Summary
Addressing:
- Unique IP address per interface
- Classful (A,B,C) => address allocation not efficient
- Hierarchical => smaller routing tables
- Provision for broadcast, multicast, loopback addresses
- Subnet masks allow “subnets” within a “network” => improved address allocation efficiency
Forwarding:
- Simple “next-hop” forwarding.
- Last hop forwards directly to destination
- Best-effort delivery : No error reporting. Delay, out-of-order, corruption, and loss possible => problem of higher layers!
- Forwarding vs routing: tables setup by separate algorithm (s)