Introduction to TCP/IP

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) on top of the Internet Protocol (IP). These protocols were developed by DARPA to enable communication between different types of computers and computer networks.
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The Internet Protocol is a connectionless protocol which provides packet routing. TCP is connection-oriented and provides reliable communication and multiplexing.

TCP/IP
TCP/IP is TCP and IP working together. TCP takes care of the communication between your application software (i.e. your browser) and your network software. IP takes care of the communication with other computers. TCP is responsible for breaking data down into IP packets before they are sent, and for assembling the packets when they arrive. IP is responsible for sending the packets to the receiver.

TCP/IP is the Internet Communication Protocol

TCP/IP is the communication protocol for communication between computers connected to the Internet. A communication protocol is a description of the rules computers must follow to communicate with each other. The Internet communication protocol defines the rules for computer communication over the Internet. TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol. The standard defines how electronic devices should be connected to the Internet, and how data

should be transmitted between them.

Inside TCP/IP
Hiding inside the TCP/IP standard there are a number of protocols for handling data communication:

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) communication between applications UDP (User Datagram Protocol) simple communication between applications IP (Internet Protocol) communication between computers ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) for errors and statistics DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) for dynamic addressing

TCP Uses a Fixed Connection

TCP is for communication between applications. When an application wants to communicate with another application via Transmission Control Protocol(TCP) , it sends a communication request. This request must be sent to an exact address. After a "handshake" between the two applications, TCP will setup a "full-duplex" communication between the two applications. The "full-duplex" communication will occupy the communication line between the two computers until it is closed by one of the two applications. UDP is very similar to TCP, but is simpler and less reliable.

IP is Connection-Less
IP is for communication between computers. IP is a "connection-less" communication protocol. It does not occupy the communication line between two communicating computers. This way IP reduces the need for network lines. Each line can be used for communication between many different computers at the same time. With IP, messages (or other data) are broken up into small independent "packets" and sent

between computers via the Internet. IP is responsible for "routing" each packet to its destination.

IP Routers
When an IP packet is sent from a computer, it arrives at an IP router. The IP router is responsible for "routing" the packet to its destination, directly or via another router. The path the packet will follow might be different from other packets of the same communication. The router is responsible for the right addressing depending on traffic volume, errors in the network, or other parameters.

Your Browser and Your Server Use TCP/IP

Internet browsers and Internet servers use TCP/IP to connect to the Internet. Your browser uses TCP/IP to access Internet servers, and servers use TCP/IP to send HTML back to your browser.

Your E-Mail Uses TCP/IP

Your e-mail program uses TCP/IP to connect to the Internet for sending and receiving e-mails.

Your Internet Address is TCP/IP

Your Internet address "203.101.50.14" is a part of the standard TCP/IP protocol. (And so is your domain name "www.someonesplace.com")

TCP/IP Addressing

TCP/IP uses 32 bits, or 4 numbers between 0 and 255 to address a computer.

IP Addresses
1. Internet Protocol, IP is an address of other network device or a computer on a network using IP or TCP/IP .
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2.

For Example, the number "166.70.10.23" is the example of such an address. 3. These addresses are similar to addresses that help data reach its appropriate destination on a network and used on houses. 4. There are five classes of available IP ranges: Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D and Class E, while only A, B and C are commonly used. Each class allows for a range of valid IP addresses. Below is a listing of these addresses. Note: Each computer must have an IP address before it can connect to Internet. Each IP packet must have an address before it can be sent to the another computer. In the TCP/IP configuration settings,when you configure the TCP/IP protocol on a Microsoft Windows computer, an IP address, subnet mask, and usually a default gateway are required.

The following table describes the different classes of IP addressing

Class Address Range Supports Supports 16 million hosts on each of 127 networks. Supports 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks. Supports 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks. Reserved for multicast groups. Reserved. Class A 1.0.0.1 to 126.255.255.254 Class B 128.1.0.1 to 191.255.255.254 Class C 192.0.1.1 to 223.255.254.254 Class D 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255 Class E 240.0.0.0 to 254.255.255.254

Class A

1. Intended for a small number of networks that had the large number of computers (hosts) attached. 2. Class A IP Address have a value in the range 1...126 as the first octet and the values 0 and 127 are not available because they have special uses. 3. Class A addresses use the first octet to identify the network which means that 126 addresses are usable, each of which can support the 16,777,216 computers (hosts).
Class B

1. Intended for the some networks that had an intermediate number of computers (hosts) attached. 2. Class B IP Addresses have a value in the range of 128...191 as the first octet. 3. Class B addresses use the first two octets to identify the network which means that 16,320 addresses are usable and each of which can support 65,536 computers (hosts).
Class C

1. Intended for a large number of the networks that would have a small (relatively) number of computers (hosts) attached.

2. Class C IP Addresses have a value in the range 192...223 as the first octet. 3. Class C addresses use the first three octets to identify the network which means that 2,080,800 addresses (networks) are possible and each of which can support 254 computers (hosts).
Class D

1. Intended to enable the multicasting in an IP address. 2. A multicast address is a unique network address that directs packets w/ that destination address to predefined groups of IP addresses. 3. Therefore, a single station can simultaneous transmit a single stream of datagrams to the multiple recipients. 4. First four bits must be 1110 and first octet: 11100000 to 11101111 (dec 224 to 239 (1st octet 224 to 239 is class D) ).
Class E

1. IETF reserves addresses in this class for its own research only. 2. No Class E addresses have been released for the use on the internet. 3. First four bits of a class E address: 1111 and range 11110000 to 11111111 (dec 240 to 255).

TCP/IP Addressing
TCP/IP supports three classes of Internet addresses: Class A, Class B, and Class C. The different classes of Internet addresses are designated by how the 32 bits of the address are allocated. The particular address class a network is assigned depends on the size of the network.

An IP Address Contains 4 Numbers.

This is your IP address: 203.101.50.14 TCP/IP uses 4 numbers to address a computer. Each computer must have a unique 4 number

address. The numbers are always between 0 and 255. Addresses are normally written as four numbers separated by a period like this: 192.168.1.50. IP addresses are normally expressed in dotted-decimal format, with four numbers separated by periods, such as 192.168.123.132. To understand how subnet masks are used to distinguish between hosts, networks, and subnetworks, examine an IP address in binary notation. For example, the dotted-decimal IP address 192.168.123.132 is (in binary notation) the 32 bit number 110000000101000111101110000100. This number may be hard to make sense of, so divide it into four parts of eight binary digits. These eight bit sections are known as octets. The example IP address, then, becomes 11000000.10101000.01111011.10000100. This number only makes a little more sense, so for most uses, convert the binary address into dotted-decimal format (192.168.123.132). The decimal numbers separated by periods are the octets converted from binary to decimal notation. For a TCP/IP wide area network (WAN) to work efficiently as a collection of networks, the routers that pass packets of data between networks do not know the exact location of a host for which a packet of information is destined. Routers only know what network the host is a member of and use information stored in their route table to determine how to get the packet to the destination host's network. After the packet is delivered to the destination's network, the packet is delivered to the appropriate host. For this process to work, an IP address has two parts. The first part of an IP address is used as a network address, the last part as a host address. If you take the example 192.168.123.132 and divide it into these two parts you get the following:
192.168.123. Network .132 Host -or192.168.123.0 - network address. 0.0.0.132 - host address.

