Product Code Database
Internetworking is the practice of multiple . (2025). 9780123850591, Elsevier, Inc.. ISBN 9780123850591 Typically, this enables any pair of hosts in the connected networks to exchange messages irrespective of their hardware-level networking technology. The resulting system of interconnected networks is called an internetwork, or simply an internet.
The most notable example of internetworking is the Internet, a network of networks based on many underlying hardware technologies. The Internet is defined by a unified IP address, Network packet format, and routing methods provided by the Internet Protocol.
The term internetworking is a combination of the components inter (between) and networking. An earlier term for an internetwork is catenet, a short-form of (con)catenating networks.
Today the interconnecting gateways are called routers. The definition of an internetwork today includes the connection of other types of computer networks such as personal area networks.
The term was coined by Louis Pouzin, who designed the CYCLADES network, in an October 1973 note circulated to the International Network Working Group, which was published in a 1974 paper " A Proposal for Interconnecting Packet Switching Networks". A Proposal for Interconnecting Packet Switching Networks, L. Pouzin, Proceedings of EUROCOMP, Brunel University, May 1974, pp. 1023-36. Pouzin was a pioneer of internetworking at a time when network meant what is now called a local area network. Catenet was the concept of linking these networks into a network of networks with specifications for compatibility of addressing and routing. The term was used in technical writing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including in RFCs and IENs. Catenet was gradually displaced by the short-form of the term internetwork, internet (lower-case i), when the Internet Protocol spread more widely from the mid 1980s and the use of the term internet took on a broader sense and became well known in the 1990s.
To build an internetwork, the following are needed: (2025). 9780132143011, Addison-Wesley. ISBN 9780132143011 A standardized scheme to Network address packets to any host on any participating network; a standardized protocol defining format and handling of transmitted packets; components interconnecting the participating networks by routing packets to their destinations based on standardized addresses.
Another type of interconnection of networks often occurs within enterprises at the link layer of the networking model, i.e. at the hardware-centric layer below the level of the TCP/IP logical interfaces. Such interconnection is accomplished with and . This is sometimes incorrectly termed internetworking, but the resulting system is simply a larger, single subnetwork, and no internetworking protocol, such as Internet Protocol, is required to traverse these devices. However, a single computer network may be converted into an internetwork by dividing the network into segments and logically dividing the segment traffic with routers and having an internetworking software layer that applications employ.
The Internet Protocol is designed to provide an unreliable (not guaranteed) Packet switching across the network. The architecture avoids intermediate network elements maintaining any state of the network. Instead, this function is assigned to the endpoints of each communication session. To transfer data reliably, applications must utilize an appropriate transport layer protocol, such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which provides a reliable stream. Some applications use a simpler, connection-less transport protocol, User Datagram Protocol (UDP), for tasks which do not require reliable delivery of data or that require real-time service, such as video streaming or voice chat.
The Internet Protocol Suite, also known as the TCP/IP model, was not designed to conform to the OSI model and does not refer to it in any of the normative specifications in Request for Comments and Internet standards. Despite similar appearance as a layered model, it has a much less rigorous, loosely defined architecture that concerns itself only with the aspects of the style of networking in its own historical provenance. It assumes the availability of any suitable hardware infrastructure, without discussing hardware-specific low-level interfaces, and that a host has access to this local network to which it is connected via a link layer interface.
For a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the network engineering community was polarized over the implementation of competing protocol suites, commonly known as the Protocol Wars. It was unclear which of the OSI model and the Internet protocol suite would result in the best and most robust computer networks.
|
|
