1 CCNA 2 v3.1 Module 8

2 TCP/IP Suite Error and Control Messages CCNA 2 Module 8

333 IP Uses best effort delivery of messages No mechanism to ensure that the data is delivered Data may fail to reach its destination due to Hardware failure - router fails, destination device disconnected Improper configuration Incorrect routing information No mechanism for sending error and control messages it uses the ICMP to send and receive error and control messages to hosts on a network Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Notifies the sender that there was an error in the delivery Used in network troubleshooting

444 ICMP Error reporting protocol for IP It reports these errors back to the source of the datagram ICMP messages are encapsulated into datagrams The following is the format of an ICMP message

555 Unreachable Networks Network communication depends upon Sending and receiving devices must have TCP/IP properly configured TCP/IP protocol installed IP address and subnet mask configured If communicating outside LAN there must be a default gateway Routers Must have the TCP/IP protocol properly configured on its interfaces Use an appropriate routing protocol Omission of the above conditions results in Datagram sent to a non-existent IP address Destination device that is disconnected from its network Routers interface is down Router has no known route to the destination If any of the above occur the router sends an ICMP host unreachable message to the source

666 Ping Tests Destination Reachability ICMP issues an echo request to the destination device If destination receives ICMP request, it formulates an echo reply Destination sends echo reply to source of the echo request If sender receives echo reply, this confirms destination reachable

777 Ping

888 Issues four echo requests Receives four echo replies Confirming IP connectivity between the two devices IP Address of destination device

999 Detecting Excessively Long Routes Faulty routing can cause a datagram to Travels in a circle Never reach its destination Faulty routes occur if two routers continually route a datagram back and forth between them, thinking the other should be the next hop to the destination How to prevent this RIP hop count is a maximum 15 TTL – Time To Live – maximum hop count TTL reduced by 1 each time it goes through a router TTL of 0 – packet discarded and ICMP time exceeded message

10 ICMP message type All ICMP message formats start with these same three fields: Type Type of ICMP message Code More information specific to the message type Checksum To verify the integrity of the data ICMP echo request and echo reply Identifier and Sequence Number are unique to the echo request / reply messages. They are used to match the echo replies to the corresponding echo request

11 Destination unreachable message Reasons delivery is not possible: Hardware failures improper protocol configuration down interfaces incorrect routing information packet fragmentation is required but not allowed (4) services such as FTP or Web are unavailable (2) ICMP delivers back to the sender a destination unreachable message

12 Miscellaneous error reporting ICMP type 12 parameter Sent when datagrams have some type of error in the header and therefore, cannot be forwarded This ICMP message includes the pointer field in the header When the code value is 0 The pointer field indicates the octet of the datagram that produced the error

13 TCP/IP Suite Control Messages

14 ICMP Control Message IP cannot provide informational or control messages to hosts ICMP provides informational or control messages to hosts Error messages result from Lost packets during packet transmission Error conditions which occur during packet transmission Control messages are used to inform hosts of Conditions such as network congestion The existence of a better gateway to a remote network ICMP control messages are encapsulated within an IP datagram

15 ICMP redirect/change requests This type of message can only be initiated by a gateway When a host connects to a segment that has two or more directly connected routers, the default gateway of the host may need to use a redirect/change request to inform the host of the best path to a certain network Type 5 indicates redirect/change request

16 ICMP redirect/change requests Default gateways only send ICMP redirect/change request messages if the following conditions are met: The interface on which the packet comes into the router is the same interface on which the packet gets routed out ie subnet/network of the source IP address is the same subnet/network of the next-hop The datagram is not source-routed The route for the redirect is not another ICMP redirect or a default route The router is configured to send redirects By default, Cisco routers send ICMP redirects Router(config-if)no ip redirects will disable ICMP redirects

17 Clock synchronization & transit time estimation Hosts on different networks using software that requires time synchronization can sometimes encounter problems. The ICMP timestamp message type is designed to help alleviate this problem. ICMP timestamp request message (13) allows a host to ask for the current time according to the remote host. Remote host uses an ICMP timestamp reply message (14) to respond to the request Provides a simple way to estimate time on a remote host and total network transit time Network Time Protocol (NTP) at the upper layers of the TCP/IP protocol stack perform clock synchronization in a more reliable manner

18 Information requests and reply message formats ICMP information requests and reply messages were intended to allow a host to determine its network number This ICMP message type is considered obsolete Other protocols such as BOOTP and DHCP are now used to allow hosts to obtain their network numbers. Request Message Reply Message

19 Address mask requirements Used by hosts to identify subnet mask when the network is subnetted and the host doesn’t know its subnet mask Request is sent directly to the router if the routers address is known, otherwise the request is broadcast

20 Router Discovery Message If host has no default gateway Host sends a router solicitation message to all routers, using multicast address as the destination address broadcast to include routers that may not be configured for multicasting If sent to a router that does not support the discovery process solicitation is unanswered If sent to a router that supports the discovery process router advertisement returned router advertisement

21 Router solicitation message A host generates an ICMP router solicitation message in response to a missing default gateway. This message is sent via multicast and it is the first step in the router discovery process. A local router will respond with a router advertisement identifying the default gateway for the local host

22 Congestion and flow control messages Multiple access to the same destination at the same time High speed LAN traffic reaches slower speed WAN connection If there is too much congestion on the network packets are dropped ICMP source-quench messages are used to reduce the amount of data lost Asks senders to reduce the rate at which they are transmitting packets If no other source-quench messages are received The source will slowly increase the transmission rate Most Cisco routers do not send source-quench messages by default