Subnet Mask

The subnet mask is the second item, which is required for TCP/IP to work. The subnet mask is used by the TCP/IP to determine whether a host is on the local subnet or on a remote network. In TCP/IP, the parts of the IP address that are used as the network and host addresses are not fixed, so the network and host addresses above cannot be determined unless you have more information. This information is supplied in another 32-bit number called a subnet mask. In this example, the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. It is not obvious what this number means unless you know that 255 in binary notation equals 11111111; so, the subnet mask is:
11111111.11111111.11111111.0000000 Lining up the IP address and the subnet mask together, the network and host portions of the address can be separated: 11000000.10101000.01111011.10000100 -- IP address (192.168.123.132) 11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000 -- Subnet mask (255.255.255.0)

The first 24 bits (the number of ones in the subnet mask) are identified as the network address, with the last 8 bits (the number of remaining zeros in the subnet mask) identified as the host address. This gives you the following:
11000000.10101000.01111011.00000000 -- Network address (192.168.123.0) 00000000.00000000.00000000.10000100 -- Host address (000.000.000.132)

So now you know, for this example using a 255.255.255.0 subnet mask, that the network ID is 192.168.123.0, and the host address is 0.0.0.132. When a packet arrives on the 192.168.123.0 subnet (from the local subnet or a remote network), and it has a destination address of 192.168.123.132, your computer will receive it from the network and process it.

Domain Names
Using a name is easier.12 digit numbers are hard to remember.
Domain names

are names used for TCP/IP addresses. academictutorials.com is a domain name.

Protocols Used in Networking

A Family of Protocols
TCP/IP is a large collection of different communication protocols based upon the two original protocols TCP and IP.

TCP - Transmission Control Protocol

TCP is used for transmission of data from an application to the network. TCP is responsible for breaking data down into IP packets before they are sent, and for assembling the packets when they arrive.
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IP - Internet Protocol
IP takes care of the communication with other computers. IP is responsible for the sending and receiving data packets over the Internet.

HTTP - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol

HTTP takes care of the communication between a web server and a web browser. HTTP is used for sending requests from a web client (a browser) to a web server, returning web content (web pages) from the server back to the client.

HTTPS - Secure HTTP

HTTPS takes care of secure communication between a web server and a web browser. HTTPS typically handles credit card transactions and other sensitive data.

MIME - Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions

The MIME protocol lets SMTP transmit multimedia files including voice, audio, and binary data across TCP/IP networks.

IMAP - Internet Message Access Protocol

IMAP is used for storing and retrieving e-mails.

SSL - Secure Sockets Layer

The SSL protocol is used for encryption of data for secure data transmission.

SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

SMTP is used for transmission of e-mails.

POP - Post Office Protocol

POP is used for downloading e-mails from an e-mail server to a personal computer.

FTP - File Transfer Protocol

FTP

takes care of transmission of files between computers.

NTP - Network Time Protocol

NTP is used to synchronize the time (the clock) between computers.

DHCP - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

DHCP is used for allocation of dynamic IP addresses to computers in a network.

SNMP - Simple Network Management Protocol

SNMP is used for administration of computer networks.

LDAP - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

LDAP is used for collecting information about users and e-mail addresses from the internet.

ICMP - Internet Control Message Protocol

ICMP takes care of error handling in the network.

ARP - Address Resolution Protocol

ARP is used by IP to find the hardware address of a computer network card based on the IP address.

RARP - Reverse Address Resolution Protocol

RARP is used by IP to find the IP address based on the hardware address of a computer network card.

BOOTP - Boot Protocol

BOOTP is used for booting (starting) computers from the network.

PPTP - Point to Point Tunneling Protocol

PPTP is used for setting up a connection (tunnel) between private networks.

TCP/IP Protocols

Transmission Control Protocol(TCP)

TCP is a reliable, connection-oriented and byte-stream protocol. Let's look at each of the terms reliable, connection-oriented, and byte-stream - in detail.Applications that require the transport protocol to provide reliable data delivery use the TCP because it verifies that data is delivered across the network accurately and in the proper sequence.
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TCP provides reliability with the help of a mechanism called Positive Acknowledgment with Retransmission (PAR). Simply stated, a system using PAR sends the data again, unless it hears from the remote system that the data arrived okay and the unit of data exchanged between cooperating TCP modules is called a segment (see Figure below Each segment contains a checksum that the recipient uses to verify that the data is undamaged. If the data segment is received undamaged, the receiver sends a positive acknowledgment back to the sender and if the data segment is damaged, the receiver discards it.The sending TCP module re-transmits any segment for which no positive acknowledgment has been received,after an appropriate time-out period.

TCP segment format

Note: TCP is the connection-oriented. It establishes a logical end-to-end connection between the two communicating host. To establish a dialogue before data is transmitted,control information, called a handshake, is exchanged between the two endpoints. TCP indicate the control function of a segment by setting the appropriate bit in the Flags field in word 4 of the segment header.

TCP Using Three Way Handshake Process

The figure below shows the three way handshake process which is used by TCP.

Host A begins the connection by sending host B a segment with the "Synchronize sequence

