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The TCP/IP Guide  9  TCP/IP Lower-Layer (Interface, Internet and Transport) Protocols (OSI Layers 2, 3 and 4)       9  TCP/IP Transport Layer Protocols            9  Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP)                 9  TCP/IP User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

UDP Operation 1 2 UDP Common Applications and Server Port Assignments

The Checksum Field and the UDP Pseudo Header

The UDP Checksum field is the one area where the protocol actually is a bit confusing. The concept of a checksum itself is nothing new; they are used widely in networking protocols to provide protection against errors. What's a bit odd is this notion of computing the checksum over the regular datagram and also a pseudo header. What this means is that instead of calculating the checksum over just the fields in the UDP datagram itself, the UDP software first constructs a “fake” additional header that contains the following fields (Figure 201):

• The IP Source Address field.
  
  
• The IP Destination Address field.
  
  
• The IP Protocol field.
  
  
• The UDP Length field.
  

  Figure 201: UDP Pseudo Header Format

  
  

The total length of this “pseudo header” is 11 bytes. It is padded to 12 bytes with a byte of zeroes and then prepended to the real UDP message. The checksum is then computed over the combination of the pseudo header and the real UDP message, and the value is placed into the Checksum field. The pseudo header is used only for this calculation and is then discarded; it is not actually transmitted. The UDP software in the destination device creates the same pseudo header when calculating its checksum to compare to the one transmitted in the UDP header.

Computing the checksum over the regular UDP fields protects against bit errors in the UDP message itself. Adding the pseudo header allows the checksum to also protect against other types of problems as well, most notably the accidental delivery of a message to the wrong destination. The checksum calculation in UDP, including the use of the pseudo header is exactly the same as the method used in TCP (except the Length field is different in TCP). See the topic describing TCP checksum calculation for a full description of why the pseudo header is important, and some of the interesting implications of using IP fields in transport layer datagram calculations.

Note that the use of the Checksum field is optional in UDP. If it is not used, it is set to a value of all zeroes. This could potentially create confusion, however, since when the checksum is used, the calculation can sometimes result in a value of zero. To avoid having the destination think the checksum was not used in this case, this zero value is instead represented as a value of all ones (65,535 decimal).

UDP Operation 1 2 UDP Common Applications and Server Port Assignments