Delivery, Forwarding,

and Routing of IP Packets

Objectives
Upon completion you will be able to:

• Understand the different types of delivery and the connection

• Understand forwarding techniques in classful addressing
• Understand forwarding techniques in classless addressing
• Understand how a routing table works

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 6.1 DELIVERY
The network layer supervises delivery, the handling of the packets by the
underlying physical networks. Two important concepts are the type of
connection and direct versus indirect delivery.

The topics discussed in this section include:

Connection Types
Direct Versus Indirect Delivery

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 Note:

IP is a connectionless protocol.

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 Figure 6.1 Direct delivery

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 Figure 6.2 Indirect delivery

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 6.2 FORWARDING
Forwarding means to place the packet in its route to its destination.
Forwarding requires a host or a router to have a routing table. .

The topics discussed in this section include:

Forwarding Techniques
Forwarding with Classful Addressing
Forwarding with Classless Addressing
Combination

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 Figure 6.3 Next-hop method

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 Figure 6.4 Network-specific method

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 Figure 6.5 Host-specific routing

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 Figure 6.6 Default routing

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 Figure 6.7 Simplified forwarding module in classful address without subnetting

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 Example 1

Figure 6.8 shows an imaginary part of the Internet.

Show the routing tables for router R1.

See Next Slide

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 Figure 6.8 Configuration for routing, Example 1

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 Example 1 (Continued)

Solution
Figure 6.9 shows the three tables used by router R1.
Note that some entries in the next-hop address
column are empty because in these cases, the
destination is in the same network to which the router
is connected (direct delivery). In these cases, the next-
hop address used by ARP is simply the destination
address of the packet..

See Next Slide

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 Figure 6.9 Tables for Example 1

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 Example 2

Router R1 in Figure 6.8 receives a packet with

destination address 192.16.7.14. Show how the packet
is forwarded.
Solution
The destination address in binary is 11000000 00010000
00000111 00001110. A copy of the address is shifted 28 bits to
the right. The result is 00000000 00000000 00000000 00001100
or 12. The destination network is class C. The network address
is extracted by masking off the leftmost 24 bits of the
destination address; the result is 192.16.7.0. The table for Class
C is searched. The network address is found in the first row.
The next-hop address 111.15.17.32. and the interface m0 are
passed to ARP.
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 Example 3

Router R1 in Figure 6.8 receives a packet with destination

address 167.24.160.5. Show how the packet is forwarded.
Solution
The destination address in binary is 10100111 00011000
10100000 00000101. A copy of the address is shifted 28 bits to
the right. The result is 00000000 00000000 00000000
00001010 or 10. The class is B. The network address can be
found by masking off 16 bits of the destination address, the
result is 167.24.0.0. The table for Class B is searched. No
matching network address is found. The packet needs to be
forwarded to the default router (the network is somewhere else
in the Internet). The next-hop address 111.30.31.18 and the
interface number m0 are passed to ARP.
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 Figure 6.10 Simplified forwarding module in classful address with subnetting

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 Example 4

Figure 6.11 shows a router connected to four subnets.

See Next Slide

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 Figure 6.11 Configuration for Example 4

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 Example 4 (Continued)

Note several points. First, the site address is

145.14.0.0/16 (a class B address). Every packet with
destination address in the range 145.14.0.0 to
145.14.255.255 is delivered to the interface m4 and
distributed to the final destination subnet by the
router. Second, we have used the address x.y.z.t/n for
the interface m4 because we do not know to which
network this router is connected. Third, the table has
a default entry for packets that are to be sent out of
the site. The router is configured to apply the mask
/18 to any destination address.
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 Example 5

The router in Figure 6.11 receives a packet with

destination address 145.14.32.78. Show how the
packet is forwarded.

Solution
The mask is /18. After applying the mask, the subnet
address is 145.14.0.0. The packet is delivered to ARP
with the next-hop address 145.14.32.78 and the
outgoing interface m0.

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 Example 6

A host in network 145.14.0.0 in Figure 6.11 has a

packet to send to the host with address 7.22.67.91.
Show how the packet is routed.

Solution
The router receives the packet and applies the mask
(/18). The network address is 7.22.64.0. The table is
searched and the address is not found. The router
uses the address of the default router (not shown in
figure) and sends the packet to that router.

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 Note:

In classful addressing we can have a

routing table with three columns;
in classless addressing, we need at
least four columns.

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 Figure 6.12 Simplified forwarding module in classless address

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 Example 7

Make a routing table for router R1 using the

configuration in Figure 6.13.

See Next Slide

Solution
Table 6.1 shows the corresponding table.

See the table after the figure.

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 Figure 6.13 Configuration for Example 7

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 Table 6.1 Routing table for router R1 in Figure 6.13

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 Example 8

Show the forwarding process if a packet arrives at R1

in Figure 6.13 with the destination address
180.70.65.140.
Solution
The router performs the following steps:
1. The first mask (/26) is applied to the destination
address. The result is 180.70.65.128, which does not
match the corresponding network address.

See Next Slide

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 Example 8 (Continued)

2. The second mask (/25) is applied to the

destination address. The result is 180.70.65.128,
which matches the corresponding network address.
The next-hop address (the destination address of the
packet in this case) and the interface number m0
are passed to ARP for further processing.

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 Example 9

Show the forwarding process if a packet arrives at R1

in Figure 6.13 with the destination address
201.4.22.35.

