Frame fields
bermovick
Member Posts: 1,135 ■■■■□□□□□□
in CCNA & CCENT
I'm confused why an Ethernet frame has a 'type' field if one of the points made in the OSI model is that each layer doesn't need to care about how any other layer works.
I've tried rolling it around in my head, and I'm just not seeing why it's needed.
(I think it's even gotten me confused about other things about layer 2 in the process too!)
I've tried rolling it around in my head, and I'm just not seeing why it's needed.
(I think it's even gotten me confused about other things about layer 2 in the process too!)
Latest Completed: CISSP
Current goal: Dunno
Current goal: Dunno
Comments
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tiersten Member Posts: 4,505How do you know what the next layer is without a type field? An underlying layer doesn't need to know how the next layer works but it still needs to know what it is.
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bermovick Member Posts: 1,135 ■■■■□□□□□□But what does anything that works at layer 2 care? I'm just not understanding it. Perhaps it makes more sense later on, but why does a switch care if the frame is encapsulating an IP packet if it just examines the MAC addresses to see where to send the packet next?
Sometimes I feel I'm just 'not getting it'.Latest Completed: CISSP
Current goal: Dunno -
tiersten Member Posts: 4,505But what does anything that works at layer 2 care?
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tiersten Member Posts: 4,505"Type Field" is a length field specifying the number of bytes in the LLC and data fields.
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bermovick Member Posts: 1,135 ■■■■□□□□□□OK; I grabbed Odom's book (Lammle's CCENT book doesn't seem to work very well for me. At least I got it cheap), and I'm actually staring at the OSI table on page 34 and I'm still not getting it, since it seems to me the destination doesn't care about layer 3 much other than "yup, thats my IP address" before passing it up to the Transport layer.
OK; I'm guilty of tunnel vision there - what if it's not IP? The books only discuss IP, but if it were IPX layer3 would need to know this ahead of time so I suppose it does make sense now... sortof.
Maybe it's good that I'm going through this; it converts the raw information into semi-practical (and easier remembered) information, but it's frustrating haha.Latest Completed: CISSP
Current goal: Dunno -
tiersten Member Posts: 4,505since it seems to me the destination doesn't care about layer 3 much other than "yup, thats my IP address" before passing it up to the Transport layer.
Instead you can look at the ethertype field in whatever header it is located in and go it is 0x800 so therefore I know that this is an IPv4 packet. Or it is 0x806 so I know it is ARP.OK; I'm guilty of tunnel vision there - what if it's not IP? -
bermovick Member Posts: 1,135 ■■■■□□□□□□Yeah; the second half of my previous post was more of musing & trying to get it to fit, and I (tentatively) got it to. I've looked further and verified each layer gets a piece of information from the layer above it similarly; layer 2 has the 'type' field, layer 3 has the 'protocol field', layer 4's port since that links it to the appropriate higher-layer application.Latest Completed: CISSP
Current goal: Dunno