's put a computer on one of the
networks. Imagine it's a desktop, sitting on someone's desk at their workplace.
It'll be our client in this scenario, and we'll refer to it as computer 1. It's
part of network A, and has been assigned an IP address of 10.1.1.100. Now, let's
put another computer on one of our other networks. This one is a server in a data
center. It'll act as our server in this scenario and we'll refer to it as computer
2. It's part of network C and has been assigned an IP address of 172.16.1.100 and
has a web server listening on port 80. In end user, Sitting at computer one, opens
up a web browser and enters 172.16.1.100 into the address bar. Let's see what
happens. The web browser running on computer one knows it's been ordered to
retrieve a web page from 172.16.1.100. The web browser communicates with the local
networking stack, which is the part of the operating system responsible for
handling networking functions. The web browser explains that it's going to want to
establish a TCP connection to 172.16.1.100 port 80. The networking stack will now
examine its own subnet. It sees that it lives on the network 10.1.1.0 slash 24,
which means that the destination 172.16.1.100 is on another network. At this point,
computer 1. knows that it'll have to send any data to its gateway for routing to a
remote network. And it's been configured with a gateway of 10.1.1.1. Next, computer
one looks at its ARP table to determine what MAC address of 10.1.1.1 is, but it
doesn't find any corresponding entry. Uh-oh, it's okay. Computer A crafts an ARP
request for an IP address of 10.1.1.1. which it sends to the hardware broadcast
address of all Fs. This ARP discovery request is sent to every node on the local
network. When router A receives this ARP message, it sees that it's the computer
currently assigned the IP address of 10.1.1.1. So it responds to computer one to
let it know about its own MAC address of 001122334455. Computer 1 receives this
response and now knows the hardware address of its gateway. This means that it's
ready to start constructing the outbound packet. Computer 1 knows that it's being
asked by the web browser to form an outbound TCP connection, which means it'll need
an outbound TCP port. The operating system identifies the ephemeral port of 50,000
as being available and opens a socket connecting the web browser to this port.
Since this is a TCP connection, the networking stack knows that before it can
actually transmit any of the data the web browser wants it to, it'll need to
establish a connection. The networking stack starts to build a TCP segment. It
fills in all the appropriate fields in the header, including a source port of
50,000 and a destination port of 80. A sequence number is chosen and is used to
fill in the sequence number field. Finally, the SYN flag. is set and a checksum for
the segment is calculated and written to the checksum field. Our newly constructed
TCP segment is now passed along to the IP layer of the networking stack. This layer
constructs an IP header. This header is filled in with the source IP, the
destination IP, and a TTL of 64, which is a pretty standard value for this field.
Next. The TCP segment is inserted as the data payload for the IP datagram, and a
checksum is calculated for the whole thing. Now that the IP datagram has been
constructed, computer one needs to get this to its gateway, which it now knows has
a MAC address of 001122334455. So an ethernet frame is constructed. All the
relevant fields are filled in with the appropriate data. Most notably, the source
and destination MAC addresses. Finally, the IP datagram is inserted as the data
payload of the Ethernet frame, and another checksum is calculated. Now we have an
entire Ethernet frame ready to be sent across the physical layer. The network
interface connected to computer one sends this binary data as modulations of the
voltage of an electrical current running across a cat6 cable that's connected
between it. and a network switch. This switch receives the frame and inspects the
destination MAC address. The switch knows which of its interfaces this MAC address
is attached to and forwards the frame across only the cable connected to this
interface. At the other end of this link is router A, which receives the frame and
recognizes its own hardware address as the destination. Router A knows that this
frame is intended for itself. So it now takes the entirety of the frame and
calculates a checksum against it. Router A compares this checksum with the one in
the ethernet frame header and sees that they match, meaning all of the data has
made it in one piece. Next, Router A strips away the ethernet frame, leaving it
with just the IP datagram. Again, it performs a checksum calculation against the
entire datagram, and again, it finds that it matches, meaning all the data is
correct. It inspects the destination IP address and performs a lookup of this
destination in its routing table. Router A sees that in order to get data to the
172.16.1.0 slash 24 network, the quickest path is one hop away via router B, which
has an IP of 192.168.1.1. Router A looks at all the data in the IP datagram,
calculates a new checksum reflecting the new TTL value and makes a new IP datagram
with this data. Router A knows that it needs to get this datagram to Router B,
which has an IP address of 192.168.1.1. It looks at its ARP table and sees that it
has an entry for 192.168.1.1. Now, Router A can begin to construct an ethernet
frame. with the MAC address of its interface on network B as the source and the MAC
address of router B's interface on network B as the destination. Once the values
for all fields in this frame have been filled out, router A places the newly
constructed IP datagram into the data payload field, calculates a checksum and
places this checksum into place and sends the frame out to network B. Just like
before, this frame makes it across network B. and is received by router B. Router B
performs all the same checks, removes the ethernet frame encapsulation, and
performs a checksum against the IP datagram. It then examines the destination IP
address. Looking at its routing table, router B sees that the destination address
of computer 2, or 172.16.1.100, is on a locally connected network. So it decrements
the TTL by one again, calculates a new checksum, and creates a new IP datagram.
This new IP datagram is again encapsulated by a new ethernet frame, this one with
the source and destination MAC address of router B and computer 2. And the whole
process is repeated one last time. The frame is sent out onto network C. A switch
ensures it gets sent out of the interface that computer 2 is connected to. Computer
2 receives the frame, identifies its own MAC address as the destination, and knows
that it's intended for itself. Computer 2 then strips away the ethernet frame,
leaving it with the IP datagram. It performs a CRC and recognizes that the data has
been delivered intact. It then examines the destination IP address and recognizes
that as its own. Next, Computer 2 strips away the IP datagram, leaving it with just
the TCP segment. Again, the checksum for this layer is examined and everything
checks out. Next, computer two examines the destination port, which is 80. The
networking stack on computer two checks to ensure that there's an open socket on
port 80, which there is. It's in the listen state and held open by a running Apache
web server. Computer two then sees that this packet has the sin flag set. So it
examines the sequence number and stores that, since it'll need to put the sequence
number in the acknowledgement field once it crafts the response. After all of that,
all we've done is get a single TCP segment containing a SYN flag from one computer
to a second one. Everything would have to happen all over again for computer two to
send a SYN ACK response to computer one. Then everything would have to happen all
over again for computer one to send an ACK back to computer two, and so on and so
on. Looking at all of this end to end hopefully helps show how all the different
layers of our networking model. have to work together to get the job done. I hope
it also gives you some perspective in understanding how remarkable computer
networking truly is. Even more remarkable than that, you for making it through this
module. Now it's time to apply your new knowledge to the next assessment. When
you're done, I'll see you in the next video. But first, another quiz. You got this.
But even if you don't, just review the material until you get more comfortable with
this stuff.