numbers" (SYN) bit set and this segment tells host B that A wishes to set up a connection, and it tells B what sequence number host A will use as a starting number for its segments. (Sequence numbers are used to keep data in the proper order.) Host B responds to A with a segment that has the "Acknowledgment" (ACK) and SYN bits set and B's segment acknowledges the receipt of A's segment, and informs A which Sequence Number host B will start with. Finally, host A sends a segment that acknowledges receipt of B's segment, and transfers the first actual data. After this exchange, host A's TCP has positive evidence that the remote TCP is alive and ready to receive data and then as soon as the connection is established, data can be transferred. When the cooperating modules have concluded the data transfers,to close the connection they will exchange a three-way handshake with segments containing the "No more data from sender" bit (called the FIN bit). It is the end-to-end exchange of data that provides the logical connection between the two system. TCP also helps to views the data it sends as a continuous stream of bytes, not as independent packets. Therefore, TCP takes care to maintain the sequence in which bytes are received and sent.The Acknowledgment Number and Sequence Number fields in the TCP segment header keep track of the bytes. The TCP standard does not require that each system start numbering bytes with any specific number and each system chooses the number it will use as a starting point.Each end of the connection must know the other end's initial number to keep track of the data stream correctly. The two ends of the connection synchronize byte-numbering systems by exchanging SYN segments during the handshake and the Sequence Number field in the SYN segment contains the Initial Sequence Number (ISN), which is the starting point for the byte-numbering system. For security reasons the ISN should be the random number, though it is often 0. Each byte of data is numbered sequentially from the ISN, so the first real byte of data sent has a sequence number of ISN+1 and the Sequence Number in the header of a data segment identifies the sequential position in the data stream of the first data byte in the segment. For example, if the first byte in the data stream was sequence number 1 (ISN=0) and 4000 bytes of data have already been transferred, then the first byte of data in the current segment is byte 4001, and the Sequence Number would be 4001 only. The Acknowledgment Segment (ACK) performs two functions: flow control and positive acknowledgment. The acknowledgment tells the sender how much data has been received, and how much more the receiver can accept and the Acknowledgment Number is the sequence number of the next byte the receiver expects to receive.For every packet,the standard does not require an individual acknowledgment. The acknowledgment number is a positive acknowledgment of all bytes up to that number. For example, if the first byte sent was numbered 1 and 2000 bytes have been successfully received, the Acknowledgment Number would be 2001. The Window field contains the number of bytes the remote end is able to accept or the window. If the receiver is capable of accepting 6000 more bytes, the window would be 6000 only. The window indicate to the sender that it can continue sending segments as long as the total number of bytes that it sends is smaller than the window of bytes that the receiver can accept and he

receiver controls the flow of bytes from the sender by changing the size of the window. A zero window tells the sender to cease transmission until it receives the non-zero window value.

IP - Internet Protocol
1. The Internet Protocol (IP) is a network-layer (Layer 3) protocol that contains some control information that enables packets to be routed and addressing information.

2. IP is the primary network-layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite and is documented in RFC 791.

3. Along with the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), IP represents the heart of the Internet protocol.

4. IP has two primary responsibilities: providing connectionless, best-effort delivery of datagrams through an internetwork and providing fragmentation and reassembly of datagrams to support data links with different maximum-transmission unit (MTU) sizes.

IP Packet Format
An IP packet contains several types of information, as illustrated in the following figure:

The description for IP packet fields is given below: 1. Version: Indicates that the version of IP currently used.

2. IP Header Length (IHL):which indicates the datagram header length in 32-bit words.

3. Type-of-Service:which specifies how an upper-layer protocol would like a current datagram to be handled, and assigns datagrams various levels of importance.

4. Total Length: Specifies the length, in bytes, of the entire IP packet, including the data and header.

5. Identification:which contains an integer that identifies the current datagram. This field is used to help piece together datagram fragments.

6. Flags:which consists of a 3-bit field of which the two low-order (least-significant) bits

control fragmentation. The low-order bit specifies whether the packet can be fragmented. The middle bit specifies whether the packet is the last fragment in a series of fragmented packets. The third or high-order bit is not used.

7. Fragment Offset:which indicates the position of the fragment's data relative to the beginning of the data in the original datagram, which allows the destination IP process to properly reconstruct the original datagram.

8. Time-to-Live:which maintains a counter that gradually decrements down to zero, at which point the datagram is discarded. This keeps packets from looping endlessly.

9. Protocol:which indicates which upper-layer protocol receives incoming packets after IP processing is complete.

10. Header Checksum:which helps ensure IP header integrity.

11. Source Address:which specifies the sending node.

12. Destination Address:which specifies the receiving node.

13. Options:which allows IP to support various options, such as security.

14. Data:which contains upper-layer information.

HTTP and HTTPS protocols

To transfer web pages from a web server to a client web browser using TCP, usually on port 80,Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) is used.
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To inform the client web browser what type of data it is receiving,HTTP utilizes Multipart Internet Message Protocol (MIME) headers sent by the HTTP server.

HTTP Request 1. Request Headers 2. Request Methods HTTP Response 1. Response Messages 2. Message Header Response Codes Authentication 1. Basic Authentication 2. Digest Authentication Encryption Secure Sockets Layer

HTTP
To communicate web pages to web browsers,the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used by web servers.When your browser connects to a web server, requests a web page from the server, and downloads the page,HTTP is used. It is a common standard that enables any browser to connect to any server, anywhere in the world. HTTP was originally designed by Tim Berners-Lee to support the special demands of web communications and with an emphasis on efficiency, and a target page load time of under a tenth of a second. Modern Internet networks can support this type of response provided the page isn't too large and the server is too far away. To download different parts of a web page, downloading the text, graphics, and other objects on the page in different orders,your browser can open more than one HTTP connection at once. That is why you may see the status messages in the bottom of your browser window switch

between a message like "downloading 38% of 47K" to "downloading 62% of 15K" on the same page -- there are different HTTP connections. To specify the download priorities,some browsers enable you so that, for example, graphics are not loaded, text is loaded before graphics, everything is loaded at once, etc and check your individual browser preferences

Sample HTTP
GET / HTTP/1.0 HTTP/1.0 200 OK Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 20:18:59 GMT Server: Apache/1.0.0 Content-type: text/html Content-length: 1579 Last-modified: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 22:23:34 GMT HTML document The use of full headers is preferred for several reasons which are as follows:

The first line of a server header includes a response code indicating that the success or failure of the operation One of the server header fields will be Content-type:, which specifies that a MIME type to describe how the document should be interpreted. If the document has moved, the server can specify its new location with a Location: field and allowing the client to transparently retry the request using the new URL. WWW-Authenticate: and the Authorization: fields allow access controls to be placed on Web documents. The Referer: field allows the client to tell the server the URL of the document that triggered this request and permitting savvy servers to trace clients through a series of requests.

HTTP Supported Methods

The table below lists the HTTP 1.1 methods supported by the RDF Gateway. HTTP Method Description

GET HEAD POST PUT DELETE OPTIONS

Retrieves the information identified by the Request-URI. Identical to the GET method but returns no response body. Identical to the GET method but encodes parameters in the request body. Updates the information identified by the Request-URI. Removes the information identified by the Request-URI. Requests information about the communication options available.

HTTPS - Secure HTTP

The HyperText Transport Protocol (Secure), the standard encrypted communication mechanism on the World Wide Web and this is actually just HTTP over SSL.

Advantages of HTTPS
1. Same as HTTP, only encrypted for security purposes. HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer, or HTTP over SSL) is a Web protocol built into its browser that encrypts and decrypts user page requests as well as the pages that are returned by the Web server and developed by Netscape. HTTPS is really just the use of the Netscape's Secure Socket Layer (SSL) as a sublayer under its regular HTTP application layering. 2. The Hypertext Transport Protocol, Secure, the standard SSL communication mechanism of World Wide Web. (1) (HyperText Transport Protocol Secure) The protocol for accessing a secure Web server and using HTTPS in the URL instead of HTTP directs the message to a secure port address rather than the default Web port address of 80. The session is then managed by the security protocol. (2) (HyperText Transport Protocol Secure) The protocol for accessing a secure Web server and using HTTPS in the URL instead of HTTP directs the message to a secure port number rather than the default Web port number of 80. The session is then managed by a security protocol. (3) (HyperText Transport Protocol Server) A Web server that runs under Windows NT, developed by the European Microsoft Windows Academic Centre.

