Internet Protocol (IP) for IPv4 (Windows CE 5.0)
IP is the mailroom of the TCP/IP stack, where packet sorting and delivery take place. At this layer, each incoming or outgoing packet is referred to as a datagram. Each IP datagram bears the source IP address of the sender and the destination IP address of the intended recipient. Unlike the MAC addresses, the IP addresses in a datagram remain the same throughout a packet's journey across an inter-network. IP layer functions are described below.
IP is central to the TCP/IP stack — all other TCP/IP protocols use IP — and all data passes through it. IP is a connectionless protocol and has some limitations. If IP attempts packet delivery and in the process a packet is lost, delivered out of sequence, duplicated, or delayed, neither sender nor receiver is informed. Packet acknowledgement is handled by a higher-layer transport protocol, such as TCP.
IP is responsible for addressing and routing packets between hosts, and for fragmentation. Fragmentation is the process of breaking a datagram into smaller pieces for inter-network routing. IP fragments packets prior to sending them and reassembles them upon receipt.
**Note **Winsock applications can send packets, but cannot affect packet routing or fragmentation.
Windows CE .NET 4.1 and later provides a dual protocol stack to support 32-bit IPv4 addresses and 128-bit IPv6 addresses. For information about the stack architecture, see Dual Stack Architecture.
The following table shows links to more information about IPv4.
| Area | IPv4 topics |
|---|---|
| Addressing, name registration and name resolution | |
| Routing | |
| Subnet multicasting |
See Also
Core Protocol Stack for IPv4 | IPv6 and IPv4 Coexistence | Network Utilities | Internet Protocol (IP) for IPv6
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