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COMPUTER NETWORKS
Subject Code: 21CS52

Google Classroom Code

kvgeg6m
https://classroom.google.com/c/NTMwNjA5NjU1NzU5?cjc=kvgeg6m
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MODULE- 1
• Introduction to networks: Network
hardware, Network software, Reference
models
• Physical Layer: Guided transmission
media, Wireless transmission
Laboratory Component :
1. Implement Three nodes point – to – point
network with duplex links between them for
different topologies. Set the queue size, vary the
bandwidth, and find the number of packets
dropped for various iterations.
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Introduction
• We are living in a connected world. Information is being
produced, exchanged, and traced across the globe in real
time.
• It's possible as almost
everyone and everything in
the digital world is
interconnected through one
way or the other.
• “A computer network is an interconnection among two
or more computers or computing devices”
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Introduction
• The network size may vary from small to large depending on the
number of computers it connects.
• A computer network can include different types of hosts (also called
nodes) like server, desktop, laptop, cellular phones.
• Apart from computers, networks
include networking devices like
switch, router, modem, etc.
• Networking devices are used to
connect multiple computers in
different settings.
• For communication, data in a
network is divided into smaller
chunks called packets.
Devices in a network can be connected
• These packets are then carried
either through wired media like cables
over a network. or wireless media like air.
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Introduction
• In a communication network, each device that is a part of a network
and that can receive, create, store or send data to different network
routes is called a node.
• In the context of data communication, a node can be a device such as
a modem, hub, bridge, switch, router, digital telephone handset, a
printer, a computer or a server.
• Interconnectivity of computing devices in a network allows us to
exchange information simultaneously with many parties through
email, websites, audio/video calls, etc.
• Network allows sharing of resources.
• People often connect their devices through hotspot, thus forming a
small personal network.
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Evolution of Networking
• In the 1960s a research project was commissioned by Advanced
Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in the U.S.
Department of Defense to connect the academic and research
institutions located at different places for scientific collaborations.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
• An criterion for classifying networks is
Transmission Technology and Scale
• There are two types of transmission
technology that are in widespread use:
1. Broadcast Links and
2. Point-to-Point Links.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Transmission Technology
Point-to-Point Links:
• Point-to-point links connect individual pairs of
machines.
• To go from the source to the destination on a network
made up of point-to-point links, short messages,
called packets in certain contexts, may have to first
visit one or more intermediate machines.
• Point-to-point transmission with exactly one sender
and exactly one receiver is sometimes called
unicasting.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Broadcast Links:
• On a broadcast network, the communication channel
is shared by all the machines on the network; packets
sent by any machine are received by all the others.
• An address field within each packet specifies the
intended recipient
• Upon receiving a packet, a machine checks the
address field. If the packet is intended for the
receiving machine, that machine processes the
packet; if the packet is intended for some other
machine, it is just ignored.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Broadcast Links:
• A wireless network is a common example of a
broadcast link, with communication shared over a
coverage region that depends on the wireless
channel and the transmitting machine.
• Broadcast systems usually also allow the
possibility of addressing a packet to all
destinations by using a special code in the
address field.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Broadcast Links:
• When a packet with this code is transmitted, it is
received and processed by every machine on the
network. This mode of operation is called
broadcasting.
• Some broadcast systems also support
transmission to a subset of the machines, which
known as multicasting.
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URL
• URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.
• A URL is nothing more than the address of a given
unique resource on the Web

• There are two types of URL:

1. Absolute URL (This type of URL contains both the domain name and directory/page path)
2. Relative URL (This type of URL contains the path excluding the domain name)
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NETWORK HARDWARE
SCALE:
• Distance is important as a classification metric because different
technologies are used at different scales.
• we classify multiple processor systems by their rough physical
size.
• At the top are the Personal Area Networks (PAN) , networks
that are meant for one person.
• Beyond these come longer-range networks. These can be
divided into local, metropolitan, and wide area networks, each
with increasing scale.
• Finally, the connection of two or more networks is called an
internetwork.
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• Larger internetworks with the Interplanetary Internet that

connects networks across space
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Personal Area Networks:
• PANs (Personal Area Networks) let devices communicate over
the range of a person.
• A common example is a wireless network that connects a
computer with its peripherals.
• To design a short-range wireless
network called Bluetooth to connect
these components without wires
• PANs can also be built with other
technologies that communicate over
short ranges, such as RFID on
smartcards and library books.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Local Area Networks:
• A LAN is a privately owned network that operates within and
nearby a single building like a home, office or factory.
• LANs are widely used to connect personal computers and
consumer electronics to let them share resources (e.g., printers)
and exchange information.
• When LANs are used by companies, they are called enterprise
networks.
• In these systems, every computer has a radio modem and an
antenna that it uses to communicate with other computers.
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• In most cases, each computer talks to a device in the ceiling.

