What happens if the IP header checksum is invalid?

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Multiple Choice

What happens if the IP header checksum is invalid?

Explanation:
IP header checksum is there to detect corruption of the IP header as a datagram moves through the network. If that checksum doesn’t match, the header cannot be trusted, and there’s no reliable way to recover the packet’s integrity. Routers and hosts will drop the datagram rather than forwarding it or delivering it to the transport layer. They also don’t fix the header and forward it by recalculating the checksum, because you can’t know the original correct header state just from a corrupted one. Generating an ICMP error for every bad header could also be exploited or flood networks, so the standard behavior is to silently discard the packet.

IP header checksum is there to detect corruption of the IP header as a datagram moves through the network. If that checksum doesn’t match, the header cannot be trusted, and there’s no reliable way to recover the packet’s integrity. Routers and hosts will drop the datagram rather than forwarding it or delivering it to the transport layer. They also don’t fix the header and forward it by recalculating the checksum, because you can’t know the original correct header state just from a corrupted one. Generating an ICMP error for every bad header could also be exploited or flood networks, so the standard behavior is to silently discard the packet.

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