CN 211: Computer Networking

Protocols

OSI Model Cont…

12/10/2024 12:19 PM CN 211 CIVE 23/24 1

Physical layer
• Physical layer does two things:-
— It sends bits and
— Receives bits.

• Bits come only in values of 1 or 0—a Morse code with

numerical values.

• The Physical layer communicates directly with the

various types of actual communication media.

• Different kinds of media represent these bit values in

different ways.
Physical layer
• Some use audio tones, while others employ state
transitions—changes in voltage from high to low and
low to high, light signal or electromagnetic waves.

• Specific protocols are needed for each type of media to

describe the proper bit patterns to be used, how data is
encoded into media signals, and the various qualities of
the physical media’s attachment interface.

• The physical layer has four important characteristics for

activating, maintaining, and deactivating a physical link
between end systems:-
Physical layer
i. Mechanical: Relates to the physical properties of the interface to
a transmission medium. Typically, the specification is of a
pluggable connector that joins one or more signal conductors,
called circuits.

ii. Electrical: Relates to the representation of bits (e.g., in terms of

voltage levels) and the data transmission rate of bits.

iii. Functional: Specifies the functions performed by individual

circuits of the physical interface between a system and the
transmission medium.

iv. Procedural: Specifies the sequence of events by which bit

streams are exchanged across the physical medium.
Physical layer (Summary)
• Defines physical means of sending data over
network devices

• Interfaces between network medium and devices

• Defines optical, electrical and mechanical

characteristics
The Data Link Layer
• Whereas the physical layer provides only a raw bit-
stream service, the data link layer attempts to make the
physical link reliable while providing the means to
activate, maintain, and deactivate the link.

• The Data Link layer provides the physical transmission

of the data and handles error notification(error
detection)-ACK/NACK, network topology-Logical
topology, and flow control- buffer overflow issue.

• Thus, with a fully functional data-link-layer protocol, the

next higher layer may assume error-free transmission
over the link.
The Data Link Layer
• This means that the Data Link layer will ensure that
messages are delivered to the proper device on a LAN
using hardware addresses, and translates messages
from the Network layer into bits for the Physical layer to
transmit.

• The Data Link layer formats the message into pieces,

each called a data frame, and adds a customized
header containing the hardware destination and
source address.
The Data Link Layer
• The Data link layer has two sublayers:-
— Logical Link Control (LLC) and
— Media Access Control (MAC)

Data Link Sub-layers

The Data Link Layer
• Media Access Control (MAC): Defines how packets
are placed on the media.

— Contention media access is “first come/first served” access

where everyone shares the same bandwidth—hence the name.

— Physical addressing is defined here, as well as logical topologies.

— What’s a logical topology? It’s the signal path through a physical

topology. Line discipline, error notification (not correction),
ordered delivery of frames, and optional flow control can also be
used at this sublayer.
The Data Link Layer
• Logical Link Control (LLC): Responsible for
identifying Network layer protocols and then
encapsulating them.

— An LLC header tells the Data Link layer what to do with a packet
once a frame is received.

— It works like this: A host will receive a frame and look in the LLC
header to find out where the packet is destined for—say, the IP
protocol at the Network layer.

— The LLC can also provide flow control and sequencing of control
bits.
The Data Link Layer (Summary)
• Defines procedures for operating the
communication links.

• Frames packets.

• Detects packets transmit errors.

The Network Layer
• The Network layer (also called layer 3) manages
device addressing, tracks the location of devices on the
network, and determines the best way to move data,
which means that the Network layer must transport
traffic between devices that aren’t locally attached.

• Routers (layer 3 devices) are specified at the Network

layer and provide the routing services within an
internetwork.
The Network Layer
• The Network layer formats the message into pieces,
each called a data packets, and adds a customized
header containing the ip destination and source
address.

• Two types of packets are used at the Network layer:-

— data packets and
— route updates.
The Network Layer
• Data packets Used to transport user data through the
internetwork. Protocols used to support data traffic are
called routed protocols; examples of routed protocols
are IP and IPX.

• Route update packets Used to update neighboring

routers about the networks connected to all routers
within the internetwork. Protocols that send route
update packets are called routing protocols; examples of
some common ones are RIP, EIGRP, and OSPF.

• Route update packets are used to help build and

maintain routing tables on each router.
The Network Layer

The use of relay

The Network Layer
• The lower three layers are concerned with
attaching to and communicating with the
network.

