Token Bus (IEEE 802.

4)
Token Bus is described in the IEEE 802.4 specification, and is a Local Area Network (LAN) in which the
stations on the bus or tree form a logical ring. Each station is assigned a place in an ordered sequence, with
the last station in the sequence being followed by the first, as shown below. Each station knows the address
of the station to its "left" and "right" in the sequence.

A Token Bus network

This type of network, like a Token Ring network, employs a small data frame only a few bytes in size, known
as a token, to grant individual stations exclusive access to the network transmission medium. Token-passing
networks are deterministic in the way that they control access to the network, with each node playing an
active role in the process. When a station acqires control of the token, it is allowed to transmit one or more
data frames, depending on the time limit imposed by the network. When the station has finished using the
token to transmit data, or the time limit has expired, it relinquishes control of the token, which is then
available to the next station in the logical sequence. When the ring is initialised, the station with the highest
number in the sequence has control of the token.

The physical.topology of the network is either a bus or a tree, although the order in which stations are
connected to the network is not important. The network topology means that the we are essentially dealing
with a broadcast network, and every frame transmitted is received by all attached stations. With the exception
of broacast frames, however, frames will only be read by the station to which they are addressed, and ignored
by all other stations. As the token frame is transmitted, it icarries the destination address of the next station in
the logical sequence. As each individual station is powered on, it is allocated a place in the ring sequence
(note that in the diagram above, station two is not participating in the ring). The Token Bus medium access
control protocol allows stations to join the ring or leave the ring on an ad-hoc basis.

Token Bus networks were conceived to meet the needs of automated industrial manufacturing systems and
owe much to a proposal by General Motors for a networking system to be used in their own manufacturing
plants - Manufacturing Automation Protocol (MAP). Ethernet was not considered suitable for factory
automation systems because of the contention-based nature of its medium access control protocol, which
meant that the length of time a station might have to wait to send a frame was unpredictable. Ethernet also
lacked a priority system, so there was no way to ensure that more important data would not be held up by less
urgent traffic.

A token-passing system in which each station takes turns to transmit a frame was considered a better option,
because if there are n stations, and each station takes T seconds to send a frame, no station has to wait longer
than nT seconds to acquire the token. The ring topology of existing token-passing systems, however, was not
such an attractive idea, since a break in the ring would cause a general network failure. A ring topology was
also considered to be incompatible with the linear topology of assembly-line or process control systems.
Token Bus was a hybrid system that provided the robustness and linearity of a bus or tree topology, whilst
retaining the known worst-case performance of a token-passing medium access control method.
The transmission medium most often used for broadband Token Bus networks is 75 Ohm coaxial cable (the
same type of cable used for cable TV), although alternative cabling configurations are available. Both single
and dual cable systems may be used, with or without head-ends. Transmission speeds vary, with data rates of
1, 5 and 10 Mbps being common. The analogue modulation schemes that can be used include:
 Phase continuous frequency shift keying
 Phase coherent frequency shift keying
 Multilevel duobinary amplitude modulated phase shift keying

IEEE 802.5 Token Ring

by Dinesh Thakur
IEEE 802.5 Token Ring: Token ring is the IEEE 802.5 standard for a token-passing ring in Communication
networks. A ring consists of a collection of ring interfaces connected by point-to-point lines i.e. ring interface
of one station is connected to the ring interfaces of its left station as well as right station. Internally, signals
travel around the Communication network from one station to the next in a ring.
These point-to-point links can be created with twisted pair, coaxial cable or fiber optics. Each bit arriving at
an interface is copied into a 1-bit buffer. In this buffer the bit is checked and may be modified and is then
copied out to the ring again. This copying of bit in the buffer introduces a 1-bit delay at each interface.
Token Ring is a LAN protocol defined in the IEEE 802.5 where all stations are connected in a ring and each
station can directly hear transmissions only from its immediate neighbor. Permission to transmit is granted by
a message (token) that circulates around the ring. A token is a special bit pattern (3 bytes long). There is only
one token in the network.

Token-passing networks move a small frame, called a token, around the network. Possession of the token
grants the right to transmit. If a node receiving the token in order to transmit data, it seizes the token, alters 1
bit of the token (which turns the token into a start-of-frame sequence), appends the information that it wants
to transmit, and sends this information to the next station on the ring. Since only one station can possess the
token and transmit data at any given time, there are no collisions.
There are two operating modes of ring interfaces. There are listen and transmit. In listen mode, the input bits
are simply copied to output with a delay of 1- bit time. In transmit mode the connection between input and
output is broken by the interface so that is can insert its own data. The station comes in transmit mode when
it captures the token.
The frames are acknowledged by the destination in a very simple manner. The sender sends frames to
receiver with ACK bit 0. The receiver on receiving frames, copies data into its buffer, verifies the checksum
and set the ACK bit to 1. The verified frames come back to sender, where they are removed from the ring.
The information frame circulates the ring until it reaches the intended destination station, which copies the
information for further processing. The information frame continues to circle the ring and is finally removed
when it reaches the sending station. The sending station can check the returning frame to see whether the
frame was seen and subsequently copied by the destination.
A station can hold a token for a specific duration of time. During this time, it has to complete its transmission
and regenerates the token in ring. Whenever a station finishes its transmissions, the other station grabs the
token and starts its own transmission.

