Address Binding Technique Part-3

Now as all we aware of the first and second technique of address binding, now its high time to tell you the third and last technique of address binding.In this technique the address resolution takes place through message exchange.

Address Resolution with message exchange: In this approach the computer that needs to resolve an address sends a message across network and receives reply.The message carries a request that specifies the protocol address,and the reply carries the corresponding hardware address.Now the main question that came in front of us is that where all these requests be sent.Generally there are two designs that are used for this.In the first design a network includes one or more servers that are assigned the task of answering address resolution requests.

Whenever,address resolution is needed a message must be sent to any of these servers which will send a reply.In the second design no special address resolution servers are needed.Instead,each computer on the network participates in address resolution by agreeing to answer resolution requests for its address.When a computer needs to resolve an address,it broadcasts a request on the network.All machine receive the request and examine the requested address.If an incoming request matches a computer’s address, the computer responds.Now discuss the advantages of both the designs.

The chief advantage of the first scheme arise from centralization because a few address resolution servers handle all resolution tasks on the network,address resolution is easier to configure,manage and control.Now the advantage of second design arise from distributed computation.Address resolution servers may be expensive.In addition to the expense of additional hardwares like extra memory.In addition to this servers are expensive to maintain because address binding information stored in servers must be updated whenever new computers are added to the network or hardware address changes.Furthermore ,address resolution servers can become a bottleneck on a large busy network.If each computer is able to resolve its own address ,then there is no need of servers.

Address Binding Technique 2

Hello friends in the last post I told you about the first technique through which address binding takes place.Now in this post I am going to tell you second technique through which address binding takes place.

Address Resolution with closed form computation: As all we know that many network technologies use static physical addresses, some technologies use configurable addressing in which a network interface can be assigned a specific hardware address. For such type of networks it is possible that we can choose addresses that make closed form address resolution possible.A resolver that uses a closed form method computes a mathematical function that maps an IP address to its equivalent hardware address. If the relationship between the IP address and its coprresponding hardware address is straightforward, the computation requires only a few arithmetic operations.Infact,the host portion of a computer’s IP address can be chosen such that it is identical to the computer’s hardware address.

Let’s understand this situation with the help of a example, suppose a configurable network has been assigned the network address 220.123.152.xxx and its suffix ranging from 0-24. As computers are added to the network, each computer is assigned an IP address from this range and a matching hardware address.The first host is assigned an IP address 220.123.152.1 and hardware address 1. The second host is assigned an IP address 220.123.152.2 and hardware address 2. The suffixes need not be sequential, if a router attached to a network assigned IP address202.123.152.101,then the router is assigned an IP address of 121.Given the IP address of any computer on the network, the computer’s hardware address can be computed by a single Boolean ‘and’ operation.

Hardware Address=IP Address & 0xff

As I think it is clear from the example that why closed form resolution is often used with configurable networks.

Address Binding Technique 1

Hello friends in this post I am going to tell you all the first way through which address binding takes place.

1.Address resolution with table lookup: This technique of address resolution requires a data structure that contains information about address binding. The table consists of an array. Each entry in the array contains a pair (P,H),where P is the protocol address and H is its corresponding hardware address. The main advantage of table lookup approach is generality- a table can store the address bindings for an arbitrary set of computers on a given network. In particular a particular protocol address can map to an arbitrary hardware address.

Furthermore, the table lookup algorithm is straight forward and easies among all the approaches. Suppose we have given a next-hop address, N, the software searches the table until it finds an entry where the IP address matches N. The software then extracts the hardware address from the entry.For a network that contains a less then dozen of hosts, a sequential search is sufficient ,the resolution software begins at first entry and searches each entry in table until a match is found. But for large networks this sequential search is not possible because it consumes excessive CPU time. In these type of situations to improve computational efficiency we can use Hashing or Direct Indexing.

As all we know that Hashing is a general purpose data structure and is well known to all the programmers, so, here I am not going to discuss it. Let’s take a look at the other technique that is of Direct Indexing. Direct Indexing is slightly more efficient but less general technique. In particular Direct Indexing is possible only in those cases where protocol addresses are assigned from a compact range.

For ex: Direct Indexing can be used with IP addresses that are arranged in sequential order. In these type of cases the software maintains a one dimensional array of hardware addresses, and uses the host suffix from an IP address as an index to an array.

In the next post I will tell you the second technique of Address Binding.

Address Resolution Protocol

Hello friends in this post I am going to discuss one of the most interesting topics in computer networks that is of Binding Protocol Addresses or Address Resolution Protocol.

As all we know that IP addresses are virtual because they are maintained by software. Neither Local Area network nor Wide Area Network hardware understands the relationship between an IP address prefix and a network or the relationship between an IP address suffix and a particular computer. I am telling you all these things because we have to know all these things before understanding Binding Address Protocol. Now let’s come to our main issue of Binding Protocol Addresses, the first point that came into the mind of any one that is new to networking is what Binding Protocol Address is and what its requirement is.

Now before giving answer of first question I would like to give the answer of our second question. Let’s consider an application program that generates data to be sent across an internet, for this software places the data in the packet, which contains the protocol address (IP address) of the destination. Software in each host or router uses the protocol destination address to select the next hop for the packet. Once a next hop has been selected, software transfers the packet across one physical network to the selected host or router. To provide the illusion of a single, large network, software works with the IP addresses when forwarding the packets. Both the next hop and destination addresses are the IP addresses.

Now the main problem arises here, when we want to transmit frames across physical network hardware we need hardware address of the destination because the hardware does not understand the IP addressing. So, when a frame is set across a physical network it must use the hardware’s frame format and all the addresses in the frame must be hardware addresses. Consequently, the protocol address of the next hop must be translated to an equivalent hardware address before a frame can be sent. The process of converting IP address to its equivalent hardware address is known as Address Resolution and a protocol address is said to be resolved to the correct hardware address. Address Resolution is local to network that means one computer can resolve the address of another computer only if both computers attach to the same physical network. A computer never resolves the address of a computer on a remote network.

After this explanation I hope you understand a little bit about the Address Resolution Protocol. In the next post I will tell about the various techniques through which Address Resolution takes place. Hope you like this post.If you have any doubts in any of the topics of Computer Networks then post your problem in the comment. I will try to sort it out.