3. HTTP layered over the SSL protocol.

4. Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

5. Secure HyperText Transfer Protocol

6. Same as HTTP but provides secure Internet communication using SSL. A type of server software which provides the ability for "secure" transactions to take place on the World Wide Web. If a Web site is running off a HTTPS server you can type in HTTPS instead of HTTP in the URL section of your browser to enter into the "secured mode". Windows NT HTTPS and Netscape Commerce server software support this protocol. SEE ALSO: proxy server, secure server and commerce server. 7. https is ordinary http exchanged over an SSL-encrypted session. A new implementation of the HTTP protocol that provides for more secure web communications by including encryption methods. 8. A variant of HTTP that encrypts messages for security. (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) A secure protocol for sending information forth and back over the Internet and the HTTPS protocol most frequently relies on the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption system but others such as TLS (Transport layer security) are also available. Every attempt has been made to provide you with the correct acronym for HTTPS and if we missed the mark, we would greatly appreciate your help by entering the correct or alternate meaning in the box below. Definitions have been compiled multiple results provided for your review and popular search engine.

MIME and IMAP protocols

MIME(Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension)

For identifying the type of data contained in a file based on its extension,Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension, a standard system is used.
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To send binary files across the Internet as attachments to e-mail messages,MIME protocol is used and it is an Internet protocol.

This includes graphics, video, sound and photos files, and formatted text documents.

Common MIME Data Types

Although the top-level MIME media types correspond to basic concepts that all users would understand, not all subtypes fall under the obvious media category and those that are associated with specific application software, for instance, may be classified as application types rather than text, image, or audio, despite being widely available over the Internet. Often these data types require a browser plug-in before their contents will be correctly processed when visiting a Web site, or the client browser might ask you to specify which application is associated with file extension or that subtype. The following table describe most common MIME text types: MIME Type text/plain text/html File Extensions txt .html, .htm Common Format Name Text Description US ASCII text with no format tags

HyperText Markup Defines World Wide Web pages Language Rich Text Format Vendor-independent word processing file type with some formatting capabilities Print and display format

application/rtf .rtf application/ postscript ps, .ai, .eps

PostScript

application/pdf pdf

Portable Document Format used by Acrobat for platform-

Adobe's PDF

independent display and printing

New Header Fields in MIME

MIME defines the following new header fields: 1. MIME-Version, which uses a version number to declare that a message conforms to MIME standard. 2. Content-Type, which can be used to specify the subtype and type of data in the body of a message and to fully specify the encoding of such data. It includes also a subtype option. The seven Content-types specified are: 1. Text - to represent textual information in a number of character sets. 2. Image - for transmitting still image (picture) data. 3. Audio - for transmitting audio or voice data. 4. Video - for transmitting video or moving image data. 5. Message - for encapsulating a mail message. 6. Multipart - to combine several body parts, possibly of different types of data, into a single message. 7. Application - to transmit application data or binary data. 3. Content-Transfer-Encoding, which specifies how the data is encoded to allow it to pass through mail transports having data or character set limitations. 4. Content-ID (optional), which enables labeling bodies, thus allowing one body to reference another. 5. Content-Description (optional), which enables associating descriptive information with a body.

IMAP(Internet Message Access Protocol)

A protocol allowing a client to manipulate and access electronic mail messages on a server and it permits manipulation of remote message folders (mailboxes), in a way that is functionally equivalent to local mailboxes. IMAP includes operations for creating,deleting, and renaming mailboxes; checking for new messages; permanently removing messages; searching; and selective fetching of message attributes, texts, and portions thereof. It does not specify a means of posting mail; this function is handled by a mail transfer protocol such as SMTP.

IMAP Basics - What it is, and what it can do.

For anyone who has a requirement to access multiple separate mail accounts that reside on different machines, access to email becomes problematic and many mail systems use the tried and tested POP3 protocol. POP3 client applications download the mail from the server, and store it on the client computer. Most clients store mail in their own format, making it inaccessible by other mail programs, and most machines which run POP3 clients are desktops, which are rarely on 24/7, further reducing access to the mail once it has been downloaded. The IMAP protocol attempts to remedy some of these problems and the strength of IMAP lies in online and disconnected operation. Unlike POP3, mail is not copied from the server and then deleted - instead, IMAP clients manipulate the mail on the server, and permit access to remote, server hosted mailboxes as though they were local resources.

An IMAP mail system has a number of immediate advantages for users which are given below:As all mail is stored on the server and changing mail client becomes the work of seconds - all that is required is to configure a new IMAP client with the IMAP account details. An IMAP client can easily be configured to view the multiple mailboxes in physically separate servers. Multiple IMAP clients can be used by each user and this makes implementing a webmail solution for roaming users a simple task. IMAP maintains the message status flags on the server for read, answered, etc. IMAP allows the idea of shared folders and this makes it easier to implement generic
email accounts

for an organisation, and then allow multiple users to access those accounts.

Many implementations also allow server side filtering of mail and this can be an extremely useful feature when users are accessing their mailboxes through different email clients.

Comparing IMAP and POP

Points POP IMAP

What does it stand for?

Post Office Protocol

Internet Message Access Protocol If you want to access your mail from multiple computers or locations.

Which If you access mail using only one protocol would computer e.g. your office PC or a suit me best? laptop.

Many mail programs now have some IMAP capability but you will generally need to use the latest version of one of the more popular Which mail All mail programs or clients have POP programs such as Netscape programs can I capability Messenger, Eudora or Outlook use? Express to ensure that you can use full IMAP features. You will also be able to access your mail via a web page using any web browser. Some Common Tasks: By default, incoming messages stay on the server when you check your By default, incoming messages are mail - only headers are transferred transferred to your local machine when with full messages only downloaded you check your incoming mail. Only when selected for reading. All your Check for new messages are available if you messages are always available no incoming mail connect to the server using a PC other matter where or how you connect to than your normal one. You are the server. You remain connected to connected to the server only for the the server whilst you deal with mail transfer of messages. but some clients allow for off-line working. You can read and respond to messages directly on the server but you can also read and respond to messages on your local machine, Reading and responding to messages is after downloading for offline done on your local machine. working (depending on client). When you reconnect, your mailboxes are resynchronised to reflect the changes you have made. Creating mailboxes can be done only on your local machine. You can create mailboxes directly on the server. By default, an Inbox is automatically created on the server when you begin using IMAP. The Inbox functions as the master

Read and respond to mail

Create mailboxes for storing messages

mailbox (or folder) as well as the mailbox for incoming messages. All other mailboxes, including a trash box, need to be created within the Inbox. Move messages in and out of mailboxes Transfer messages from local machine to server and vice versa You can move messages in and out You can move messages in and out of of mailboxes on the server and on mailboxes only on your local machine. your local machine. You cannot transfer any messages from your local machine to the server. Messages are automatically transferred from the server to your local machine when you check your incoming mail. You can transfer individual messages from mailboxes on your local machine into mailboxes on the server and vice versa. You can delete individual messages and groups of messages directly on the server as well as on your local machine.

