Computer Networks and Security

Module 8: TCP/IP Suite Error and Control

Messages
CCNA 2: Routers and Routing Basics

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 IP
• Uses best effort delivery of messages
• No mechanism to ensure that the data is delivered
• Data may fail to reach its destination due to
• Hardware failure - router fails, destination device disconnected
• Improper configuration
• Incorrect routing information
• No mechanism for sending error and control messages
• it uses the ICMP to send and receive error and control messages to hosts on a network
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)
• Notifies the sender that there was an error in the delivery
• Used in network troubleshooting
• Error reporting protocol for IP
• It reports these errors back to the source of the datagram
• ICMP messages are encapsulated into datagrams
• The following is the format of an ICMP message

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 Ping Tests Destination Reachability

• ICMP issues an echo request to the destination device

• If destination receives ICMP request, it formulates an echo reply
• Destination sends echo reply to source of the echo request
• If sender receives echo reply, this confirms destination reachable

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 • Issues four echo requests
• Receives four echo replies
• Confirming IP connectivity
between the two devices

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 Detecting Excessively Long Routes

• Faulty routing can cause a datagram to

• Travels in a circle
• Never reach its destination
• Faulty routes occur if
• two routers continually route a datagram back and forth
between them, thinking the other should be the next hop to
the destination
• How to prevent this
• RIP hop count is a maximum 15
• TTL – Time To Live – maximum hop count
• TTL reduced by 1 each time it goes through a router
• TTL of 0 – packet discarded and ICMP time exceeded
message

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 ICMP message type

• All ICMP message formats start with these same three fields:
• Type
• Type of ICMP message
• Code
• More information specific to the message type
• Checksum
• To verify the integrity of the data

ICMP echo request and echo reply

Identifier and Sequence Number are unique to the echo request / reply messages.
They are used to match the echo replies to the corresponding echo request
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 Destination unreachable message

• Reasons delivery is not possible:

• Hardware failures
• improper protocol configuration
• down interfaces
• incorrect routing information
• packet fragmentation is required but not allowed (4)
• services such as FTP or Web are unavailable (2)

ICMP delivers back to the sender a destination unreachable message

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 ICMP Control Message

• IP cannot provide informational or control messages to hosts

• ICMP provides informational or control messages to hosts

• Error messages result from

• Lost packets during packet transmission
• Error conditions which occur during packet transmission

• Control messages are used to inform hosts of

• Conditions such as network congestion
• The existence of a better gateway to a remote network

• ICMP control messages are encapsulated within an IP datagram

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 ICMP redirect/change requests

• This type of message can only be initiated by a gateway

• When a host connects to a segment that has two or more
directly connected routers, the default gateway of the host
may need to use a redirect/change request to inform the
host of the best path to a certain network
Default gateways only send ICMP redirect/change request
messages if the following conditions are met:
• The interface on which the packet comes into the router is
the same interface on which the packet gets routed out. ie
subnet/network of the source IP address is the same Type 5 indicates redirect/change request
subnet/network of the next-hop

• The datagram is not source-routed

• The route for the redirect is not another ICMP redirect or a

default route

• The router is configured to send redirects

• By default, Cisco routers send ICMP redirects
• Router(config-if)no ip redirects will disable ICMP
redirects
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 Router Discovery Message

• If host has no default gateway

• Host sends a router solicitation message to
all routers, using
• multicast address 224.0.0.2 as the
destination address
• broadcast to include routers that may not
be configured for multicasting
• If sent to a router that does not support the
discovery process
• solicitation is unanswered
• If sent to a router that supports the
discovery process
• router advertisement returned

router advertisement
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 Router solicitation message

• A host generates an ICMP router solicitation

message in response to a missing default
gateway.
• This message is sent via multicast and it is the
first step in the router discovery process.
• A local router will respond with a router
advertisement identifying the default
gateway for the local host

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 Congestion and flow control messages

• Multiple access to the same destination at the same time

• High speed LAN traffic reaches slower speed WAN connection
• If there is too much congestion on the network packets are dropped
• ICMP source-quench messages
• are used to reduce the amount of data lost
• Asks senders to reduce the rate at which they are transmitting packets
• If no other source-quench messages are received
• The source will slowly increase the transmission rate
• Most Cisco routers do not send source-quench messages by default

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 Recap

• IP & ICMP

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