414 CHAPTER 4 • THE NETWORK LAYER

R2. What are the two most important network-layer functions in a datagram net-
work? What are the three most important network-layer functions in a virtual-
circuit network?
R3. What is the difference between routing and forwarding?
R4. Do the routers in both datagram networks and virtual-circuit networks use for-
warding tables? If so, describe the forwarding tables for both classes of networks.
R5. Describe some hypothetical services that the network layer can provide to a
single packet. Do the same for a flow of packets. Are any of your hypotheti-
cal services provided by the Internet’s network layer? Are any provided by
ATM’s CBR service model? Are any provided by ATM’s ABR service
model?
R6. List some applications that would benefit from ATM’s CBR service model.

SECTION 4.3
R7. Discuss why each input port in a high-speed router stores a shadow copy of
the forwarding table.
R8. Three types of switching fabrics are discussed in Section 4.3. List and briefly
describe each type. Which, if any, can send multiple packets across the fabric
in parallel?
R9. Describe how packet loss can occur at input ports. Describe how packet loss
at input ports can be eliminated (without using infinite buffers).
R10. Describe how packet loss can occur at output ports. Can this loss be
prevented by increasing the switch fabric speed?
R11. What is HOL blocking? Does it occur in input ports or output ports?

SECTION 4.4
R12. Do routers have IP addresses? If so, how many?
R13. What is the 32-bit binary equivalent of the IP address 223.1.3.27?
R14. Visit a host that uses DHCP to obtain its IP address, network mask, default
router, and IP address of its local DNS server. List these values.
R15. Suppose there are three routers between a source host and a destination host.
Ignoring fragmentation, an IP datagram sent from the source host to the desti-
nation host will travel over how many interfaces? How many forwarding tables
will be indexed to move the datagram from the source to the destination?
R16. Suppose an application generates chunks of 40 bytes of data every 20 msec,
and each chunk gets encapsulated in a TCP segment and then an IP datagram.
What percentage of each datagram will be overhead, and what percentage
will be application data?
R17. Suppose Host A sends Host B a TCP segment encapsulated in an IP datagram.
When Host B receives the datagram, how does the network layer in Host B
 HOMEWORK PROBLEMS AND QUESTIONS 415

know it should pass the segment (that is, the payload of the datagram) to TCP
rather than to UDP or to something else?
R18. Suppose you purchase a wireless router and connect it to your cable modem.
Also suppose that your ISP dynamically assigns your connected device (that
is, your wireless router) one IP address. Also suppose that you have five PCs
at home that use 802.11 to wirelessly connect to your wireless router. How
are IP addresses assigned to the five PCs? Does the wireless router use NAT?
Why or why not?
R19. Compare and contrast the IPv4 and the IPv6 header fields. Do they have any
fields in common?
R20. It has been said that when IPv6 tunnels through IPv4 routers, IPv6 treats the
IPv4 tunnels as link-layer protocols. Do you agree with this statement? Why
or why not?

SECTION 4.5
R21. Compare and contrast link-state and distance-vector routing algorithms.
R22. Discuss how a hierarchical organization of the Internet has made it possible
to scale to millions of users.
R23. Is it necessary that every autonomous system use the same intra-AS routing
algorithm? Why or why not?

SECTION 4.6
R24. Consider Figure 4.37. Starting with the original table in D, suppose that D
receives from A the following advertisement:

Destination Subnet Next Router Number of Hops to Destination

z C 10
w — 1
x — 1
.... .... ....

Will the table in D change? If so how?

R25. Compare and contrast the advertisements used by RIP and OSPF.
R26. Fill in the blank: RIP advertisements typically announce the number of hops
to various destinations. BGP updates, on the other hand, announce the
__________ to the various destinations.
R27. Why are different inter-AS and intra-AS protocols used in the Internet?
R28. Why are policy considerations as important for intra-AS protocols, such as
OSPF and RIP, as they are for an inter-AS routing protocol like BGP?
416 CHAPTER 4 • THE NETWORK LAYER

R29. Define and contrast the following terms: subnet, prefix, and BGP route.
R30. How does BGP use the NEXT-HOP attribute? How does it use the AS-PATH
attribute?
R31. Describe how a network administrator of an upper-tier ISP can implement
policy when configuring BGP.

SECTION 4.7
R32. What is an important difference between implementing the broadcast abstrac-
tion via multiple unicasts, and a single network- (router-) supported broad-
cast?
R33. For each of the three general approaches we studied for broadcast communi-
cation (uncontrolled flooding, controlled flooding, and spanning-tree broad-
cast), are the following statements true or false? You may assume that no
packets are lost due to buffer overflow and all packets are delivered on a link
in the order in which they were sent.
a. A node may receive multiple copies of the same packet.
b. A node may forward multiple copies of a packet over the same
outgoing link.
R34. When a host joins a multicast group, must it change its IP address to that of
the multicast group it is joining?
R35. What are the roles played by the IGMP protocol and a wide-area multicast
routing protocol?
R36. What is the difference between a group-shared tree and a source-based tree in
the context of multicast routing?

Problems
P1. In this question, we consider some of the pros and cons of virtual-circuit and
datagram networks.
a. Suppose that routers were subjected to conditions that might cause them
to fail fairly often. Would this argue in favor of a VC or datagram archi-
tecture? Why?
b. Suppose that a source node and a destination require that a fixed amount
of capacity always be available at all routers on the path between the
source and destination node, for the exclusive use of traffic flowing
between this source and destination node. Would this argue in favor of a
VC or datagram architecture? Why?
c. Suppose that the links and routers in the network never fail and that rout-
ing paths used between all source/destination pairs remains constant. In
this scenario, does a VC or datagram architecture have more control traf-
fic overhead? Why?