When using some clients (e.g. Eudora), Delete selected if you specified to leave messages on messages on the server, you can delete individual the server messages left there.

SSL and SMTP protocols

Secure Socket Layer(SSL)

To ensure security of data transported and routed through HTTP, LDAP or POP3 application layers,the SSL protocol was originally developed by Netscape. SSL is designed to make use of TCP as a communication layer to provide a reliable end-to-end secure and authenticated connection between two points over a network (for example between the service client and the server).
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Notwithstanding this SSL can be used for protection of data in transit in situations related to any network service and it is used mostly in HTTP server and client applications.

Today, almost each available HTTP server can support an SSL session, whilst Netscape Navigator or IE browsers are provided with SSL-enabled client software.

Objectives of SSL
1. Authenticating the client and server to each other: to authenticate the communicating parties to each other,the SSL protocol supports the use of standard key cryptographic techniques (public key encryption). Though the most frequent application consists in authenticating the service client on the basis of a certificate and SSL may also use the same methods to authenticate the client. 2. Ensuring data integrity: during a session, data cannot be either unintentionally or intentionally tampered with. 3. Securing data privacy: data in transport between the server and the client must be protected from interception and be readable only by the intended recipient. This prerequisite is necessary for both the data associated with the protocol itself (securing traffic during negotiations) and the application data that is sent during the session itself and SSL is in fact not a single protocol but rather a set of protocols that can additionally be further divided in two layers:

4. <

b>the protocol to ensure data security and integrity: this layer is composed of SSL Record Protocol 5. the protocols that are designed to establish an SSL connection:

three protocols are used in this layer: the SSL Handshake Protocol,the SSL Alert Protocol and the SSL ChangeCipher SpecPprotocol.

The SSL protocol stack is illustrated in the following figure:

To address the tasks as described above,SSL uses these protocols. The SSL record protocol is responsible for data integrity and encryption. As can be seen in above figure, it is also used to encapsulate data sent by other SSL protocols, and therefore, it is also involved in the tasks associated with the SSL check data. The other three protocols cover the areas of session management, cryptographic parameter management and transfer of SSL messages between the client and the server and prior to going into a more detailed discussion of the role of individual protocols and their functions let us describe two fundamental concepts related to the use of SSL.

The following figure illustrate the creation of a packet under

SSL record protocol

1. The

SSL

Record

protocol

To transfer any data within a session - both messages and other SSL protocols (for example the handshake protocol), as well as for any application data,the SSL record protocol is used. 2. The Alert Protocol The Alert Protocol is used by parties to convey session messages associated with data functioning and exchange of the protocol. Each message in the alert protocol consists of two bytes and the first byte always takes a value, warning (1) or fatal (2) , that determines the severity of the message sent. Sending a message having a fatal status by either party will result in an immediate termination of the SSL session. The next byte of the message contains one of the defined error code, which may occur during an SSL communication session. 3. The ChangeCipher Spec protocol This protocol is the simplest SSL protocol. It consists of a single message that carries the value of 1. The sole purpose of this message is to cause the pending session state to be established as a fixed state, which results, for example, in defining the used set of protocols. This type of message must be sent by the client to the server and vice versa. After exchange of messages, the session state is considered agreed. This message and any other SSL messages are transferred using the SSL record protocol. 4. The handshake protocol

5. 6.

7.

8.

The handshake protocol constitutes the most complex part of the SSL protocol and it is used to initiate a session between the server and the client. Within the message of this protocol, various components such as keys and algorithms used for data encryption are negotiated. Due to this protocol, it is possible to authenticate the parties to each other and negotiate appropriate parameters of the session between them. The process of negotiations between the server and the client is illustrated in the above figure. It can be divided into 4 phases separated with horizontal broken lines and during the first phase, a logical connection must be initiated between the client and the server followed by the negotiation on the connection parameters. The client sends the server a client_hello message containing data such as: Version: which is the highest SSL version supported by the client Random: which specifies data consisting of a 32-bit timestamp and 28 bytes of randomly generated data. This data is used to protect the key exchange session between the parties of the connection. Session ID: which specifies a number that defines the session identifier. A nonzero value of this field indicates that the client wishes to update the parameters of an existing connection or establish a new connection on this session. A zero value in this field indicates that the client wishes to establish a new connection. CipherSuite: which specifies a list of encryption algorithms and key exchange method supported by the client.

SMTP(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)

SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a way to transfer email efficiently and reliably. SMTP is a relatively simple and text-based protocol, where one or more recipients of a message are specified (and in most cases verified to exist) and then the message text is transferred. To communicate among themselves,you can think of SMTP as the language that mail servers use it.

The SMTP Model

The exchange of mail using TCP/IP is performed by a message transfer agent (MTA) and users normally don?t deal with the MTA. To set up the local MTA,the system administrator is responsible. The SMTP protocol describes how two In the Internet Protocol stack,MTAs communicate with each other using the single TCP connection. The SMTP standard is one of the most widely used upper layer protocols ans as its name implies, it is a protocol that defines how to transmit messages (mail) between two users. SMTP uses the concept of spooling and the idea of spooling is to allow mail to be sent from a local application to the SMTP application, which stores the mail in some device or memory. Once the mail has arrived at the spool, it has been queued. A server checks to see if any messages are available and then attempts to deliver them and if the user is not available for delivery, the server may try later. Eventually, if the mail cannot be delivered, it will be discarded or perhaps returned to the sender. This is known as an end-to-end delivery system, because the server is attempting to contact the destination to deliver, and it will keep the mail in the spool for the a period of time until it has been delivered. SMTP is found in the two RFCs. RFC 822 describes the structure for the message, which includes the envelope as well and RFC 821 specifies the protocol that controls the exchange of mail between two machines. The figure below illustrates a general model of SMTP.

SMTP Commands
1. The MAIL command identifies the originator of message. 2. The next command, RCPT, identifies the recipient and more than one RCPT command can be issued if there are multiple recipients.
3. The contents of the mail message are sent by the client using the DATA command and the final command, QUIT, terminates the mail exchange.

