telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than tha ...

s and

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...

ing, a network packet is a formatted unit of

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...

carried by a packet-switched network. A packet consists of control information and user data; the latter is also known as the ''

payload Payload is the object or the entity which is being carried by an aircraft or launch vehicle. Sometimes payload also refers to the carrying capacity of an aircraft or launch vehicle, usually measured in terms of weight. Depending on the nature of ...

''. Control information provides data for delivering the payload (e.g., source and destination network addresses, error detection codes, or sequencing information). Typically, control information is found in packet headers and trailers. In

packet switching In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping Data (computing), data into ''network packet, packets'' that are transmitted over a digital Telecommunications network, network. Packets are made of a header (computing), header and ...

, the bandwidth of the transmission medium is shared between multiple communication sessions, in contrast to

circuit switching Circuit switching is a method of implementing a telecommunications network in which two network nodes establish a dedicated communications channel (circuit) through the network before the nodes may communicate. The circuit guarantees the full b ...

, in which circuits are preallocated for the duration of one session and data is typically transmitted as a continuous

bit stream A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits. A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...

Terminology

In the seven-layer

OSI model The Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model) is a conceptual model that 'provides a common basis for the coordination of SOstandards development for the purpose of systems interconnection'. In the OSI reference model, the communications ...

computer networking A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...

, ''packet'' strictly refers to a protocol data unit at layer 3, the

network layer In the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking, the network layer is layer 3. The network layer is responsible for packet forwarding including routing through intermediate routers. Functions The network layer provides the means of trans ...

. A data unit at layer 2, the

data link layer The data link layer, or layer 2, is the second layer of the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking. This layer is the protocol layer that transfers data between nodes on a network segment across the physical layer. The data link layer ...

, is a '' frame''. In layer 4, the

transport layer In computer networking, the transport layer is a conceptual division of methods in the layered architecture of protocols in the network stack in the Internet protocol suite and the OSI model. The protocols of this layer provide end-to-end ...

, the data units are ''segments'' and ''datagrams''. Thus, in the example of TCP/IP communication over

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

, a TCP segment is carried in one or more IP packets, which are each carried in one or more

Ethernet frame In computer networking, an Ethernet frame is a data link layer protocol data unit and uses the underlying Ethernet physical layer transport mechanisms. In other words, a data unit on an Ethernet link transports an Ethernet frame as its payloa ...

Architecture

The basis of the packet concept is the postal letter: the header is like the envelope, the payload is the entire content inside the envelope, and the footer would be your signature at the bottom. Network design can achieve two major results by using packets: ''error detection'' and ''multiple host addressing''.

Framing

Communications protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchro ...

s use various conventions for distinguishing the elements of a packet and for formatting the user data. For example, in Point-to-Point Protocol, the packet is formatted in 8-bit bytes, and special characters are used to delimit elements. Other protocols, like Ethernet, establish the start of the header and data elements by their location relative to the start of the packet. Some protocols format the information at a

bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented a ...

level instead of a

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

level.

A packet may contain any of the following components: ;Addresses :The

routing Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched telephone netw ...

of network packets requires two network addresses, the source address of the sending host, and the destination address of the receiving host. ;Error detection and correction :

Error detection and correction In information theory and coding theory with applications in computer science and telecommunication, error detection and correction (EDAC) or error control are techniques that enable reliable delivery of digital data over unreliable comm ...

is performed at various layers in the protocol stack. Network packets may contain a

checksum A checksum is a small-sized block of data derived from another block of digital data for the purpose of detecting errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage. By themselves, checksums are often used to verify dat ...

parity bit A parity bit, or check bit, is a bit added to a string of binary code. Parity bits are a simple form of error detecting code. Parity bits are generally applied to the smallest units of a communication protocol, typically 8-bit octets (bytes) ...

s or cyclic redundancy checks to detect errors that occur during transmission. :At the transmitter, the calculation is performed before the packet is sent. When received at the destination, the checksum is recalculated, and compared with the one in the packet. If discrepancies are found, the packet may be corrected or discarded. Any packet loss due to these discards is dealt with by the network protocol. :In some cases modifications of the network packet may be necessary while routing, in which cases checksums are recalculated. ;Hop limit :Under fault conditions, packets can end up traversing a

closed circuit Closed circuit can refer to: *Closed-circuit television *Closed-circuit radio *Rebreather – breathing sets * ''Closed Circuit'' (1978 film), a 1978 Italian film * ''Closed Circuit'' (2013 film), a 2013 British thriller film *An electric circuit ...

