Introduction to Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)

Before you start

Objectives : You will be able understand ICMP protocol and other utility which are depends upon ICMP.

Prerequisites: You have to know what is a protocol and how protocol works.

Tags : ICMP, PING, TRACERT, TRACEROUTE.

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What is ICMP ?

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a TCP/IP organize layer protocol that gives investigating, control and blunder message administrations. ICMP is most as often as possible utilized as a part of working frameworks for organized PCs, where it transmits blunder messages.

ICMP for Internet Protocol rendition 4 is called ICMPv4 and for Internet Protocol adaptation 6 is called ICMPv6. Internet Control Message Protocol is specified by RFC 792.

ICMP Header

Different Utility which are use ICMP

1.PING4:- PING stand for Packet InterNet Groper. Ping4 is usually used for checking the connectivity between two network devices or system which is configure with IPv4 IP address. Ping4 can be simply used by the simple ping command in linux and windows operating system. So our command will we look like [ ping IPv4_address , ping4 IPv4_address ].

2.PING6:-PING6 is used for the checking the connectivity between two network devices which have IPv6 IP address. So , if we have network with the IPv6 configration the we used ping6 command instant of ping or ping4. So we type [ ping IPv6 address ] for checking the connectivity.

3.TRACEROUTE:- Traceroute is a PC organize symptomatic instrument for showing the course (way) and measuring travel deferrals of parcels over an Internet Protocol (IP) arrange. The historical backdrop of the course is recorded as the round-trip times of the parcels gotten from each progressive host (remote hub) in the course (way); the aggregate of the interims in each jump is a measure of the aggregate time spent to build up the association. Traceroute continues unless every one of the (three) sent parcels are lost more than twice, at that point the association is lost and the course can't be assessed. Ping, then again, just processes the last round-trip times from the goal point.

4.TRACERT:- The functionality of TRACERT is same as TRACEROUTE. The only major difference between the TRACERT and TRACEROUTE is that the TRACERT is used by the windows operating system and the TRACEROUTE is used by the all Linux platform and the network devices such as router and switch. But , Both TRACERT and TRACEROUTE used ICMP protocol .

Position of ICMP in OSI Model

ICMP truly doesn't do this. Its occupation is to enable the switches to make sense of the state of the internet and what heading to send parcels with various conventions. Subsequently, it's viewed as a system layer convention, since its employment is to guarantee that information is steered to the perfect place yet doesn't really course the information.

But the truth is that , it is not clear that ICMP is layer 3 or layer 4 protocol. It is just because that some packets of ICMP is use UDP protocol such as TRACEROUTE unreachable reply.