What is flooding (computer networking)?

By CCERT 16-Aug-2020

Flooding is used in computer networks routing algorithm in which every incoming packet is sent through every outgoing link except the one it arrived on.[1] Flooding is used in bridging and in systems such as Usenet and peer-to-peer file sharing and as part of some routing protocols, including OSPF, DVMRP, and those used in ad-hoc wireless networks (WANETs)

Types

  1. Uncontrolled Flooding: In uncontrolled flooding each node unconditionally distributes packets to each of its neighbors. Without conditional logic to prevent indefinite recirculation of the same packet, broadcast storms are a hazard.
  2. Controlled flooding: Controlled flooding has its own two algorithms to make it reliable, SNCF (Sequence Number Controlled Flooding) and RPF (Reverse Path Forwarding). In SNCF, the node attaches its own address and sequence number to the packet, since every node has a memory of addresses and sequence numbers. If it receives a packet in memory, it drops it immediately while in RPF, the node will only send the packet forward. If it is received from the next node, it sends it back to the sender.

Advantages

The advantages of this method are that it is very simple to implement, if a packet can be delivered then it will (probably multiple times), and since flooding naturally utilizes every path through the network it will also use the shortest path.D

Disadvantages

Flooding can be costly in terms of wasted bandwidth. While a message may only have one destination it has to be sent to every host. In the case of a ping flood or a denial of service attack, it can be harmful to the reliability of a computer network.

Messages can become duplicated in the network further increasing the load on the network as well as requiring an increase in processing complexity to disregard duplicate messages. Duplicate packets may circulate forever, unless certain precautions are taken:

  • Use a hop count or a time to live (TTL) count and include it with each packet. This value should take into account the number of nodes that a packet may have to pass through on the way to its destination.
  • Have each node keep track of every packet seen and only forward each packet once.
  • Enforce a network topology without loops.