• The packets created by the end system pass

through one or more network nodes that act as
relays between the two end systems.

• The network nodes implement layers 1-3 of the

architecture.
The Network Layer (Summary)
• Determines how data are transferred between network
devices.

• Routes packets according to unique network device

addresses.

• Provides flow and congestion control to prevent network

resource depletion.
Transport Layer
• The Transport layer segments and reassembles data
into a data stream.

• The transport layer provides a mechanism for the

exchange of data between end systems.

• Services located in the Transport layer both segment

and reassemble data from upper-layer applications and
unite it onto the same data stream.

• They provide end-to-end data transport services and

can establish a logical connection between the sending
host and destination host on an internetwork.
Transport Layer
• The Transport layer is responsible for providing
mechanisms for multiplexing upper-layer applications,
establishing sessions, and tearing down virtual circuits.

• It also hides details of any network-dependent

information from the higher layers by providing
transparent data transfer.

• The Transport layer can be connectionless (user

datagram-UDP) or connection-oriented (transmission
control protocol-TCP).
Transport Layer
• The connection-oriented transport service ensures that
data are delivered error-free, in sequence, with no
losses or duplications.

• The transport layer may also be concerned with

optimizing the use of network services and with
providing a requested quality of service to session
entities.

• For example, the session entity may specify acceptable

error rates, maximum delay, priority, and security.
Transport Layer
• The size and complexity of a transport protocol depend
on how reliable or unreliable the underlying network and
network layer services are.

• The following slides will provide the skinny on the

connection-oriented (reliable) protocol of the Transport
layer.
Flow Control
• Data integrity is ensured at the Transport layer by
maintaining flow control and by allowing users to
request reliable data transport between systems.

• Flow control prevents a sending host on one side of the

connection from overflowing the buffers in the receiving
host—an event that can result in lost data.
Flow Control
• Reliable data transport employs a connection-oriented
communications session between systems, and the
protocols involved ensure that the following will be
achieved:-
— The segments delivered are acknowledged back to the sender
upon their reception.
— Any segments not acknowledged are retransmitted.
— Segments are sequenced back into their proper order upon
arrival at their destination.
— A manageable data flow is maintained in order to avoid
congestion, overloading, and data loss.
Connection-Oriented Communication
• In reliable transport operation, a device that wants to
transmit sets up a connection-oriented communication
with a remote device by creating a session.

• The transmitting device first establishes a connection-

oriented session with its peer system, which is called a
call setup, or a three way handshake.

• Data is then transferred (data transmission), when

finished, a call termination takes place to tear down the
virtual circuit.
Connection-Oriented Communication
• To summarize up the steps in the connection-oriented
session—the three-way handshake are:-
— The first “connection agreement” segment is a request for
synchronization.
— The second and third segments acknowledge the request and
establish connection parameters—the rules—between hosts.
— The receiver’s sequencing is also requested to be synchronized
here, as well, so that a bidirectional connection is formed.
— The final segment is also an acknowledgment. It notifies the
destination host that the connection agreement has been
accepted and that the actual connection has been established.
— Data transfer can now begin.
— Lastly the circuit/session is terminated.
Connection-Oriented Communication

Establishing a connection-oriented session

Connection-Oriented Communication
• Sounds pretty simple, but things don’t always flow so
smoothly.

• Sometimes during a transfer:-

— congestion can occur because a high-speed computer is
generating data traffic a lot faster than the network can handle
transferring.
— A bunch of computers simultaneously sending datagrams
through a single gateway or destination can also damage things
up agreeably.
— In the latter case, a gateway or destination can become
congested even though no single source caused the problem.
— In either case, the problem is basically akin to a freeway
bottleneck—too much traffic for too small a capacity (It’s not
usually one computer that’s the problem; there are simply too many
computers on that freeway).
Connection-Oriented Communication
• Okay, so what happens when a machine receives a
flood of datagrams too quickly for it to process? It
stores them in a memory section called a buffer.

• But this buffering action can only solve the problem if

the datagrams are part of a small burst.

• If not, and the datagram flood continues, a device’s

memory will eventually be exhausted, its flood capacity
will be exceeded, and it will react by discarding any
additional datagrams that arrive.
Connection-Oriented Communication
• In fundamental, reliable, connection-oriented data
transfer, datagrams are delivered to the receiving host
in exactly the same sequence they’re transmitted—and
the transmission fails if this order is breached.

