Comparing TCP Vs UDP Protocols, SMTP, TCP-MIB, And TCP Protocol Sequence In An Essay.

Question 1

Working for a software company you are attending a meeting to discuss the development of a new application which will allow massive volumes of data to be transferred over several days. One of the topics for discussion is whether the TCP or UDP protocol should be used. One of your colleagues is convinced that TCP must be used as it provides services such as error control and flow control which are critical for the data delivery task. Another colleague however points out that the requirement for data transfer to occur over several days mandates the use of UDP, as even a temporary network outage could cause the TCP connection to be dropped, in turn causing the transfer to be aborted. In response, you tell them that they’re both wrong, and that either protocol could be used. For both TCP and UDP:

1. Briefly explain how the protocol could successfully be used for this application;
2. Briefly explain two advantages and two disadvantages of using the protocol for this application.

Consider the operation of the SMTP protocol as illustrated in Week 8 Slide 59:

1. Briefly describe what is happening at each step of this exchange
2. Briefly describe three services of the underlying transport layer and how they are used/exploited by this application protocol.
3. Briefly explain why this particular style of message exchanges and the formatting of the email data section have been chosen for this application protocol.

Consider the Management Information Base proposed/defined for the TCP protocol in RFC4022:

Briefly discuss what information you could learn about your network from the following objects:

• tcpAttemptFails
• tcpEstabResets
• tcpRetransSegs
• tcpConnectionTable

For each of the objects identified above:

1. Briefly describe what information the object contains (must be in your own words)
2. Discuss what can be learned about what’s happening in the network on the basis of this information, e.g., what would a low value versus a high value in object X potentially mean is happening on the network?

a) Demonstrate the use of sequence numbers and acknowledgement numbers by the TCP protocol to send a random short phrase which is divided into three segments, two of which are delivered and acknowledged, before the final segment is delivered and acknowledged. Note that only segment data content, sequence number, and acknowledgement numbers are required.

Hint 1: Running a Google search for “short quotes” or similar will result in many short phrases that could potentially be used (remember Code of Conduct rules apply, nothing offensive/ abusive can be used).

b) In the Week 8 lab task, we examined the behaviour of the DNS protocol. Identify what layer of the TCP/IP model the DNS protocol runs at and explain why.

c) In the Week 9 practical we examined the SNMP protocol  and the NetFlow protocols. Briefly describe what kind of information is provided by the NetFlow protocol and briefly discuss what this information could be used for.

Comparison of TCP and UDP protocols

The software company have the requirement of sent massive volumes of data and there is a confusion for selection of the TCP or the UDP protocol for sending the data packets in the network. For the selection of the protocol for sending the data packets in the network the following functionality of both the protocol is analyzed.

After the analysis of the protocol it has been found that for long distance communication where there are multiple paths available for the data packets to reach the destination address the TCP protocol can be used because the using the UDP protocol the data packets may get lost and thus cause corruption of the data.

1. Two advantage and disadvantage of using the TCP and the UDP protocol for application in the software company are given as follows:

Advantages of TCP protocol- 

• The data sent from the server to the client can reach without duplication and on time and the data are automatically broken down into packets for sending it over the network.
• The operations are performed by the operating system and there is no need of extra involvement of the users in the sending and the receiving of the data packets. All the operations are done automatically.

Disadvantage of TCP protocol-

• If there is bugs in the operating system then different problems may occur during downloading of the web content and receive the data packets from the source address.
• The TCP connection cannot be used for multicast connection because one connection can be established at a time.

Advantage of UDP protocol-

• It can be used for broadcast and multicast communication and communicate with more than one number of client at a time
• The communication speed is faster because the data packets can reach the destination address using multiple paths

Disadvantage of UDP protocol-

• The data packets may not reach the destination address because it may get lost during reaching the destination address because multiple paths are used and there is also [possibility of duplication data.
• The data are required to be broken down into data packets for sending over the network.

