Simple Router

As part of my course work for CSC458 - Computer Networks at the University of Toronto, I implemented a simple router in C using the Mininet system. The assignment description can be found here.

In brief, the router needed to correctly direct packets through the network. We implemented functionality to correctly route IP packets, and process ARP packets. We construct ARP replies for received ARP requests. For ARP replies, we cache the information to be used in future routing decisions.

IP packet handling involved verifying the checksum of IP packets, and forwarding those packets to the next hop identified by querying a static routing table using Longest Prefix Match searching. Ethernet packets to that next hop were constructed using cached information from our ARP cache. If we had no cached information regarding the destination of a packet, an ARP request would be sent by our router.

The router I implemented also received ICMP and TCP / UDP packets for the purposes of ping and traceroute. We respond to ICMP echo replies to ICMP echo requests, and ICMP errors for TCP and UDP packets (as this is required functionality for traceroute). ICMP errors were also sent for any errors encountered in other functional areas.

As this assignment continues to be used for future offerings of CSC458, my implementation is not publicly available.