What Really Happens When We Visit a Web Page
The journey down the protocol stack for a perspective of the many, many protocols that are involved in a simple request: downloading a web page.
Our setting consists of: a student, Bob, connecting his laptop to his school’s Ethernet switch and downloads a web page (www.google.com).
Getting Started: DHCP, UDP, IP, and Ethernet
Bob boots up his laptop and then connects it to an Ethernet cable connected to the school’s Ethernet switch, which in turn is connected to the school’s router. The school’s router is connected to an ISP, comcast.net. Comcast.net is providing the DNS service for the school; thus, the DNS server resides in the Comcast network rather than the school network. We’ll assume that the DHCP server is running within the router, as is often the case. When Bob first connects his laptop to the network, he can’t do anything (e.g. visit a web page) without an IP address. Thus, the first network-related action taken by Bob’s laptop is to run the DHCP protocol to obtain an IP address, as well as other information, from the local DHCP server:
1. The operating system on Bob’s laptop creates a DHCP request message and puts this message within a UDP segment with destination port 67 (DHCP server) and source port 68 (DHCP client). The UDP segment is then placed within an IP datagram with a broadcast IP destination address (255.255.255.255) and a source IP address of 0.0.0.0, since Bob’s laptop doesn’t yet have an IP address.
2. The IP datagram containing the DHCP request message is then placed within an Ethernet frame. The Ethernet frame has a destination MAC addresses of FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF so that the frame will be broadcast to all devices connected to the switch (hopefully including a DHCP server); the frame’s source MAC address is that of Bob’s laptop, 00:16:D3:23:68:8A.
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