Those were the commands used in the above examples, but SMTP has a few more commands: 4. The RSET command causes both ends to reset and aborts the current mail transaction. Any stored information about sender and recipients or mail data is discarded. 5. The VRFY command lets the client ask the sender to verify a recipients address, without sending mail to the recipient and it's often used by a system administrator, by hand, for debugging mail delivery problems. 6. The NOOP command does nothing besides force the server to respond with an OK with a reply code (200). 7. EXPN expands a mailing list, and is often used by the system administrator and similar to VRFY. 8. The TURN command lets the server and client switch roles, to send mail in the reverse direction, without having to take down the TCP connection and create a new one. 9. Three more commands are available but rarely implemented: SEND,SAML, and SOML. They replace the MAIL command and allow combinations of the mail being delivered directly to the users terminal (if logged in), or sent to the recipient?s mailbox. 10. For further detailed information about SMTP commands look at the extensive look at SMTP command.

POP and FTP protocols

Post office protocol(POP)

The POP3 protocol enables any email program anywhere on the Internet to connect to any email server to perform the usual email functions, such as sending and reading, as long as they have a valid account and password.
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POP3 is an open Internet standard.

The common POP3 commands

The common POP3 commands and responses are listed in the following table: Command user (username) pass_ (password) stat () list ([message]) retr (message) rset () Responses Login with a username. If valid username, server will respond with request for password. Send password. If valid, server response will be two numbers, message count and mailbox size. Get the mailbox status. Response is two numbers, message count and mailbox size. Get list of messages. An option "message" gets information on a specific message. Get message number "message". Remove all deleted message markings.

getwelcome () Gets the greeting from the server.

dele (message) Delete message number "message".

noop () quit () top (message, lines) uidl ([message])

No operation. Do nothing. Really. Needed in unusual programming situations. Quit. Commits all changes, unlocks the mailbox, and ends the server connection. Gets just the first "lines" number of lines of message number "message". Useful on low bandwidth lines to get just the first part of long messages. Gets a unique id list -- a message digest including unique ids. The option gets the unique id for the specific message "message".

FTP(File Transfer Protocol)

FTP is used for transmission of data in the form of file from an application to the network. FTP is responsible for breaking data down into IP packets before they are sent,and for assembling the packets when they arrive. Uploading and downloading of file can be done by FTP easily.

FTP Session
An FTP session normally involves the interaction of five software elements which is given in the following table. User Interface Client PI Server PI Client DTP Server DTP This provides a user interface and drives the client protocol interpreter. This is the client protocol interpreter. It issues commands to the remote server protocol interpreter and it also drives the client data transfer process. This is the server protocol interpreter which responds to commands issued by the client protocol interpreter and drives the server data transfer process. This is the client data transfer process responsible for communicating with the server data transfer process and the local file system. This is the server data transfer process responsible for communicating with the client data transfer process and the remote file system.

NTP and DHCP protocols

partner-pub-6213 FORID:11 ISO-8859-1

To synchronize the clocks of computers over a network,NTP protocol is designed. NTP version 3 is an internet draft standard, formalized in RFC 1305 and NTP version 4 is a significant revision of the NTP standard, and is the current development version, but has not been formalized in an RFC. Simple NTP (SNTP) version 4 is described in RFC 2030.
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Network Time Protocol (NTP) keeps corporate networks functioning

As the global marketplace has grown more reliant on the network computing and the Internet, the importance of Network Time Protocol, or NTP, has grown as well. Simply put, NTP is the protocol used to synchronize the clocks of computers across multiple networks or on a network, like the Internet. Without adequate NTP synchronization, organizations cannot expect their applications and network to function properly. And in this digital age of sales transactions and instantaneous communication, a failed corporate network can quickly lead to loss of credibility with customers and to loss of profitability as well. That's why so many companies the world over have selected NTP systems from Symmetricom to manage and protect their corporate networks

Symmetricom delivers NTP systems for organizations worldwide

Symmetricom markets and builds NTP synchronization solutions for clients in more than 90 countries. Symmetricom's NTP products are found in telecom networks; defense,avionics, and space systems; and IT networks in enterprises and other organizations. Customers of Symmetricom's NTP products include government and research facilities, network service

providers, telecom equipment manufacturers, military and aerospace contractors, and major enterprises around the globe. Symmetricom NTP product offerings and time servers offer superior reliability and comprehensive solutions for network time synchronization. Symmetricom's NTP devices include the software necessary to synchronize, manage and monitor time and dedicated network time servers on all the components of a network.

The dangers of poor NTP timekeeping

When NTP is poorly handled on a corporate network, organizations can face a number of severe consequences and data may be lost when NTP is not properly synchronized and an old version of a file is inadvertently saved as the latest version. Critical operations like data backup or order processing may breakdown when tasks that need to happen in a specific sequence on different computers at exact times happen out of order.Network security can be compromised when network administrators can't track the activities of hackers because time stamps on log files are not accurate and because time stamping is such an important part of legal contracts handled electronically, poor NTP synchronization can also expose organizations to increased legal liability.

DHCP(Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)

This protocol is used to assign IP addresses to workstations or hosts on the network. Usually a DHCP server on the network performs this function and it "leases" out address for specific times to the various hosts. If a host does not use a given address for some period of time, that IP address can then be assigned to another machine by the DHCP server. When assignments are changed or made, the DHCP server must update the information in the DNS server. As with BOOTP, DHCP uses the machine's or hardware address or NIC ethernet (MAC) to determine IP address assignments. The DHCP protocol is built on BOOTP and replaces BOOTP and DHCP extends the vendor specific area in BOOTP to 312 bytes from 64. RFC 1541 defines DHCP.

DHCP Lease Stages

1. Lease Request - The client send a broadcast requesting an IP address

2. Lease Offer - The server send the above information and marks the offered address as unavailable and the message sent is a DHCPOFFER broadcast message.

3. Lease Acceptance - The first offer received by the client is accepted and the acceptance is sent from the client as a broadcast (DHCPREQUEST message) including the IP address of the DNS server that sent the accepted offer and other DHCP servers retract their offers and mark the offered address as available and the accepted address as unavailable.

4. Server lease acknowledgement - The server sends a a DHCPNACK or DHCPACK if an unavailable address was requested.

Benefits of DHCP
All servers and clients need an IP address on a TCP/IP network. How will you configure those dotty dot numbers on your TCP/IP property tabs? automatically, or Manually via DHCP? Let us investigate what advantages an automatic DHCP service has over the manual alternative.

DHCP needs much less effort - manual configuration is labour intensive and boring. Above all, DHCP options give a sense of the central control. Easy to update a default gateway or DNS server's IP address. and manual changes would be a nightmare, you would have to visit every machine. No IP duplicate addresses provided you configure the DHCP scopes intelligently and there will never be another 'Duplicate IP address' problem to eat into your valuable time.

