Hello Everyone!
In this video, you will learn about various
types of network addresses, being used to identify the
machines, during a network communication.
Communication among computing devices, worldwide is
possible due to the four types of addresses, defined at
various layers of the TCP/IP protocol suite. Physical
address, Logical Address, Port Address and Specific
address. These addresses identify the networking devices
during the communication process.
Let’s understand the relationship of the addresses to the
layers of TCP/IP protocol suite. The physical address, also
known as the link address, is defined on data link layer. This
address has a scope of local area network, i.e., no two
machines can have same physical address inside a LAN.,
The IP address, also known as logical address, is defined
on Network layer. Its scope is worldwide which means that
no two machines in the world can have same IP address.
The port address or a network identifier of a process is
defined on Transport layer. This address identifies a
process on a machine, and no two processes on a machine
can have same port number. A port address in TCP/IP is 16
bits in length.
A specific address is a user-friendly address, which is
defined on Application layer. Universal Resource Locator
(URL) is an example of specific address. As the application
layer is the closest layer to the user, these addresses have
been designed in a human readable and understandable
form.
When one machine sends data to another machine, the
physical addresses of the sender and receiver are placed in
a frame header. In the figure, a machine with physical
address 10 sends a frame to a machine with physical
address 87 in the same network. The data frame carries the
sender and receiver’s physical address. When the data
moves from one network to other, the physical address
changes hop to hop throughout the communication path.
In TCP /IP networks, the machines use a 48-bit physical
address also known as MAC address. These addresses are
represented in a colon hexadecimal notation for easy
management and remembrance.
The logical address or IP address in TCP/IP protocol suite
is defined in the network layer packets during the
communication. These addresses remain, same throughout
the path and identify the sender and receiver machines in a
multinetwork path. The figure demonstrates the concept of
the physical address and logical address.
The figure shows an internet with two routers connecting
three LANs. The sender machine with IP address A and
physical address 10 is willing to send data to the destination
machine with IP address P and physical address 95.
In this case, each computer is connected to only one
network, therefore has only one pair of addresses (physical
and network). Each router, however, is connected to three
networks (only two are shown in the figure). Therefore,
each router has three pairs of addresses, one for each
connection.
The sender machine creates a frame (with the packet
encapsulated) and sends it on the link. However, as the
destination machine belongs to a different network, the
destination physical address of the packet will be marked
with the address of router 1(i.e. 20). The router will send it
to the next router in the path, by changing the sender’s
physical address as its own and receiver’s address as of
router 2(99 and 33 respectively).
In the last, router 2 will again change the physical addresses
in the frame, with its own as the sender and destination
machines address as the receiver.
In the complete flow of the data, we can see that the logical
address of the machine does not change during the path,
while the physical address changes on each hop
(intermediate router).
The Machines in TCP/IP networks have a logical address,
known as IP address defined on the Internet or Network
layer. This address is a 32bit address, which is represented
in a dotted decimal notation as shown. we will learn about
this address in detail in the upcoming videos.
The port addresses identify the communicating processes
on the endpoints. In this figure, two computers are
communicating via the Internet. Three processes are
running on the sending computer with port addresses a, b,
and c while two processes with port addresses j and k are
running on the receiving computer Process an on sending
machine is communicating with process j on the receiving
computer. It can easily be seen here, that the port numbers
of the communicating processes do not change during the
path and remain fixed.
In TCP/IP, a process is identified with a 16-bit number,
represented as a single decimal number on the transport
layer. This is called a port number, as shown in figure.
Specific addresses identify the machines on the application
layer. These addresses are represented as Uniform resource
locator(URL), while accessing any web site. These
addresses are defined for humans to remember easily.
During the communication, these addresses are converted
into a combination of IP address and port number.
https://www. Facebook.com is an example.
Thank You.
