CHAPTER 7

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The Magnificent Internet Protocol

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Internet protocol (IP) is the standard that governs activities related to network addressing and the movement of IP datagrams (network packets) between source and destination devices. Every IP datagram is based on a similar format or prototype, with certain mandatory placeholders or fields for information in its header. The information in these fields is necessary for the protocol to perform its various functions.

The information that needs to ...

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