SNMP and LDAP protocols

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an application layer protocol that facilitates the exchange of management information between network devices and it is part of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol suite. SNMP enables network administrators to manage network performance,solve and find network problems, and plan for network growth.
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Two versions of SNMP exist: SNMP version 1 (SNMPv1) and SNMP version 2 (SNMPv2) and both versions have a number of features in common, but SNMPv2 offers enhancements, such as additional protocol operations. Standardization of yet another version of the SNMPSNMP Version 3 (SNMPv3)is pending.

SNMP Basic Components

An SNMP-managed network consists of three key components: agents, managed devices, and network-management systems (NMSs). A managed device is the network node that contains an SNMP agent and that resides on a managed network. Managed devices store and collect management information and make this information available to NMSs using SNMP. Managed devices, sometimes called network elements, can be access server and srouters, switches and bridges, hubs, computer hosts, or printers. An agent is a network-management software module that resides in a managed device and it has local knowledge of management information and translates that information into a form compatible with SNMP. An NMS executes applications that control and monitor managed devices. NMSs provide the bulk of the processing and memory resources required for network management and one or more NMSs must exist on any managed network. Figure below illustrates the relationships of these three components.

SNMP Basic Commands

Managed devices are controlled and monitored using four basic SNMP commands: read, write, trap, and traversal operations. The read command is used by an NMS to monitor managed devices and the NMS examines different variables that are maintained by managed devices. The write command is used by an NMS to control managed devices and the NMS changes the values of variables stored within managed devices. The trap command is used by managed devices to asynchronously report events to the NMS and when certain types of events occur, a managed device sends a trap to the NMS. Traversal operations are used by the NMS to determine which variables a managed device that supports and to sequentially gather information in variable tables, such as a routing table.

LDAP
Light Weight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an open network protocol standard that designed to provide access to distributed directories. LDAP provides a mechanism for modifying and querying information that resides in a directory information tree (DIT). A directory information tree typically contains a broad range of the information about different types of network objects including users, printers, applications, and other network resources. LDAP is described through four basic models: Information, Naming,Security, and Functional. The combination of these models introduces a nomenclature that describes their attributes and entries, and provides methods to query and manipulate their values.

The structure of an LDAP directory tree

LDAP directory servers store their data hierarchically and if you've seen the top-down representations of DNS trees or UNIX file directories, an LDAP directory structure will be familiar ground. As with DNS host names, an LDAP directory record's Distinguished Name (DN for short) is read from the individual entry, backwards through the tree, up to the top level. More on this point later. Why break things up into a hierarchy? There are a number of reasons. Here are a few possible scenario:

You may wish to push all your US-based customer contact information to an LDAP server in the Seattle office (which is devoted to sales) and you probably don't need to push the company's asset management information there. You may wish to grant permissions to a group of individuals based on directory structure. In the example listed below, the company's asset management team might need full access to the asset-mgmt section and not to other areas. Combined with replication, you can tailor the layout of your directory structure to minimize WAN bandwidth utilization and your sales office in Seattle might need up-tothe minute updates for US sales contacts, but only hourly updates for European sales information.

Advantages of Using LDAP

With LDAP ACIs, you can do things like:

Grant users the ability to change their home address and home phone number, while restricting them to read-only access for other data types (such as job title or manager's login). Grant anyone in the group "HR-admins" the ability to modify any user's information for the following fields: manager, job title, employee ID number, department name, and department number and there would be no write permission to other fields. Deny read access to anyone attempting to query LDAP for a user's password, while still allowing a user to change her or his own password. Grant managers read-only permission for the home phone numbers of their direct reports, while denying this privilege to the anyone else. Grant anyone in the group "host-admins" to create,edit, and delete all aspects of host information stored in LDAP. Via a Web page, allow people in "foobar-sales" to selectively grant or deny themselves read access to subsets of the customer contact database and this would, in turn, allow these individuals to download the customer contact information to their local laptops or to a PDA. (This will be most useful if your sales force automation tool is LDAP-aware.) Via a Web page,allow any group owner to remove or add any entries from groups they own. For example, this would allow sales managers to grant or remove access for salespeople to modify Web pages. This would allow owners of mail aliases to add and remove users without having to contact IT and mailing lists designated as "public" could allow users to add or remove themselves (but only themselves) to or from those mail aliases. Restrictions can also be based on hostname or IP address. For example, fields can be made readable only if user's IP address begins with 192.168.200.*, or if the user's reverse DNS hostname maps to *.foobar.com.

ICMP and ARP protocols

ICMP is Internet Control Message Protocol.

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ICMP is a complementary protocol to IP (Internet Protocol) and like IP, ICMP resides on the Network Layer of the OSI Model.

ICMP is designed for test messages and sending control across IP networks. Unlike the Transport Layer protocols UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) which operate on top of IP, ICMP exists alongside IP. The ability to understand ICMP is a requirement for any IP-compatible network device and however, many security devices such as firewalls block or disable all or part of ICMP functionality for security purposes.

ICMP Message Types

The most common ICMP message types are given in the following table: Type 0 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 Name Echo Reply
Destination

Unreachable

Source Quench Redirect Alternate Host Address Echo

Router

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Router Solicitation Time Exceeded

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 30

Parameter Problem Timestamp Timestamp Reply Information Request Information Reply Address Mask Request Address Mask Reply Traceroute

ARP
The address resolution protocol (arp) is a protocol used by the Internet Protocol (IP) [RFC826] and specifically IPv4, to map IP network addresses to the hardware addresses used by a data link protocol. The protocol operates below the network layer as a part of the interface between the OSI network and OSI link layer and it is used when IPv4 is used over Ethernet. The term address resolution refers to the process of finding an address of a computer in a network and the address is "resolved" using a protocol in which a piece of information is sent by a client process executing on the local computer to a server process executing on a remote computer and the information received by the server allows the server to uniquely identify the network system for which the address was required and therefore to provide the required address. The address resolution procedure is completed when the client receives a response from server containing the required address.

Types of Message Sent by ARP

There are four types of arp messages that may be sent by the arp protocol and these are identified by four values in the "operation" field of an arp message. The types of message are: 1. 2. 3. 4. ARP request ARP reply RARP request RARP reply

The format of an arp message is shown below:

To reduce the number of address resolution requests, a client normally caches resolved addresses for a (short) period of time and the arp cache is of a finite size, and would become full of incomplete and obsolete entries for computers that are not in use if it was allowed to grow without check. The arp cache is therefore periodically flushed of all entries. This deletes and unused entries frees space in the cache and it also removes any unsuccessful attempts to contact computers which are not currently running.

Example of use of the Address Resolution Protocol (arp)

The figure below shows the use of arp when a computer tries to contact a remote computer on the same LAN (known as "sysa") using the "ping" program and it is assumed that no previous IP datagrams have been received form this computer, and therefore arp must first be used to identify the MAC address of the remote computer.