Handling cable breakage in ring networks

• If the cable breaks, the entire ring network goes down. This can completely stop the propagation of token in
the ring.
• This problem can be solved by using wire centre as shown in fig.
• This wire centre bypasses the terminal that has gone down in following manner:
(a) Each station is connected to wire center by a cable containing two twisted pairs, one for data to station
and one for data from the station.
(b) Inside the wire center are bypass relays that are energized by the current from the stations.
(c) If the ring breaks or a station goes down loss of drive current will release the relay and bypass the station.
Network Switching

Switching is process to forward packets coming in from one port to a port leading towards the destination.
When data comes on a port it is called ingress, and when data leaves a port or goes out it is called egress. A
communication system may include number of switches and nodes. At broad level, switching can be divided
into two major categories:
 Connectionless: The data is forwarded on behalf of forwarding tables. No previous handshaking is
required and acknowledgements are optional.
 Connection Oriented: Before switching data to be forwarded to destination, there is a need to pre-
establish circuit along the path between both endpoints. Data is then forwarded on that circuit. After
the transfer is completed, circuits can be kept for future use or can be turned down immediately.
Circuit Switching
When two nodes communicate with each other over a dedicated communication path, it is called circuit
switching.There 'is a need of pre-specified route from which data will travels and no other data is
permitted.In circuit switching, to transfer the data, circuit must be established so that the data transfer can
take place.
Circuits can be permanent or temporary. Applications which use circuit switching may have to go through
three phases:
 Establish a circuit
 Transfer the data
 Disconnect the circuit

Circuit switching was designed for voice applications. Telephone is the best suitable example of circuit
switching. Before a user can make a call, a virtual path between caller and callee is established over the
network.
Message Switching
This technique was somewhere in middle of circuit switching and packet switching. In message switching,
the whole message is treated as a data unit and is switching / transferred in its entirety.
A switch working on message switching, first receives the whole message and buffers it until there are
resources available to transfer it to the next hop. If the next hop is not having enough resource to
accommodate large size message, the message is stored and switch waits.
This technique was considered substitute to circuit switching. As in circuit switching the whole path is
blocked for two entities only. Message switching is replaced by packet switching. Message switching has the
following drawbacks:
 Every switch in transit path needs enough storage to accommodate entire message.
 Because of store-and-forward technique and waits included until resources are available, message
switching is very slow.
 Message switching was not a solution for streaming media and real-time applications.
Packet Switching
Shortcomings of message switching gave birth to an idea of packet switching. The entire message is broken
down into smaller chunks called packets. The switching information is added in the header of each packet
and transmitted independently.
It is easier for intermediate networking devices to store small size packets and they do not take much
resources either on carrier path or in the internal memory of switches.

Packet switching enhances line efficiency as packets from multiple applications can be multiplexed over the
carrier. The internet uses packet switching technique. Packet switching enables the user to differentiate data
streams based on priorities. Packets are stored and forwarded according to their priority to provide quality of
service.
Internetworking

In real world scenario, networks under same administration are generally scattered geographically. There
may exist requirement of connecting two different networks of same kind as well as of different kinds.
Routing between two networks is called internetworking.
Networks can be considered different based on various parameters such as, Protocol, topology, Layer-2
network and addressing scheme.
In internetworking, routers have knowledge of each other’s address and addresses beyond them. They can be
statically configured go on different network or they can learn by using internetworking routing protocol.

Routing protocols which are used within an organization or administration are called Interior Gateway
Protocols or IGP. RIP, OSPF are examples of IGP. Routing between different organizations or
administrations may have Exterior Gateway Protocol, and there is only one EGP i.e. Border Gateway
Protocol.
Tunneling
If they are two geographically separate networks, which want to communicate with each other, they may
deploy a dedicated line between or they have to pass their data through intermediate networks.
Tunneling is a mechanism by which two or more same networks communicate with each other, by passing
intermediate networking complexities. Tunneling is configured at both ends.

When the data enters from one end of Tunnel, it is tagged. This tagged data is then routed inside the
intermediate or transit network to reach the other end of Tunnel. When data exists the Tunnel its tag is
removed and delivered to the other part of the network.
Both ends seem as if they are directly connected and tagging makes data travel through transit network
without any modifications.
Packet Fragmentation
Most Ethernet segments have their maximum transmission unit (MTU) fixed to 1500 bytes. A data packet
can have more or less packet length depending upon the application. Devices in the transit path also have
their hardware and software capabilities which tell what amount of data that device can handle and what size
of packet it can process.
If the data packet size is less than or equal to the size of packet the transit network can handle, it is processed
neutrally. If the packet is larger, it is broken into smaller pieces and then forwarded. This is called packet
fragmentation. Each fragment contains the same destination and source address and routed through transit
path easily. At the receiving end it is assembled again.
If a packet with DF (don’t fragment) bit set to 1 comes to a router which can not handle the packet because of
its length, the packet is dropped.
When a packet is received by a router has its MF (more fragments) bit set to 1, the router then knows that it is
a fragmented packet and parts of the original packet is on the way.
If packet is fragmented too small, the overhead is increases. If the packet is fragmented too large,
intermediate router may not be able to process it and it might get dropped.

