2.5 Summary
This chapter covered a tremendous amount of fundamental networking protocol material. We presented the basic structure of the Internet network protocols and an overview of the TCP/IP layered architecture. This architectural model provides a communication service for peers running on different machines and exchanging messages.
We also covered the basics of protocol layers: the network layer and the structure of IPv4 and IPv6. IP addressing is further subdivided as either classful or classless. Classless addressing is more practical for managing routing tables. Finally, we compared the equal-sized packet networking environment to IP networks. Although packet multiplexing is easy, the traffic management is quite challenging.
The next chapter presents another fundamental discussion in networking. Chapter 3 focuses on the fundamental operations of networking devices.