RARP,BOOTP and PPTP protocols

Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) is a network layer protocol used to resolve an IP address from a given hardware address (such as an Ethernet address) and it is now obsoleted by BOOTP and the more modern DHCP, which both support a much greater feature set than RARP. The primary limitations of RARP are that each MAC must be manually configured on a central server, and that the protocol only conveys an IP address and this leaves configuration of subnetting, gateways, and other information to other protocols or the user.
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Protocol Structure - RARP (Reverse Address Resolution Protocol)

<----------------------16 bits-----------------> Hardware Type HLen Plen Sender Hardware Address Sender Protocol Address Target Hardware Address Target Protocol Address In the above figure it is clear that RARP and ARP has the same structure:

<----------------------16 bits-----------------> Protocol Type Operation

Hardware type - which specifies a hardware interface type for which the sender requires a response. Protocol type -which specifies the type of the high-level protocol address the sender has supplied. Hlen - Hardware address length. Plen - Protocol address length. Operation - The values are as follows: o ARP request. o ARP response. o RARP request. o RARP response. o Dynamic RARP request. o Dynamic RARP reply.

Dynamic RARP error. InARP request. InARP reply. Sender hardware address -HLen bytes in length. Sender protocol address - PLen bytes in length. Target hardware address - HLen bytes in length. Target protocol address - PLen bytes in length.

o o o

Advantages of RARP
1. RARP (Reverse Address Resolution Protocol) allows a physical machine in a local area network to request its IP address from a gateway server's Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) cache or table. 2. A network administrator creates a table in a local area network's gateway router that maps the physical machine (or Media Access Control - MAC address) addresses to corresponding to the Internet Protocol addresses (IP address). 3. When a new machine is set up, its RARP client program requests from RARP server on the router to be sent its IP address. 4. Assuming that an entry has been set up in the router table and the RARP server will return the IP address to the machine which can store it for future use. 5. RARP is available for Fiber Distributed-Data Interface,Ethernet, and Token Ring LANs and ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) performs the opposite function as the RARP: mapping of an IP address to a physical machine address.

BOOTP (Bootstrap Protocol)

BOOTP sends IP addresses and other configuration data to hosts that broadcast BOOTP requests and because some BOOTP clients require more data to boot than can fit in a BOOTP response, BOOTP provides a means for specifying the location of a boot file. The BOOTP client can then load the file using TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol). Usually, the data in the boot file (such as an X server for an X terminal) is specific to the vendor of BOOTP client software. The BOOTP service responds to BOOTP requests only and if you are using the BOOTP-only service, DHCP services are not available. The BOOTP server is provided for backwards compatibility for those sites not wishing to change their configurations.

Using BOOTP
The MultiNet BOOTP (Bootstrap Protocol) service lets your OpenVMS system help other network devices establish network connectivity and diskless hosts. The remote system broadcasts a BOOTP request over the network with its Ethernet address and the BOOTP server looks up the host's address in a configuration file (MULTINET:BOOTP-SERVER.CONFIGURATION) and responds with the host's IP address, subnet mask, gateway address, initial load file, and any other data needed by the client. Using this information, the client can boot from the network itself. Starting with MultiNet V3.5, MultiNet includes two BOOTP servers: An older server provided for backwards compatibility for those sites not wishing to change their configuration, and a newer DHCP/BOOTP server that provides features not present in the older and BOOTP-only server. Configuring the BOOTP server involves: 1. Obtaining the data required by each BOOTP client.

2. Starting and enabling BOOTP.

3. Modifying the BOOTP configuration file.

4. Reloading the BOOTP configuration.

5. Disabling debug messages, if desired.

Obtaining Data for BOOTP Clients

Make a list of configuration parameters (known as BOOTP options) required by devices you

want to configure using BOOTP. Because some network devices require vendor-specific configuration or large amounts of information at boot time, BOOTP lets you specify the path names of additional configuration files the client can download from TFTP servers. Note! If you are running DNS, make sure you use the same IP address and host name data used by your primary site's DNS servers. If you are using host tables instead of DNS, make sure you use the same IP address and host name data listed in MULTINET:HOSTS.LOCAL.

PPTP

Short for Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, a new technology for creating Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) developed jointly by the Microsoft Corporation, U.S. Robotics, and several remote access vendor companies, known collectively as the PPTP Forum. A VPN is a private network of computers that uses the public Internet to connect some nodes and because the Internet is essentially an open network, the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is used to ensure that messages transmitted from one VPN node to another are secure. With PPTP, users can dial in to their corporate network via Internet.

Fuction of PPTP
PPTP allows existing Network Access Server (NAS) functions to be separated using a clientserver architecture and traditionally, the following functions are implemented by a NAS: 1. Physical native interfacing to ISDN or PSTN and control of external modems or terminal adapters. A NAS may interface directly to a telco digital or analog circuit or attach via an external modem or terminal adapter. Control of a circuit-switched connection is accomplished with eitherDSS1 ISDN call control or modem control protocols. The NAS, in conjunction with the modem or terminal adapters, may perform rate adaption,sync to async conversion,analog to digital conversion or a number of other alterations of data streams. 2. Logical termination of a Point-to-Point-Protocol (PPP) Link Control Protocol (LCP)

session. 3. Participation in PPP authentication protocol . 4. Bundle management and Channel aggregation for PPP Multilink Protocol. 5. Logical termination of the various PPP network control protocols (NCP). 6. Multiprotocol bridging and routing between NAS interfaces. PPTP divides these functions between the PAC and PNS. 7. The protocol used to carry PPP protocol data units (PDUs) between the PNS and PAC, as well as call control and management is addressed by PPTP.

TCP/IP Email

Email is one of the most important uses of TCP/IP.

When you write an email, you don't use TCP/IP.

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When you write an email, you use an email program like Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook or Netscape Communicator.

Your Email Program Does

Your email program uses different TCP/IP protocols:

It sends your emails using SMTP It can download your emails from an email server using POP It can connect to an email server using IMAP

SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

The SMTP protocol is used for the transmission of e-mails. SMTP takes care of sending email to another computer. Normally your email is sent to an email server (SMTP server), and then to another server or servers, and finally to its destination. SMTP can only transmit pure text. It cannot transmit binary data like pictures, sounds or movies. SMTP uses the MIME protocol to send binary data across TCP/IP networks. The MIME protocol converts binary data to pure text.

POP - Post Office Protocol

The POP protocol is used by email programs (like Microsoft Outlook) to retrieve emails from an email server. If your email program uses POP, all your emails are downloaded to your email program (also called email client), each time it connects to your email server.

IMAP - Internet Message Access Protocol

The IMAP protocol is used by email programs (like Microsoft Outlook) just like the POP protocol. The main difference between the IMAP protocol and the POP protocol is that the IMAP protocol will not automatically download all your emails each time your email program connects to your email server. The IMAP protocol allows you to see through your email messages at the email server before you download them. With IMAP you can choose to download your messages or just delete them. This way IMAP is perfect if you need to connect to your email server from different locations, but only want to download your messages when you are back in your office.