• This device, called an AP (Access Point), wireless router, or
base station, relays packets between the wireless computers
and also between them and the Internet.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Local Area Networks:
• There is a standard for wireless LANs called IEEE 802.11, popularly
known as WiFi, which has become very
• It runs at speeds anywhere from 11 widespread to hundreds of Mbps.
• Wired LANs use a range of different transmission technologies.
• Most of them use copper wires, but some use optical fiber.
• LANs are restricted in size, which means that the worst-case
transmission time is bounded and known in advance.
• Typically, wired LANs run at speeds of 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, have low
delay (microseconds or nanoseconds), and make very few errors.
• Newer LANs can operate at up to 10 Gbps. Compared to wireless
networks, wired LANs exceed them in all dimensions of performance.
• It is just easier to send signals over a wire or through a fiber than
through the air.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Local Area Networks:
• The topology of many wired LANs is built from point-to-point
links. IEEE 802.3, popularly called Ethernet, is, by far, the most
common type of wired LAN. Fig. 1-8(b) shows a sample topology
of switched Ethernet.
• Each computer speaks the Ethernet protocol and connects to a
box called a switch with a point-to-point link. Hence the name.
• A switch has multiple ports, each of which can connect to one
computer.
• The job of the switch is to relay packets between computers that
are attached to it, using the address in each packet to
determine which computer to send it to.
• It is also possible to divide one large physical LAN into two
smaller logical LANs.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Local Area Networks:
• The engineering and finance departments of a
company might have computers on the same physical
LAN because they are in the same wing of the building
but it might be easier to manage the system if
engineering and finance logically each had its own
network Virtual LAN or VLAN
• In this design each port is tagged with a ‘‘color,’’ say
green for engineering and red for finance.
• Both wireless and wired broadcast networks can be
divided into static and dynamic designs, depending
on how the channel is allocated.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Local Area Networks: Virtual LAN or VLAN:
Why Do We Need VLAN?
• Early Ethernet allows data communication over shared media
through Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection
(CSMA/CD).
• When an Ethernet network has a large number of hosts, collision
becomes a serious problem and can lead to broadcast storms.
• This degrades network performance or even causes a complete
breakdown.
• Using Layer 2 devices to connect LANs can restrict data
transmission within a LAN. However, this resolves only the
conflicts.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Local Area Networks:
Virtual LAN or VLAN:
• A VLAN breaks a single network into multiple
sections.
• By logically separating ports and additional
switches from one another, a VLAN
effectively creates multiple standalone
networks out of the same networking
backbone.
• This is more secure, and it reduces the
number of broadcasts individual devices
receive.
• Each VLAN functions as a separate
broadcast domain, with devices in the same
VLAN able to directly communicate with one
another, while those in different VLANs
cannot.
• As a result, broadcast packets are confined
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Local Area Networks:
Different types of wireless and wired broadcast networks:
• Depending on how the channel is allocated, there are two types
of designs
1. Static Design
2. Dynamic Design
• Static Design
• A typical static allocation would be to divide time into discrete
intervals and use a round-robin algorithm, allowing each
machine to broadcast only when its time slot comes up.
• Static allocation wastes channel capacity when a machine has
nothing to say during its allocated slot, so most systems attempt
to allocate the channel dynamically
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Local Area Networks:
• A typical static allocation would be to divide time into discrete intervals
and use a round-robin algorithm, allowing each machine to broadcast
only when its time slot comes up.
• Static allocation wastes channel capacity when a machine has nothing
to say during its allocated slot, so most systems attempt to allocate the
channel dynamically
• There are other wired LAN topologies too. In fact, switched Ethernet is
a modern version of the original Ethernet design that broadcast all the
packets over a single linear cable.
• At most one machine could successfully transmit at a time, and a
distributed arbitration mechanism was used to resolve conflicts. It used
a simple algorithm: computers could transmit whenever the cable was
idle.
• If two or more packets collided, each computer just waited a random
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Local Area Networks:
Different types of wireless and wired broadcast networks:
Dynamic Design
• Dynamic allocation methods for a common channel are either
centralized or decentralized.
• In the centralized channel allocation method, there is a single
entity.
• In the decentralized channel allocation method, there is no
central entity; each machine must decide for itself whether to
transmit.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Metropolitan Area Networks:
• A MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) covers a city. The best-
known examples of MANs are the cable television networks
available in many cities.
• In those early systems, a large antenna was placed on top of a
nearby hill and a signal was then piped to the subscribers’
houses
• In figure 1.9 we see both television signals and Internet being fed
into the centralized cable head-end for subsequent distribution
to people’s homes.Cable television is not the only MAN, though.
• Recent developments in high-speed wireless Internet access
have resulted in another MAN, which has been standardized as
IEEE 802.16 and is popularly known as WiMAX
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Metropolitan Area Networks:
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Wide Area Networks:
• A WAN (Wide Area Network) spans a large geographical area, often a
