This week we took a dive into the network layer, which is widely considered to be the most complex layer of the protocol stack. The main role of the network layer is to move packets from a sender to a receiver. Because of this, two functions in particular are very important -- forwarding and routing. Forwarding refers to the router-local action of transferring a packet from an input link interface to the appropriate output link interface. Routing on the other hand refers to the network-wide process that determines end-to-end paths that packets take from source to destination. We also looked over different types of packet scheduling -- FIFO, Priority Queuing, Round Robin, and Weighted Fair Queuing. Next we took some time to learn about IP address and how to convert between binary and dotted-decimal notation. We also covered DHCP, or the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, which is a client-server protocol that allows a host to obtain an IP address automatically.
Overall this week contained a wealth of information and I'm not sure I've wrapped my head around it. I'm about halfway through the optional worksheets and I intend to finish going over those in order to get a better grasp on the concepts before the final exam next week.