Network Layer Routing

When a device has multiple paths to reach a destination, it always selects one path by preferring it over
others. This selection process is termed as Routing. Routing is done by special network devices called routers
or it can be done by means of software processes.The software based routers have limited functionality and
limited scope.
A router is always configured with some default route. A default route tells the router where to forward a
packet if there is no route found for specific destination. In case there are multiple path existing to reach the
same destination, router can make decision based on the following information:
 Hop Count
 Bandwidth
 Metric
 Prefix-length
 Delay
Routes can be statically configured or dynamically learnt. One route can be configured to be preferred over
others.
Unicast routing
Most of the traffic on the internet and intranets known as unicast data or unicast traffic is sent with specified
destination. Routing unicast data over the internet is called unicast routing. It is the simplest form of routing
because the destination is already known. Hence the router just has to look up the routing table and forward
the packet to next hop.
Broadcast routing
By default, the broadcast packets are not routed and forwarded by the routers on any network. Routers create
broadcast domains. But it can be configured to forward broadcasts in some special cases. A broadcast
message is destined to all network devices.
Broadcast routing can be done in two ways (algorithm):
 A router creates a data packet and then sends it to each host one by one. In this case, the router creates
multiple copies of single data packet with different destination addresses. All packets are sent as
unicast but because they are sent to all, it simulates as if router is broadcasting.
This method consumes lots of bandwidth and router must destination address of each node.
 Secondly, when router receives a packet that is to be broadcasted, it simply floods those packets out
of all interfaces. All routers are configured in the same way.

This method is easy on router's CPU but may cause the problem of duplicate packets received from peer
routers.
Reverse path forwarding is a technique, in which router knows in advance about its predecessor from where it
should receive broadcast. This technique is used to detect and discard duplicates.
Multicast Routing
Multicast routing is special case of broadcast routing with significance difference and challenges. In
broadcast routing, packets are sent to all nodes even if they do not want it. But in Multicast routing, the data
is sent to only nodes which wants to receive the packets.
The router must know that there are nodes, which wish to receive multicast packets (or stream) then only it
should forward. Multicast routing works spanning tree protocol to avoid looping.
Multicast routing also uses reverse path Forwarding technique, to detect and discard duplicates and loops.
Anycast Routing
Anycast packet forwarding is a mechanism where multiple hosts can have same logical address. When a
packet destined to this logical address is received, it is sent to the host which is nearest in routing topology.

Anycast routing is done with help of DNS server. Whenever an Anycast packet is received it is enquired with
DNS to where to send it. DNS provides the IP address which is the nearest IP configured on it.
Unicast Routing Protocols
There are two kinds of routing protocols available to route unicast packets:
 Distance Vector Routing Protocol
Distance Vector is simple routing protocol which takes routing decision on the number of hops between
source and destination. A route with less number of hops is considered as the best route. Every router
advertises its set best routes to other routers. Ultimately, all routers build up their network topology based on
the advertisements of their peer routers,
For example Routing Information Protocol (RIP).
 Link State Routing Protocol
Link State protocol is slightly complicated protocol than Distance Vector. It takes into account the states of
links of all the routers in a network. This technique helps routes build a common graph of the entire network.
All routers then calculate their best path for routing purposes.for example, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
and Intermediate System to Intermediate System (ISIS).
Multicast Routing Protocols
Unicast routing protocols use graphs while Multicast routing protocols use trees, i.e. spanning tree to avoid
loops. The optimal tree is called shortest path spanning tree.
 DVMRP - Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol
 MOSPF - Multicast Open Shortest Path First
 CBT - Core Based Tree
 PIM - Protocol independent Multicast
Protocol Independent Multicast is commonly used now. It has two flavors:
 PIM Dense Mode
This mode uses source-based trees. It is used in dense environment such as LAN.
 PIM Sparse Mode
This mode uses shared trees. It is used in sparse environment such as WAN.
Routing Algorithms
The routing algorithms are as follows:
Flooding
Flooding is simplest method packet forwarding. When a packet is received, the routers send it to all the
interfaces except the one on which it was received. This creates too much burden on the network and lots of
duplicate packets wandering in the network.
Time to Live (TTL) can be used to avoid infinite looping of packets. There exists another approach for
flooding, which is called Selective Flooding to reduce the overhead on the network. In this method, the router
does not flood out on all the interfaces, but selective ones.
Shortest Path
Routing decision in networks, are mostly taken on the basis of cost between source and destination. Hop
count plays major role here. Shortest path is a technique which uses various algorithms to decide a path with
minimum number of hops.
Common shortest path algorithms are:
 Dijkstra's algorithm
 Bellman Ford algorithm
 Floyd Warshall algorithm