Question

When you ping a website. What steps happen ? I know a packet is sent out and returned. But what layers of the osi model does this happen in? At what point does the 3 way handshake come into play?

Answer 1

1. The ping application crafts a ICMP ping packet to the destination and submits it to the network stack
2. The IP layer uses the routing table to determine the interface the packet should be sent out on and whether it should be addressed to the destination host or an intermediate network gateway
3. ARP uses the destination IP to determine the MAC that correlates to the nexthop IP address, looking it up via a network broadcast request if it is not in the ARP resolution table
4. The network layer crafts the frame using the ethernet MAC addressing passed in by ARP
5. The frame is sent on the wire
6. The network routes the packet to the destination host.
7. The destination IP stack replies to the ping
8. The ping response routes back.
9. The ping response frame arrives at your computer and travels through the network stack
10. The network stack hands the ping response packet to the ping application, which determines and displays elapsed time.