A brief description of the three most commonly used network protocols in LAN

This paper is participating in theNetwork protocols must be known and must be known”Essay campaign

Data can be transmitted between different workstations and servers in the network due to the existence of protocols. With the development of the Internet, different developers have developed different ways of communication. For communication to be successful and reliable, all hosts on the network must use the same language, without dialects. Strict standards must therefore be developed that define every bit of every word in every package between hosts.

These standards come from the efforts of multiple organizations to agree on common ways of communicating, known as protocols. These all make communication easier.

Many protocols have been developed, but only a few have survived. There are many reasons for the demise of those agreements – poor design, implementation or lack of support. Those protocols that have survived have stood the test of time and become effective communication methods. The three most common protocols in lans today are MICROSOFT’s NETBEUI, NOVELL’s IPX/SPX, and cross-platform TCP/IP.

A, NETBEUI

NETBEUI is a non-routing protocol developed for IBM to carry NETBIOS communications. NETBEUI’s lack of routing and network-layer addressing is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Because it does not require additional network addresses or network layer headers and tails, it is fast and efficient and suitable for small workgroup environments where only a single network or the entire environment is bridged.

With no routing support, NETBEUI will never become the primary protocol for enterprise networks. The only address in the NETBEUI frame is the data link layer media Access Control (MAC) address, which identifies the nic but not the network. Routers rely on the network address to forward frames to their final destination, whereas NETBEUI frames lack this information entirely.

Bridges are responsible for forwarding traffic between networks based on data link layer addresses, but they have many disadvantages. Because all broadcast traffic must be forwarded to each network, Bridges do not scale well. NETBEUI specifically includes counting broadcast traffic and relies on it to resolve naming conflicts. In general, Bridges to NETBEUI networks rarely exceed 100 hosts.

Networks that rely on layer 2 switches have become more common in recent years. A full transformation environment reduces network utilization, although broadcasts are still forwarded to every host in the network. In fact, the combination of 100-Base-T Ethernet, which allows the conversion of NetBIOS networks to be extended to 350 hosts, prevents broadcast traffic from becoming a serious problem.

Second, the IPX/SPX

IPX is NOVELL’s protocol group for NETWARE clients/servers, avoiding NETBEUI’s weaknesses. However, IPX has full routing capability and can be used on large enterprise networks. It allows for many routed networks. Including 32-bit network addresses introduces new and different vulnerabilities in a single environment.

The scalability of IPX is limited by its high level broadcast communications and high overhead. The ServiceAdvertising Protocol (SAP) limits the number of hosts in a routed network to several thousand. Although the limitations of SAP have been overcome by smart router and server configurations, administrators of large-scale IPX networks still have a very difficult job.

Third, the TCP/IP

Each network protocol has its own advantages, but only TCP/IP allows full connectivity to the Internet. TCP/IP was developed by MIT and some commercial organizations for the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1960s, and was able to maintain effective communication even after a nuclear attack destroyed much of the network. ARPANET was developed based on protocols and evolved into the Internet as a communication medium for scientists and engineers.

TCP/IP has both scalability and reliability requirements. Unfortunately speed and efficiency were sacrificed (however :TCP/IP development was funded by the government).

When the Internet became public, people began to discover the power of the global network. The ubiquity of the Internet is why TCP/IP is still in use today. Often without realizing it, users have installed the TCP/IP stack on their PCS, making the network protocol the most widely used in the world.

TCP/IP’s 32-bit addressing scheme is insufficient to support the number of hosts and networks to be added to the Internet. So the standard that might replace the current implementation is IPv6.