PPP Encapsulation and Framing

Nearly every byte-oriented protocol has borrowed something from HDLC. In the case of PPP, it is the framing format, which is shown in Figure 9-5. PPP frames open and close with the familiar HDLC flag. Following the opening flag, PPP uses a 1-byte address field. The address field is normally all ones, which means it is a broadcast address. Serial lines deliver frames in the order in which they are received, so frames are unnumbered by default. As in HDLC, a single byte set to 0x03 is used to indicate unnumbered information.

PPP framing and encapsulation

Figure 9-5. PPP framing and encapsulation

The protocol field follows the control byte. Two bytes are used to identify the encapsulated protocol. PPP protocol numbers for higher-layer protocols are assigned so as to ensure that protocol numbers begin with zero and end with one. Additionally, the PPP protocol number for an NCP is obtained by adding 32,768 to the corresponding network protocol. Protocols in the range of 0xc000 to 0xffff are reserved for link layer operations. Table 9-3 shows common PPP protocol numbers.

Table 9-3. PPP protocol numbers

Protocol number (hexadecimal)

Protocol

0021

IP

8021

IPCP (NCP for IP)

002d

Van Jacobson TCP/IP header compression (RFC 1144)

002f

Van Jacobson IP header compression

c021

Link Control Protocol

c025

Link Quality Report

The protocol numbers 802d and 802f are not used because ...

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