Solution
The router performs the following steps:

See Next Slide

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 Example 9 (Continued)

1. The first mask (/26) is applied to the destination address. The

result is 201.4.22.0, which does not match the corresponding
network address (row 1).
2. The second mask (/25) is applied to the destination address.
The result is 201.4.22.0, which does not match the
corresponding network address (row 2).
3. The third mask (/24) is applied to the destination address.
The result is 201.4.22.0, which matches the corresponding
network address. The destination address of the package and
the interface number m3 are passed to ARP.

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 Example 10

Show the forwarding process if a packet arrives at R1

in Figure 6.13 with the destination address
18.24.32.78.
Solution
This time all masks are applied to the destination
address, but no matching network address is found.
When it reaches the end of the table, the module gives
the next-hop address 180.70.65.200 and interface
number m2 to ARP. This is probably an outgoing
package that needs to be sent, via the default router, to
some place else in the Internet.
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 Example 11

Now let us give a different type of example. Can we

find the configuration of a router, if we know only its
routing table? The routing table for router R1 is given
in Table 6.2. Can we draw its topology?

See Next Slide

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 Routing table for Example 11

Mask Network Next hop Interface

Address Address Number
/24 192.16.7.0 111.15.17.32 m0
/16 145.80.0.0 -------------- m1
/16 170.14.0.0 -------------- m2
/8 111.0.0.0 -------------- m0
default default 111.30.31.18 m0

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 Figure 6.8 Configuration for routing, Example 1

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 Table 6.2 Routing table for Example 11

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 Example 11 (Continued)

Solution
We know some facts but we don’t have all for a
definite topology. We know that router R1 has three
interfaces: m0, m1, and m2. We know that there are
three networks directly connected to router R1. We
know that there are two networks indirectly connected
to R1. There must be at least three other routers
involved (see next-hop column). We know to which
networks these routers are connected by looking at
their IP addresses. So we can put them at their
appropriate place.
See Next Slide
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 Example 11 (Continued)

We know that one router, the default router, is

connected to the rest of the Internet. But there is some
missing information. We do not know if network
130.4.8.0 is directly connected to router R2 or through
a point-to-point network (WAN) and another router.
We do not know if network140.6.12.64 is connected to
router R3 directly or through a point-to-point network
(WAN) and another router. Point-to-point networks
normally do not have an entry in the routing table
because no hosts are connected to them. Figure 6.14
shows our guessed topology.
See Next Slide
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 Figure 6.14 Guessed topology for Example 6

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 Address Aggregation
 When we use classless addressing, it is likely that the number of
routing table entries will increase.
 This is because the intent of classless addressing is to divide up the
whole address space into manageable blocks.
 The increased size of the table results in an increase in the amount
of time
 needed to search the table.
 To alleviate the problem, the idea of address aggregation was
designed.

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 Figure 6.15 Address aggregation

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  A router can reach four different organizations via the same
interface. The IP prefixes used by the different organizations are
108.25.224.0/21, 108.25.232.0/21, 108.25.240.0/21 and
108.25.248.0/21
 Can the router aggregate the prefixes? If so to what?
 Answer Description
 Binary value of the 3rd byte are as follows
 224 -- 11100000
 232 -- 11101000
 240 -- 11110000
 248 -- 11111000
 The first 3 bits are same across all and this can be aggregated to
16+3 = 19 prefix
 Hence the router can aggregate the prefixes to 108.25.224.0/19

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 Figure 6.16 Longest mask matching

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 Example 12

As an example of hierarchical routing, let us consider Figure

6.17. A regional ISP is granted 16384 addresses starting from
120.14.64.0. The regional ISP has decided to divide this block
into four subblocks, each with 4096 addresses. Three of these
subblocks are assigned to three local ISPs, the second subblock
is reserved for future use. Note that the mask for each block is
/20 because the original block with mask /18 is divided into 4
blocks.

See Next Slide

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 Figure 6.17 Hierarchical routing with ISPs

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 Example 12 (Continued)

The first local ISP has divided its assigned subblock into 8
smaller blocks and assigned each to a small ISP. Each small
ISP provides services to 128 households (H001 to H128), each
using four addresses. Note that the mask for each small ISP is
now /23 because the block is further divided into 8 blocks.
Each household has a mask of /30, because a household has
only 4 addresses (232−30 is 4).
The second local ISP has divided its block into 4 blocks and
has assigned the addresses to 4 large organizations (LOrg01 to
LOrg04). Note that each large organization has 1024 addresses
and the mask is /22.
See Next Slide
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 Example 12 (Continued)

The third local ISP has divided its block into 16 blocks and
assigned each block to a small organization (SOrg01 to
SOrg15). Each small organization has 256 addresses and the
mask is /24.
There is a sense of hierarchy in this configuration. All routers
in the Internet send a packet with destination address
120.14.64.0 to 120.14.127.255 to the regional ISP. The regional
ISP sends every packet with destination address 120.14.64.0 to
120.14.79.255 to Local ISP1. Local ISP1 sends every packet
with destination address 120.14.64.0 to 120.14.64.3 to H001.

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 6.3 ROUTING
Routing deals with the issues of creating and maintaining routing tables.

The topics discussed in this section include:

Static Versus Dynamic Routing Tables

Routing Table

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 Figure 6.18 Common fields in a routing table

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 Flags
 U (up): The U flag indicates the router is up and
running.
 G (Gateway): The G flag means that the destination is in
another network.
 H (host-specific): Indicates the entry in the network
address is a host specific address.
 D(added by redirection): The D flag indicates that the
routing information for this destination has been added
to the host routing table by a redirection message from
ICMP.
 M ( modified by redirection): The M flag indicates that
the routing information for this destination has been
modified by a redirection from ICMP.
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  Reference Count: the number of users that are using this
route at the moment.
 Use: Number of packets transmitted through this router
for the corresponding destination.

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