The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Packets

When I make a request to a web server, say Dell.com - the page is sent back to me in packets.

Are the packets reconciled at my desktop or at the gateway of my ISP?

Don Quixote
Thursday, May 20, 2004

Well, if the packets are angry packets, its best to have them reconcile at the firewall rather than at your PC. Otherwise, you'll find different processes begin to take sides in what amounts to a Survivor Reality TV show and they'll start voting each other off the island (often refered to in tech terms as a "polling loop").

hoser
Thursday, May 20, 2004

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=howstuffworks+tcp%2Fip

mb
Thursday, May 20, 2004

hoser you are a thing of beauty.

Li-fan Chen
Thursday, May 20, 2004

Long ago, there was a story about poor little packets, and the warriors sworn to protect them.

Later, it became a movie.

http://www.warriorsofthe.net

The "switch" is my personal hero.

I'm inspired by what a few people can accomplish, with relatively low-end tools, great ideas, and a little spare time.

I'm equally inspired by some of the people who frequent these Fog Creek forums, and the things they've accomplished.

Excluding myself, of course.

And hoser.

:)

Joe (no, not that Joe. The other one.)
Friday, May 21, 2004

Dr. Suess as a Network Wizard

Gene_Ziegler@Cornell.edu

Here's an easy game to play.
Here's an easy thing to say....

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gona crash.

You can't say this? What a shame, sir!
We'll find you another game, sir.

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and your screen is all distorted by the side-effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gunna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
and the microcode instructions cause unecessary risc,
then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
quickly turn of your computer and be sure to tell your mom!

ACK/NAK
Friday, May 21, 2004

Its done locally on your machine.

Assuming your using ethernet:
The network stack strips ethernet info from the packets (which identifys the network card to sendd it to using the MAC address) to get IP packets (which identify the detination using the IP address).

Then it strips the IP info to get TCP packets (which identify which application to give it to using the port number)

Then it strips out the TCP info to get text which is then pasted together and passed to your browser which then displays stuff depending on it.

bil
Friday, May 21, 2004