country or continent.
• The rest of the network that connects these hosts is then called the
communication subnet, or just subnet for short.
• The job of the subnet is to carry messages from host to host, just as the
telephone system carries words (really just sounds) from speaker to
listener.
• In most WANs, the subnet consists of two distinct components:
1. Transmission lines and
2. Switching elements.
• Transmission lines move bits between machines. They can be made of
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Wide Area Networks:
• Switching elements, or just switches, are specialized computers
that connect two or more transmission lines.
• When data arrive on an incoming line, the switching element
must choose an outgoing line on which to forward them.
• These switching computers have been called by various names in
the past; the name router is now most commonly used.
• A short comment about the term ‘‘subnet’’ is in order here.
• Originally, its only meaning was the collection of routers and
communication lines that moved packets from the source host to
the destination host.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Wide Area Networks:
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Wide Area Networks:
• The Subnet refers the collection of routers and communication lines that
moved packets from the source host to the destination host.
• The conjunction with network addressing.
• The main difference between WAN & LAN are primarily wires / transmission,
second difference is that the routers will usually connect different kinds of
networking technology.
• Separation of the pure communication aspects of the network (the subnet) from
the application aspects (the hosts) greatly simplifies the overall network design.
• The networks inside the offices may be switched Ethernet, for example, while
the long-distance transmission lines may be SONET (Synchronous Optical
Network) links.
• Many WANs will in fact be internetworks, or composite networks that are
made up of more than one network.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Wide Area Networks:
• A final difference is in what is connected to the subnet. This could be
individual computers, as was the case for connecting to LANs, or it could be
entire LANs.
• There are two varieties of WAN are there:
1. Switched WAN and
2. Point-to-Point WAN
• Lease dedicated transmission lines: This allows connections to be made
between the offices as virtual links that use the underlying capacity of the
Internet.
• This arrangement, shown in Fig. 1-11, is called a VPN (Virtual Private
Network).
• Compared to the dedicated arrangement, a VPN has the usual advantage of
virtualization, which is that it provides flexible reuse of a resource (Internet
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Wide Area Networks:
• A VPN also has the usual disadvantage of virtualization, which is a lack of control
over the underlying resources.
• With a dedicated line, the capacity is clear.
• With a VPN your mileage may vary with your Internet service.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Wide Area Networks:
• The subnet operator is known as a network service provider and the
offices are its customers.
• The subnet operator will also connect to other networks that are part of
the Internet. Such a subnet operator is called an ISP (Internet Service
Provider) and the subnet is an ISP network.
• Its customers who connect to the ISP receive Internet service.
• In most WANs, the network contains many transmission lines, each
connecting a pair of routers.
• The network makes the decision as to which path to use is called the
routing algorithm.
• Each router makes the decision as to where to send a packet next is
called the forwarding algorithm.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Wide Area Networks:
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Wide Area Networks:
• The cellular telephone network is another example of a WAN that uses
wireless technology.
• The first generation was analog and for voice only.
• The second generation was digital and for voice only.
• The third generation is digital and is for both voice and data.
• Each cellular base station covers a distance much larger than a wireless
LAN, with a range measured in kilometers rather than tens of meters.
• The base stations are connected to each other by a backbone network
• that is usually wired.
• The data rates of cellular networks are often on the order of 1 Mbps,
much smaller than a wireless LAN that can range up to on the order of
100 Mbps.
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NETWORK HARDWARE
Internetworks:
• A collection of interconnected networks is called an internetwork or
internet.
• The Internet uses ISP networks to connect enterprise networks, home
networks, and many other networks.
• A network is formed by the combination of a subnet and its hosts.
• The general name for a machine that makes a connection between two
or more networks and provides the necessary translation, both in terms
of hardware and software, is a gateway.
• Gateways are distinguished by the layer at which they operate in the
protocol hierarchy
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Network software is now highly structured.
Protocol Hierarchies:
• To reduce their design complexity, most networks are
organized as a stack of layers or levels, each one built upon
the one below it.
• The number of layers, the name of each layer, the contents of
each layer, and the function of each layer differ from network
to network.
• In a sense, each layer is a kind of virtual machine, offering
certain services to the layer above it.
• The fundamental idea is that a particular piece of software
(or hardware) provides a service to its users but keeps the
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies:
• When layer n on one machine carries on a conversation with
layer n on another machine, the rules and conventions used
in this conversation are collectively known as the layer n
protocol.
• A Protocol is an agreement between the communicating
parties on how communication is to proceed.
• A five-layer network is illustrated in Fig. 1-13. The entities
comprising the corresponding layers on different machines
are called peers.
• The peers may be software processes, hardware devices, or
even human beings. The peers communicate by using the
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies:

