Internet Control Message Protocol
The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. It is chiefly used by the operating systems of networked computers to send error messages indicating, for example, that a requested service is not available or that a host or router could not be reached. ICMP can also be used to relay query messages.] It is assigned protocol number 1.
ICMP differs from transport protocols such as TCP and UDP in that it is not typically used to exchange data between systems, nor is it regularly employed by end-user network applications (with the exception of some diagnostic tools like ping and traceroute).
ICMP for Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is also known as ICMPv4. IPv6 has a similar protocol, ICMPv6.
Internet Protocol Suite
Technical details
Internet Control Message Protocol is part of the Internet Protocol Suite as defined in RFC 792. ICMP messages are typically generated in response to errors in IP datagrams (as specified in RFC 1122) or for diagnostic or routing purposes. ICMP errors are always reported to the original source IP address of the originating datagram.[1]
An example ICMP error message is the Time To Live Exceeded message. Every machine (such as an intermediate router) that forwards an IP datagram has to decrement the time to live (TTL) field of the IP header by one. If the TTL reaches 0, an ICMP Time to live exceeded in transit message is sent to the source of the datagram.
Each ICMP message is encapsulated directly within a single IP datagram, and thus, like UDP, ICMP is unreliable.
Although ICMP messages are contained within standard IP datagrams, ICMP messages are usually processed as a special case, distinguished from normal IP processing, rather than processed as a normal sub-protocol of IP. In many cases, it is necessary to inspect the contents of the ICMP message and deliver the appropriate error message to the application that generated the original IP packet, the one that prompted the sending of the ICMP message.
Many commonly-used network utilities are based on ICMP messages. The tracert (traceroute), Pathping commands are implemented by transmitting UDP datagrams with specially set IP TTL header fields, and looking for ICMP Time to live exceeded in transit (above) and “Destination unreachable” messages generated in response. The related ping utility is implemented using the ICMP “Echo request” and “Echo reply” messages.
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