COMP90007 Internet Technologies Semester 1, 2016

THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Practice Examination – Semester 1, 2016

COMP90007: Internet Technologies

Exam Duration: 3 hours Total marks for this Exam: 60

Reading Time: 15 minutes
This exam has 2 pages.

Authorised materials:
The following items are authorized: writing materials (e.g. pens, pencils)
and non-electronic dictionaries are allowed.
Calculators and all other books are not allowed.

Instructions to Invigilators:
Supply students with standard script book.

The exam paper must remain in the exam room and be returned to
the subject coordinator.

Instructions to Students:

 This paper contains 20 questions each worth 3 marks. Attempt all

questions.
 Answer questions in the script book(s) provided. Do not write your
answers on this paper.
 Clearly number your answers.
 Bullet points are acceptable in answering descriptive questions.
 As a guide, two or three sentences should be sufficient to answer
each question. Marks may be deducted for overly long answers or
irrelevant information.
 Any unreadable answers will be considered wrong.

This paper may NOT be reproduced nor lodged with Baillieu Library.

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COMP90007 Internet Technologies Semester 1, 2016

Q1. The following data is the output of traceroute on a computer in the EDS
laboratory.

traceroute to cis.unimelb.edu.au (128.250.37.164), 64 hops max, 52 byte

packets
1 10.9.152.1 3.304 ms 3.304 ms 3.304 ms
2 172.18.68.81 1.146 ms 1.099 ms 1.076 ms
3 172.18.68.83 1.133 ms 1.144 ms 1.115 ms
4 172.18.68.33 2.175 ms 1.931 ms 2.149 ms
5 172.18.66.133 9.724 ms 1.688 ms 1.989 ms
6 128.250.37.130 1.246 ms 1.205 ms 1.381 ms
7 128.250.37.164 1.988 ms 2.035 ms 1.848 ms

a. What is the IP address of the router connected to the destination?

b. Explain how Traceroute uses ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol)

in its operation.

Q2. Briefly explain the relative advantages and disadvantages of the OSI
Reference Model versus the TCP/IP Reference Model. [3 marks]

Q3. Consider a client program that needs to run the following operations on a
remote file server:

a. List the contents of a directory

b. Open a file
c. Read a text file
d. Display the attributes of a file.

For each of the above operations, indicate whether they are more likely to
be delay sensitive or bandwidth sensitive. Justify your answer? [3 marks]

Q4. The bandwidth and latency are the main characteristics of the networks
affecting the performance of applications on networks. Define bandwidth
and latency as discussed in lectures. Give an example of a network that
exhibits high bandwidth but also high latency. Then give an example of a
network that has both low bandwidth and low latency. [3 marks]

Q5. How can you increase the bit rate of a 1200 baud line from 1200 bit/s to
3600 bit/s? [3 marks]

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COMP90007 Internet Technologies Semester 1, 2016

Q6. Consider a telephone signal that is bandwidth limited to 4 kHz. (a) At what
rate should you sample the signal so that you can completely reconstruct
the signal? (b) If each sample of the signal is to be encoded at 256 levels,
how many bits/symbol are required for each sample? (c) What is the
minimum bit rate required to transmit this signal? [3 marks]

Q7. a. The following binary data fragment occurs in the middle of a data stream
for which the bit-stuffing algorithm described in the lectures is to be applied:

0001111101111111111001

Show the output binary data stream after the bit-stuffing algorithm has been
applied. (Note that you do not need to add any flag bytes)

b. The following data fragment occurs in the middle of a data stream for
which the byte-stuffing algorithm described in the lectures is to be applied:

A B ESC D FLAG FLAG ESC C

Show the output data stream after the byte-stuffing algorithm has been
applied.
c. What is the maximum overhead in the byte-stuffing algorithm in general?
[3 marks]

Q8. Briefly explain the difference in operation and philosophy of two approaches
to error handling on the data link layer; error-correcting and error-detecting.
[3 marks]

Q9. Data link protocols almost always put the CRC in a trailer rather than in a
header. Why? [3 marks]

Q10. If a LAN is under high load, would it be more efficient to use a contention
protocol or a collision free protocol in the MAC Sub-layer? Briefly explain
your answer. [3 marks]

Q11. Explain the operational benefits of Switched Ethernet in terms of handling

increased traffic loads and avoiding collisions. [3 marks]

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COMP90007 Internet Technologies Semester 1, 2016
Q12. A router has built the following routing table. The router can directly deliver
packets over Interface 0 and Interface 1 or it can forward to routers R2, R3
and R4.

