CITS3002 Computer Networks  
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The Two Contending Network Layer Schemes, continued

In contrast, the other group is the Internet community, who base their opinions on 40+ years' experience with a practical, working implementation.

They believe the subnet's job is to transmit bits, and it is known to be unreliable.

sorting They state that with this connectionless, datagram scheme,

  • that the hosts must perform any required error processing. Thus error processing is 'relinquished' to the Transport Layer, above.
  • that each host operates in a connectionless fashion in which each 'lump' of information is moved between source and destination without a permanent connection between them.
  • that each packet moves independently of all previous packets between the same source and destination machines - with each packet possibly taking a different route.

The result is that the only services provided by the Network Layer to the Transport Layer are to perform the operations of send packet and receive packet and no negotiation is possible.

 

The analogy here is with the postal service.

Note that each packet must thus carry its full destination and source address.


CITS3002 Computer Networks, Lecture 5, The Network Layer, p8, 25th March 2024.