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The Importance of IP Header and UDP Checksum

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The Importance of IP Header and UDP Checksum

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  • Author: Gary Macknofsky
For many years now, telecommunication service providers have been testing the Ethernet portion of their networks. Until recently, this practice has been enough to ensure that service-level agreements (SLAs) were met. However, with the strong demand for VoIP and IPTV, service providers now have to analyze higher-layer protocols to ensure proper data integrity at the crucial IP and UDP layers. This type of analysis can be achieved through the validation of checksums. Most people are under the assumption that a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) or a frame check sequence (FCS) in Ethernet is good enough to detect errors. While this is true at the link layer (Layer 2 of the OSI stack), these checks do not work for the other layers. Even if every link implemented strong error detection in the form of frame CRCs, it is still essential that end-to-end checksums at and above the IP level be used at the receiving end host.

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