• If any data segments are lost, duplicated, or damaged

along the way, a failure will transmit.

• This problem is solved by having the receiving host

acknowledge that it has received each and every data
segment.
Connection-Oriented Communication

Transmitting segments with flow control

Connection-Oriented Communication
• A service is considered connection-oriented if it has the
following characteristics:-
— A virtual circuit is set up (e.g., a three-way handshake).
— It uses sequencing.
— It uses acknowledgments.
— It uses flow control.

• The types of flow control are:-

— Buffering
— Windowing and
— Congestion avoidance.
Windowing
• Ideally, data throughput happens quickly and efficiently.

• And as you can imagine, it would be slow if the

transmitting machine had to wait for an acknowledgment
after sending each segment.

• But because there’s time available after the sender

transmits the data segment and before it finishes
processing acknowledgments from the receiving machine,
the sender uses the break as an opportunity to transmit
more data.
Windowing
• The quantity of data segments (measured in bytes) that the
transmitting machine is allowed to send without receiving
an acknowledgment for them is called a window.

• Windows are used to control the amount of outstanding,

unacknowledged data segments.

• So the size of the window controls how much information is

transferred from one end to the other.

• While some protocols quantify information by observing the

number of packets, TCP/IP measures it by counting the
number of bytes.
Windowing
• If a TCP session is set up with a window size of 2 bytes,
and during the transfer stage of the session the window
size changes from 2 bytes to 3 bytes, the sending host
must then transmit 3 bytes before waiting for an
acknowledgment instead of the 2 bytes originally set up
in the virtual circuit.
Windowing

Windowing
Acknowledgments
• Reliable data delivery ensures the integrity of a stream
of data sent from one machine to the other through a
fully functional data link.

• It guarantees that the data won’t be duplicated or lost.

• This is achieved through something called positive

acknowledgment with retransmission—a technique that
requires a receiving machine to communicate with the
transmitting source by sending an acknowledgment
message back to the sender when it receives data.
Acknowledgments
• The sender documents each segment it sends and waits
for this acknowledgment before sending the next
segment.

• When it sends a segment, the transmitting machine

starts a timer and retransmits if it expires before an
acknowledgment is returned from the receiving end.
Acknowledgments

Transport layer reliable delivery

Acknowledgments
• In Figure above, the sending machine transmits
segments 1, 2, and 3. The receiving node acknowledges
it has received them by requesting segment 4.

• When it receives the acknowledgment, the sender then

transmits segments 4, 5, and 6, if segment 5 doesn’t
make it to the destination, the receiving node
acknowledges that event with a request for the segment
to be resent.

• The sending machine will then resend the lost segment

and wait for an acknowledgment, which it must receive
in order to move on to the transmission of segment 7.
The Transport layer (summary)
• Manages end-to-end message delivery in network

• Provides reliable and sequential packet delivery through

error recovery and flow control mechanisms

• Provides connection oriented and connectionless packet

delivery
Session Layer
• The Session layer is responsible for setting up,
managing, and then tearing down sessions between
Presentation layer entities.

• It coordinates communication between systems, and

serves to organize their communication by offering three
different modes:-
— simplex,
— half duplex, and
— full duplex.

• Also, the Session layer basically keeps different

applications’ data separate from other applications’ data.
Session Layer
• The session layer provides the mechanism for
controlling the dialogue between applications in end
systems.

• In many cases, there will be little or no need for

session-layer services, but for some applications, such
services are used.

• The key services provided by the session layer include:-

— Dialogue discipline.
— Grouping and
— Recovery.
Session Layer
• Dialogue discipline. This can be one-direction
(simplex), two-way alternate (half duplex) or two-way
simultaneous (full duplex).

• Grouping. The flow of data can be marked to define

groups of data.

• Recovery. The session layer can provide a

checkpointing mechanism, so that if a failure of some
sort occurs between checkpoints, the session entity can
retransmit all data since the last checkpoint.
Session Layer
• Some examples of Session layer protocols and
interfaces:-
— Network File System (NFS): Developed by Sun Microsystems
and used with TCP/IP and Unix workstations to allow
transparent access to remote resources.

— Structured Query Language (SQL): Developed by IBM to

provide users with a simpler way to define their information
requirements on both local and remote systems.