In Fig. 1-13,
virtual
communication is
shown by dotted
lines and physical
communication
by solid lines.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies:
• In reality, no data are directly transferred from layer n on one
machine to layer n on another machine.
• Instead, each layer passes data and control information to the
layer immediately below it, until the lowest layer is reached.
• Below layer 1 is the physical medium through which actual
communication occurs.
• Between each pair of adjacent layers is an interface.
• The interface defines which primitive operations and
services the lower layer makes available to the upper one
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies:
• A set of layers and protocols is called a network
architecture.
• The specification of an architecture must contain enough
information to allow an implementer to write the program or
build the hardware for each layer so that it will correctly
obey the appropriate protocol.
• A list of the protocols used by a certain system, one protocol
per layer, is called a protocol stack.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Design Issues for the
Layers:
• The key design issues that occur in computer networks will come
up in layer after layer.
• Reliability is the design issue of making a network that operates
correctly even though it is made up of a collection of components
that are themselves unreliable.
• One mechanism for finding errors in received information uses
codes for error detection.
• Information that is incorrectly received can then be retransmitted
until it is received correctly.
• More powerful codes allow for error correction, where the
correct message is recovered from the possibly incorrect bits that
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Design Issues for the
Layers:
• Both of these mechanisms work by adding redundant information.
• They are used at low layers, to protect packets sent over
individual links, and high layers, to check that the right contents
were received.
• Another reliability issue is finding a working path through a
network.
• Often there are multiple paths between a source and destination,
and in a large network, there may be some links or routers that are
broken.
• The network should automatically make this decision. This topic
is called routing.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Design Issues for the
Layers:
• A second design issue concerns the evolution of the network.
• Over time, network grow larger and new designs emerge that need
to be connected to the existing network.
• We have recently seen the key structuring mechanism used to
support change by dividing the overall problem and hiding
implementation details: protocol layering.
• Since there are many computers on the network, every layer needs
a mechanism for identifying the senders and receivers that are
involved in a particular message. This mechanism is called
addressing or naming, in the low and high layers, respectively.
• Designs that continue to work well when the network gets large
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Design Issues for the Layers:
• A third design issue is resource allocation.
• Networks provide a service to hosts from their underlying
resources, such as the capacity of transmission lines.
• To do this well, they need mechanisms that divide their resources so
that one host does not interfere with another too much.
• Many designs share network bandwidth dynamically, according to
the short-term needs of hosts, rather than by giving each host a fixed
fraction of the bandwidth that it may or may not use.
• This design is called statistical multiplexing, meaning sharing
based on the statistics of demand.
• It can be applied at low layers for a single link, or at high layers for
a network or even applications that use the network.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Design Issues for the
Layers:
• An allocation problem that occurs at every level is how to keep a
fast sender from swamping a slow receiver with data.
• Feedback from the receiver to the sender is often used. This subject
is called flow control.
• Sometimes the problem is that the network is oversubscribed
because too many computers want to send too much traffic, and the
network cannot deliver it all. This overloading of the network is
called congestion.
• One strategy is for each computer to reduce its demand when it
experiences congestion. It, too, can be used in all layers.
• It is interesting to observe that the network has more resources to
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Design Issues for the Layers:
• Most networks must provide service to applications that want
• this real-time delivery at the same time that they provide service to
applications that want high throughput.
• Quality of service is the name given to mechanisms that reconcile
these competing demands.
• The last major design issue is to secure the network by defending
it against different kinds of threats.
• One of the threats we have mentioned previously is that of
eavesdropping on communications.
• Mechanisms that provide confidentiality defend against this threat,
and they are used in multiple layers.
• Mechanisms for authentication prevent someone from
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Connection-Oriented
Versus Connectionless Service:
• Layers can offer two different types of service to the layers above them:
1. Connection- oriented and
2. Connectionless.
• Connection-oriented service is modeled after the telephone system. The
essential aspect of a connection is that it acts like a tube: the sender pushes
objects (bits) in at one end, and the receiver takes them out at the other end.