Subnet Number Subnet Mask Next Hop

148.96.39.0 255.255.255.0 Interface 0

148.96.39.128 255.255.255.128 interface 1
148.96.40.0 255.255.255.128 R2
196.4.153.0 255.255.255.192 R3
Default R4

Describe what the router does if a packet addressed to each of the

following destinations is received.

(a) 148.96.40.12
(b) 148.96.39.193
(e) 196.4.153.90 [3 marks]

Q13. A router has built the following CIDR entries in its routing table. The router
can directly deliver packets over Interface 0 or it can forward to routers R2
and R3.

Address / mask Next Hop

128.16.64.0 / 21 Interface 0
128.16.80.0 / 21 R2
128.16.72.0 / 21 R2
128.16.88.0 / 21 R2
Default R3

Can you simplify the routing table by aggregating addresses having the
same outgoing lines? Briefly explain your answer. If you can simplify, give
the simplified routing table. [3 marks]

Q14. Explain the purpose of subnetting and Classless Inter-Domain Routing

(CIDR) for logically partitioning the IP Address space. [3 marks]

Q15. The following round-trip times (RTT) were measured by connecting from a
host in Melbourne to one residing in the Netherlands.

Trial RTT (ms)

1 0
2 1000
3 2000
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COMP90007 Internet Technologies Semester 1, 2016

a. Determine the jitter in milliseconds. The jitter is defined as the square

root of the variance of a normal distribution as shown below:

where is the mean of the samples.

b. Explain how the value of jitter obtained above can be detrimental to

certain network applications running on the host.
c. How can this problem be alleviated and what are the corresponding
trade-offs involved? [3 marks]

Q16. Give three types of policy choices at the Transport layer that can affect
network congestion. In each case, briefly explain why the policy choice
affects network congestion. [3 marks]

Q17. A common approach to removing jitter in streaming audio is to buffer

incoming packets at the receiver. Briefly explain the main problem with
using this approach for video conferencing. [3 marks]

Q18. Briefly explain the architecture of the email system by describing key
components and services. What are the basic steps of SMTP protocol? [3
marks]

Q19. Give 3 reasons for the emergence of Voice-over-IP telephony as an

alternative to the PSTN. [3 marks]

Q20. a. Is a DNS server a client, a server, or both? Briefly justify your answer.
b. Give three important properties of a message digest. [3 marks]

End of exam

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COMP90007 Internet Technologies Semester 1, 2016
Additional Practice Questions

Q1. The following data is the output of traceroute on a computer in the EDS
laboratory.
traceroute to cis.unimelb.edu.au (128.250.37.164), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets

1 10.0.0.254 33.100 ms 33.100 ms 33.100 ms

2 58.96.2.205 27.800 ms 27.800 ms 27.800 ms
3 58.96.2.129 28.000 ms 28.000 ms 28.000 ms
4 218.100.78.33 28.299 ms 28.469 ms 28.332 ms
5 202.158.200.9 29.626 ms 28.871 ms 29.841 ms
6 202.158.210.26 31.320 ms 28.722 ms 29.135 ms
7 202.158.200.250 29.668 ms 29.096 ms 28.660 ms
8***
9***
10 * * *
11 128.250.37.130 957.521 ms 33.475 ms 29.891 ms
12 128.250.37.164 29.940 ms 29.260 ms 30.020 ms

a. Describe two techniques that can be used in traceroute to speed up

determining the number of hops to a host. Assume that all other information
aside from the final hop count is irrelevant in the traceroute output for this
particular application.
b. Why is the eighth, ninth and tenth hops shown as stars?
c. What is the round trip delay between the source and the router with IP address
58.96.2.129?
[3 marks]
Q2. With respect to routing packets in the Network Layer, explain the difference
between a connectionless and connection-oriented service? [3 marks]

Q3. An encrypted file needs to be accessed in non-sequential order. Which

cipher mode is best suited to encrypting this file, and briefly explain why. [3
marks]

Q4. Give three requirements that are needed to ensure reliable connection
establishment in the transport layer. [3 marks]

Q5. Briefly summarize the relative strengths and weaknesses of using UDP to
implement remote procedure calls (RPC). [3 marks]

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