The SMTP protocol is used for sending and receiving email over the network and the messages can be sent in queues using the SMTP protocol. The POP3 and the IMAP protocols are used with the SMTP protocol for proper working and saving the messages in the mailbox server and download them when needed. A program is used by the SMTP protocol for operating over the internet and a specific port address is used for transferring the mail. The SMTP protocol is used for the outgoing of the email through the mail server and POP3/IMAP is used for configuring the incoming server and receive the email from another client.

The three services that are used for the configuration of the email server and controlling the exploitation of the application protocol. A mail process model is required to be implemented and a mail submission agent is required to be used and the SMTP protocol can be implemented using the TCP port 587 for allowing the transmission of the emails over the network. Configuration of the server with the SMTP and the mail agent process is required to be used for local processing and configuration is required to be done on a single machine.

The message passing is used for sending messages using different communication channels and different communication protocols. The messages can be sent using synchronous and asynchronous techniques and encapsulation is required to be enabled making the system more efficient. The store v forward model can also be implemented for configuration of the email server and delivering and storing the emails from the email server. Multipurpose Internet mail Extension can also be used for setting the characters and enabling the multimedia contents to be attached using the emails. The DNS server is also required to be configured and enabling the message transfer agents to communicate with the message delivery agents.   

Operation of SMTP protocol

The TCP protocol RFC4022 is also termed as TCP-MIB and it is based on SNMP and new features and it contains the extension of the MIB-2 tcp group.  The connection table are defined using the protocol and it is used by the IPv4 connections and the connection state can be identified using the connection. The local address, local port and the remaddress can be fetched using the protocol and the object identifier is used for the implementation in the current framework of the network. The mib file is read and the tree is fetched using the command and loaded into the system. The IP forwarding rules can be set using the protocol and the resource hosts can be included for analysis of the load of the network.

The transition rules can be set and for disabling the creation of the rows and thus reducing the risk of confliction of the data. The password policy and the account lock policy is required to be setup. The data link layer consists of the different protocols and the methodology for interconnecting the nodes connected in the network and ARP protocol is used for the resolution of the address of the nodes connected in the network. The networking layer is used for transportation of the data packets across the network using the transport layer. The transport layer is used for handling the flow of data and increase the reliability of the network. The TCP and the UDP protocol works on the transport layer and the SMPTP protocol works on the application layer of the network.

The following figures is used for demonstration of the exchange of the data packets over time using the data flow graph in wire shark. The TCP protocol and division of the segments for identification of the data content, sequence number and the acknowledgement number required for transfer of data packets in the network. The acknowledgement is send to the destination address and then received for establishing the connection. The connection used is the TCP and is connection oriented. The sequence 1 and acknowledgement 1 is used for sending request sequence 1 and acknowledgement 2 is used for receiving data packets. The sequence 2 acknowledgement 2 is used for sending the final acknowledgement and establishment of the connection. The following figure is used for demonstration of the establishment of the connection between the google.com.

Exchange of the data packets over time (Timers are set correctly)

Information provided by TCP-MIB

The layers of the OSI layer in which the DNS protocol works is the application layer and it can be used for the identification of the address and the services used by the network protocols using a directory service. Wireshark network protocol analyzer can be used for the tracing DNS file and filtering specific DNS transaction and identification of the response time.  The performance of the DNS server can be analyzed using the packet captured and the abnormal behavior of the DNS can be identified. When the URL google.com is typed in the address bar of the web browser the webpage loads and appears in the web browser and if it takes more time to load the webpage it may occur due to poor response of thee DNS server and it can be verified using the packet capture file. The .pcap file can be filtered using the dns and only the dns packets can be seen for understanding the behavior and the problem.

The netflow is used for monitoring the traffic flow in a network and the IOP address of the network traffic can be collected using the protocol. The flow caching, data analyzer and the flow collector are the three components that builds the netflow. The netflow packets can be utilized for finding the source and the destination address of the data packets send over the network and the interface number of the input and the output packets. The TCP_Flag and the ToS can also be found along with the time stamp and the total bytes of flow in the network. The flow collector is utilized for collection, storage and filtering of the data. The history of the information flow in the network can be obtained from it. The data analyzer is utilized for presentation of the data for different purposes.

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