• In most cases the order is preserved so that the bits arrive in the order they were
sent.
• In some cases when a connection is established, the sender, receiver, and subnet
conduct a negotiation about the parameters to be used, such as maximum
message size, quality of service required, and other issues.
• A circuit is another name for a connection with associated resources, such as a
fixed bandwidth.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Connection-Oriented Versus
Connectionless Service:
• In contrast to connection-oriented service, connectionless service is
modelled after the postal system.
• Each message (letter) carries the full destination address, and each
one is routed through the intermediate nodes inside the system
independent of all the subsequent messages.
• There are different names for messages in different contexts; a
packet is a message at the network layer.
• When the intermediate nodes receive a message in full before sending
it on to the next node, this is called store-and-forward switching.
• The alternative, in which the onward transmission of a message at a
node starts before it is completely received by the node, is called cut-
through switching.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Connection-Oriented
Versus Connectionless Service:
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Service Primitives
• A service is formally specified by a set of primitives
(operations) available to user processes to access the
service.
• These primitives tell the service to perform some action or
report on an action taken by a peer entity.
• If the protocol stack is located in the operating system, as it
often is, the primitives are normally system calls.
• These calls cause a trap to kernel mode, which then turns
control of the machine over to the operating system to send
the necessary packets.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Service Primitives
• The set of primitives available depends on the nature of the service being
provided.
• The primitives for connection-oriented service are different from those of
connectionless service.
• As a minimal example of the service primitives that might provide a reliable byte
stream, consider the primitives listed in Fig. 1-17.
• They will be familiar to fans of the Berkeley socket interface, as the primitives are
a simplified version of that interface.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- Service Primitives
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- The Relationship of
Services to Protocols
• Services and protocols are distinct concepts.
• A service is a set of primitives (operations) that a layer
provides to the layer above it.
• The service defines what operations the layer is prepared to
perform on behalf of its users, but it says nothing at all
about how these operations are implemented.
• A service relates to an interface between two layers, with
the lower layer being the service provider and the upper
layer being the service user.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- The Relationship of
Services to Protocols
• A protocol, in contrast, is a set of rules governing the format
and meaning of the packets, or messages that are exchanged
by the peer entities within a layer.
• Entities use protocols to implement their service definitions.
• They are free to change their protocols at will, provided
they do not change the service visible to their users.
• In this way, the service and the protocol are completely
decoupled.
• This is a key concept that any network designer should
understand well.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
Protocol Hierarchies- The Relationship of
Services to Protocols
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
REFERENCE MODELS
• There are two important network architectures:
1. The OSI reference model and
2. The TCP/IP reference model
• Although the protocols associated with the OSI model are
not used any more, the model itself is actually quite
general and still valid, and the features at each layer are
still very important.
• The TCP/IP model has the opposite properties: the model
itself is not of much use but the protocols are widely used.
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
REFERENCE MODELS: The OSI Reference
Model
• This model is based on a proposal developed by the
International Standards Organization (ISO) as a first step
toward international standardization of the protocols used
in the various layers(Day and Zimmermann, 1983). It was
revised in 1995 (Day, 1995)
• The model is called the ISO OSI (Open Systems
Interconnection) Reference Model because it deals with
connecting open systems—that is, systems that are open
for communication with other systems
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
REFERENCE MODELS: The OSI Reference Model
• The OSI model has seven layers.
• The principles that were applied to arrive at the seven layers can be
briefly summarized as follows:
1. A layer should be created where a different abstraction is needed.
2. Each layer should perform a well-defined function.
3. The function of each layer should be chosen with an eye toward
defining internationally standardized protocols.
4. The layer boundaries should be chosen to minimize the
information flow across the interfaces.
5. The number of layers should be large enough that distinct
functions need not be thrown together in the same layer out of
necessity and small enough that the architecture does not become
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NETWORK SOFTWARE
REFERENCE MODELS: The OSI Reference
Model
• The OSI model has seven layers.
• .osi-tcp.ppt
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GUIDED TRANSMISSION MEDIA