. If nothing was done, eventually the number of packets circulating would build up until the network was congested to the point of failure. Time to live is a field that is decreased by one each time a packet goes through a network hop. If the field reaches zero, routing has failed, and the packet is discarded. :Ethernet packets have no time-to-live field and so are subject to broadcast radiation in the presence of a switching loop. ;Length :There may be a field to identify the overall packet length. However, in some types of networks, the length is implied by the duration of the transmission. ;Protocol identifier :It is often desirable to carry multiple communication protocols on a network. A protocol identifier field specifies a packet's protocol and allows the protocol stack to process many types of packets. ;Priority :Some networks implement

quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...

which can prioritize some types of packets above others. This field indicates which packet queue should be used; a high priority queue is emptied more quickly than lower priority queues at points in the network where congestion is occurring. ;Payload :In general, the payload is the data that is carried on behalf of an application. It is usually of variable length, up to a maximum that is set by the network protocol and sometimes the equipment on the route. When necessary, some networks can break a larger packet into smaller packets.

Examples

Internet protocol

IP packets are composed of a header and payload. The header consists of fixed and optional fields. The payload appears immediately after the header. An IP packet has no trailer. However, an IP packet is often carried as the payload inside an Ethernet frame, which has its own header and trailer. Per the

end-to-end principle The end-to-end principle is a design framework in computer networking. In networks designed according to this principle, guaranteeing certain application-specific features, such as reliability and security, requires that they reside in the commu ...

, IP networks do not provide guarantees of delivery, non-duplication, or in-order delivery of packets. However, it is common practice to layer a reliable transport protocol such as

Transmission Control Protocol The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, the entire suite is common ...

on top of the packet service to provide such protection.

NASA Deep Space Network

The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems ( CCSDS) packet telemetry standard defines the protocol used for the transmission of spacecraft instrument data over the deep-space channel. Under this standard, an image or other data sent from a spacecraft instrument is transmitted using one or more packets.

MPEG packetized stream

Packetized elementary stream (PES) is a specification associated with the

MPEG-2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, w ...

standard that allows an

elementary stream An elementary stream (ES) as defined by the MPEG communication protocol is usually the output of an audio encoder or video encoder. An ES contains only one kind of data (e.g. audio, video, or closed caption). An elementary stream is often referred ...

to be divided into packets. The elementary stream is packetized by encapsulating sequential data bytes from the elementary stream between PES packet headers. A typical method of transmitting elementary stream data from a video or audio encoder is to first create PES packets from the elementary stream data and then to encapsulate these PES packets inside an

MPEG transport stream MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast syste ...

(TS) packets or an MPEG program stream (PS). The TS packets can then be transmitted using broadcasting techniques, such as those used in an

ATSC Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an American set of standards for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog NTSC standard and, like that ...

and DVB.

NICAM

In order to provide mono "compatibility", the NICAM signal is transmitted on a

subcarrier A subcarrier is a sideband of a radio frequency carrier wave, which is modulated to send additional information. Examples include the provision of colour in a black and white television system or the provision of stereo in a monophonic radio bro ...

alongside the sound carrier. This means that the FM or AM regular mono sound carrier is left alone for reception by monaural receivers. The NICAM packet (except for the header) is scrambled with a nine-bit pseudo-random bit-generator before transmission. Making the NICAM bitstream look more like

white noise In signal processing, white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies, giving it a constant power spectral density. The term is used, with this or similar meanings, in many scientific and technical disciplines, ...

is important because this reduces signal patterning on adjacent TV channels.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Packet (Information Technology) Units of information