IP Routing Overview
Page 25-3

Transport Protocols

IP is both connectionless (it routes each datagram separately) and unreliable (it does not
guarantee delivery of datagrams). This means that a datagram may be damaged in transit, or
thrown away by a busy router, or simply never make it to its destination. The resolution of
these transit problems is to use a layer 4 transport protocol:
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)—A major data transport mechanism that provides reli-
able, connection-oriented, full-duplex data streams. While the role of TCP is to add reliabil-
ity to IP, TCP relies upon IP to do the actual delivering of datagrams.
User Datagram Protocol (UDP)—A secondary transport-layer protocol that uses IP for deliv-
ery. However, UDP is not connection-oriented so it does not provide reliable end-to-end
delivery of datagrams. But some applications can safely use UDP to send datagrams that
don’t require the extra overhead added by TCP.

Application-Layer Protocols

Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP)/Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)—May be used
by an end station to obtain an IP address. The switch provides a UDP relay that allows
BOOTP requests/replies to cross different networks. See Chapter 26, “UDP Forwarding.”
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)—Used to manage nodes on a network.
SNMP is discussed in Chapter 13, “Configuring SNMP.”
Telnet—Used for remote connection to a device. The telnet command is described in this
chapter.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)—Enables transferring files between hosts.

Additional IP Protocols

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)—Specifies the generation of error messages, test
packets, and informational messages related to IP. ICMP supports the ping command used
to determine if hosts are online.
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)—Used to find the IP address that corresponds to a
given physical (MAC) address.
Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP)—Tracks multicast group membership. See
the Multicast Services section of the Advanced Routing User Manual.
Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP)—Signals Quality of Service (QoS) requests in an IP
network. For more information, see the Switched Network Services User Manual.