• The purpose of the physical layer is to transport bits from
one machine to another. Various physical media can be
used for the actual transmission.
• Each one has its own niche in terms of bandwidth, delay,
cost, and ease of installation and maintenance.
• Media are roughly grouped into guided media, such as
copper wire and fiber optics, and unguided media, such as
terrestrial wireless, satellite, and lasers through the air.
1. Magnetic Media: One of the most common ways to
transport data from one computer to another is to write
them onto magnetic tape or removable media (e.g.,
recordable DVDs), physically transport the tape or disks
to the destination machine, and read them back in again.
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GUIDED TRANSMISSION MEDIA

2. Twisted Pairs: A twisted pair consists of two insulated
copper wires, typically about 1 mm thick. The wires are
twisted together in a helical form, just like a DNA
molecule. Twisting is done because two parallel wires
constitute a fine antenna. When the wires are twisted, the
waves from different twists cancel out, so the wire
radiates less effectively. A signal is usually carried as the
difference in voltage between the two wires in the pair.
• The most common
application of the
twisted pair is the
telephone system
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GUIDED TRANSMISSION MEDIA

2. Twisted Pairs:
• A category 5 (Cat 5) twisted pair consists of two insulated wires
gently twisted together. Four such pairs are typically grouped in
a plastic sheath to protect the wires and keep them together.
• Other twisted pair types like Cat 3, Cat 6 (referred as UTP
(Unshielded Twisted), Cat 7 are there.
• Shielding reduces the susceptibility to external interference and
crosstalk with other nearby cables to meet demanding
performance specifications.
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GUIDED TRANSMISSION MEDIA

3. Coaxial Cable:
• It has better shielding and greater bandwidth than
unshielded twisted pairs, so it can span longer distances at
higher speeds. Two kinds of coaxial cable are widely used.
• One kind, 50-ohm cable, is commonly used when it is
intended for digital transmission from the start.
• The other kind, 75-ohm cable, is commonly used for
analog transmission and cable television.
• A coaxial cable consists of a stiff copper wire as the core,
surrounded by an insulating material.
• The insulator is encased by a cylindrical conductor, often as
a closely woven braided mesh.
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3. Coaxial Cable:
• The outer conductor is covered in a protective plastic
sheath. A cutaway view of a coaxial cable is shown
• The construction and shielding of the coaxial cable give it a
good combination of high bandwidth and excellent noise
immunity. The bandwidth possible depends on the cable
quality and length Coax is still widely used for cable
television and metropolitan area networks.
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4. Power Lines :
• The telephone and cable television networks are not the
only sources of wiring that can be reused for data
communication. There is a yet more common kind of
wiring: electrical power lines.
• Power lines deliver electrical power to houses, and
electrical wiring within houses distributes the power to
electrical outlets.
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5. Fiber Optics :
• Fiber optics are used for long-haul transmission in network
backbones, high-speed LANs (although so far, copper has
always managed catch up eventually), and high-speed Internet
access such as FttH (Fiber to the Home).
• An optical transmission system has three key components:
1. The light source
2. The transmission medium, and
3. The detector.
• Conventionally, a pulse of light indicates a 1 bit and the
absence of light indicates a 0 bit.
• The transmission medium is an ultra-thin fiber of glass.
• The detector generates an electrical pulse when light falls
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Textbooks
1. Computer-Networks- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
and David J. Wetherall, Pearson Education,
5th Edition.
(www.pearsonhighered.com/tanenbaum)

Reference Books
2. Behrouz A Forouzan, Data and Communications and
Networking, Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, Indian Edition
3. Larry L Peterson and Brusce S Davie, Computer
Networks, fifth edition, ELSEVIER
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Thank you