1.7 Demultiplexing

1.7 Demultiplexing

When an Ethernet frame is received at the destination host it starts its way up the protocol stack and all the headers are removed by the appropriate protocol box. Each protocol box looks at certain identifiers in its header to determine which box in the next upper layer receives the data. This is called demultiplexing. Figure 1.8 shows how this takes place.

Figure 1.8. The demultiplexing of a received Ethernet frame.
graphics/01fig08.gif

Positioning the protocol boxes labeled "ICMP" and "IGMP" is always a challenge. In Figure 1.4 we showed them at the same layer as IP, because they really are adjuncts to IP. But here we show them above IP, to reiterate that ICMP messages and IGMP messages are encapsulated in IP datagrams.

We have a similar problem with the boxes "ARP" and "RARP." Here we show them above the Ethernet device driver because they both have their own Ethernet frame types, like IP datagrams. But in Figure 2.4 we'll show ARP as part of the Ethernet device driver, beneath IP, because that's where it logically fits.

Realize that these pictures of layered protocol boxes are not perfect.

When we describe TCP in detail we'll see that it really demultiplexes incoming segments using the destination port number, the source IP address, and the source port number.



TCP.IP Illustrated, Volume 1. The Protocols
TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series)
ISBN: 0201633469
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1993
Pages: 378

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