— Remote Procedure Call (RPC): A broad client/server

redirection tool used for disparate service environments. Its
procedures are created on clients and performed on servers.
Session Layer (Summary)
• Manages user sessions and dialogues

• Controls establishment and termination of logic links

between users

• Reports upper layer errors

The Presentation Layer
• The Presentation layer gets its name from its purpose:
It presents data to the Application layer and is responsible
for data translation and code formatting.

• This layer is essentially a translator and provides coding

and conversion functions.

• A successful data-transfer technique is to adapt the data

into a standard format before transmission.

• Computers are configured to receive this generically

formatted data and then convert the data back into its
native format for actual reading (for example, EBCDIC to
ASCII).
The Presentation Layer
• By providing translation services, the Presentation layer
ensures that data transferred from the Application layer
of one system can be read by the Application layer of
another one.

• The OSI has protocol standards that define how

standard data should be formatted.

• Tasks like data compression, decompression, encryption,

and decryption are associated with this layer.

• Some Presentation layer standards are involved in

multimedia operations too.
The Presentation Layer
• The following serve to some direct graphic and visual
image presentation:-
— PICT A picture format used by Macintosh programs for
transferring QuickDraw graphics.

— JPEG Photo standards brought to us by the Joint Photographic

Experts Group.

— MPEG Increasingly popular Moving Picture Experts Group

standard for the compression and coding of motion video for
CDs. It provides digital storage and bit rates up to 1.5Mbps.
The Presentation Layer (Summary)
• Masks the differences of data formats between
dissimilar systems

• Specifies architecture-independent data transfer format

• Encodes and decodes data; encrypts and decrypts data;

compresses and decompresses data
The Application Layer
• The Application layer of the OSI model marks the
spot where users actually communicate to the
computer.

• Take the case of Edge or Google Chrome. You could

uninstall every trace of networking components from a
system, such as TCP/IP, NIC card, etc., and you could
still use the browser to view a local HTML document—no
problem.
The Application Layer
• But things would definitely get messy if you tried to do
something like view an HTML document that must be
retrieved using HTTP, or nab a file with FTP.

• That’s because browser like Edge will respond to

requests such as those by attempting to access the
Application layer.

• What’s happening is that the Application layer is acting

as an interface between the actual application
program—which isn’t at all a part of the layered
structure—and the next layer down, by providing ways
for the application to send information down through
the protocol stack
The Application Layer
• In other words, Edge doesn’t truly reside within the
Application layer—it interfaces with Application-layer
protocols when it needs to deal with remote resources.

• The Application layer is also responsible for identifying

and establishing the availability of the intended
communication partner, and determining whether
sufficient resources for the intended communication
exist.

• These tasks are important because computer

applications sometimes require more than only desktop
resources.
The Application Layer
• Often, they’ll unite communicating components from
more than one network application.

• Prime examples are:-

— File transfers and
— E-mail.
— Enabling remote access
— Network management activities
— Client/server processes and
— Information location.
The Application Layer
• Today, transactions and information exchanges between
organizations are broadening to require internetworking
applications such as the following:-
— World Wide Web (WWW) Connects countless servers (the
number seems to grow with each passing day) presenting diverse
formats. Most are multimedia and can include graphics, text,
video, and sound. Netscape Navigator and IE simplify both
accessing and viewing websites.

— E-mail gateways Versatile; can use Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

(SMTP) or the X.400 standard to deliver messages between
different e-mail applications.
The Application Layer
— Electronic data interchange (EDI) A composite of specialized
standards and processes that facilitates the flow of tasks such as
accounting, shipping/receiving, and order and inventory tracking
between businesses. (FTP)

— Special interest bulletin boards Include the many Internet chat

rooms where people can “meet” (connect) and communicate with
each other either by posting messages or by typing a live
conversation. They can also share public-domain software.

— Internet navigation utilities Include applications such as Gopher

and Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), as well as search
engines such as Google and Yahoo!, which help users locate the
resources and information they need on the Internet.
The Application Layer
− Financial transaction services Target the financial community.
They gather and sell information pertaining to investments, market
trading, commodities, currency exchange rates, and credit data to
their subscribers.
The Application Layer (Summary)
• Defines interface to user processes for communication
and data transfer in network

• Provides standardized services such as virtual terminal,

file and job transfer and operations