COMPUTER NETWORKS

ASSIGNMENT NO. 02

PONRAJ. P
III BCA C
0822JC32
02.08.2010
 ETHERNET
Ethernet Cabling:

The name “Ethernet” refers to the cable (the ether). It has four
different types of cabling are commonly used.

Name Cable Max.seg Nodes/seg Advantages

10Base5 Thick coax 500 m 100 Original
cable; now
obsolete
10Base2 Thin coax 185 m 30 No hub
needed
10Base-T Twisted pair 100 m 1024 Cheapest
system
10Base-F Fiber Coax 2000 m 1024 Best between
buildings

Historically 10Base5 cabling, popularly called Thick Ethernet.

Connections to it are generally made using vampire taps, in which a pin in
very carefully forced halfway into the coaxial cable core. The first number
is the speed in Mbps.

The second cable type was 10Base2 or thin Ethernet which

connections to it are made using industry standard BNC connectors to
form T junctions. It is easier to use and more reliable.

Timing the interval between sending the pulse and receiving the
echo, it is possible to localize the origin of the echo. This technique is called
time domain reflectometry. All the stations have a cable running to a
central hub in which they are all connected electrically. This scheme is
called 10Base-T.
 For 10Base5 a transceiver is clamped securely around the cable so
that its tap makes contact with the inner core. With 10Base5, a transceiver
cable or drop cable connects the transceiver to an interface board in the
computer.

The fourth cabling option for Ethernet is 10Base-F, which uses fiber
optics. It has the excellent noise immunity. Runs of up to km are allowed.

Each version of Ethernet has a maximum cable length per segment.

To allow large networks, multiple cables can be connected by Repeaters.

Manchester Encoding:

The version of Ethernet uses straight binary encoding with 0 volts for
a 0 bit and 5 volts for a 1 bit because it leads to ambiguities. If one station
sends the bit string 00010000, others might falsely interpret it as 10000000
or 01000000. This problem can be solved by using +1 volts for a 1 and -1
volts for a 0.
 Two such approaches are called Manchester encoding and
differential Manchester encoding. A binary 1 bit is sent by having the
voltage set high during the first interval and low in the second one.

All Ethernet systems use Manchester encoding due to its simplicity.

The high signal is +0.85 volts and the low signal is -0.85 volts, giving a DC
value of 0 volts.

The Ethernet MAC Sublayer Protocol:

The original DIX (DEC, Intel, Xerox) frame structure is shown. Each
frame starts with a preamble of 8 bytes, each containing the bit pattern
10101010. The Manchester encoding of this pattern produces a 10-MHz
square wave for 6.4 µsec to allow the receiver’s clock to synchronize with
the sender’s.

The frame contains two addresses, one for the destination and one for
the source. The standard allows 2-byte and 6-byte addresses, but the
parameters defined for the 10-Mbps baseband address is a 0 for ordinary
addresses and 1 for group address. Group address allow
Frame formats (a)DIX Ethernet (b)IEEE 802.3

multiple stations to listen to a single address. When a frame is sent to a

group receives it. Sending to a group of stations is called multicast. The
address consisting of all 1 bit is reserved for broadcast.

The Type field, which tells the receiver what to do with the frame.
Multiple network layer protocols may be in use at the same time on the
same machine, the kernel has to know which one to hand the frame to.
Next the data up to 1500 bytes. This limit was chosen somewhat arbitrarily
at the time the DIX standard a transceiver needs enough RAM to hold an
entire frame. Hence a more expensive transceiver.

If a station tries to transmit a very short frame, it is conceivable that a

collision occurs, but the transmission completes before the noise burst gets
back at 2t. The final Ethernet field is the check-sum. The check-sum
algorithm is a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) of the kind. When the IEEE
standardized Ethernet, the committee made two changes to the DIX format.
The first one was to reduce the preamble to 7 bytes and use the last byte for
a Start of Frame delimiter. The second one was to change the Type field .

The Binary Exponential Backoff Algorithm:

After a collision, time is divided into discrete slots whose length is

equal to the worst-case round-trip propagation time on the Ether. After the
first collision, each station waits either 0 or 1 slot times before trying again.
After the second collision, each one picks either 0, 1, 2, or 3 at random and
waits that number of slot times. If a third collision occurs (the probability of
the this happening is 0.25), then the next time the number of slots to wait is
chosen at random from the interval 0 to 23 -1.

In general, after i collision a random number between 0 and 2i -1and

that number of slots is skipped. After 10 collisions, have been reached, the
randomization interval is frozen at a maximum of 1023 slots. Further
recovery is up to higher layers.

This algorithm, called binary exponential backoff, was chosen to

dynamically adapt to the number of stations trying to send. If the
randomization interval for all collision was 1023, the chance of two
stations colliding for a second time would be negligible, but the average
waits after a collision introducing significant delay.

Ethernet Performance:

The performance of Ethernet under conditions of heavy and

constant load, that is, k stations always ready to transmit. A rigorous
analysis of the binary exponential backoff algorithm is complicated.

A = kp(1-p)k-1
A is maximized when p = 1/k, with A  1/e as k  ∞. The probability that
the contention interval has exactly j slots in it is A(1-A)j-1, so that mean
number of slots per contention is given by

Since each slot has a duration 2t, the mean contention interval, w, is 2t/A.
Assuming optimal p, the mean number of contention slots is never more
than e, so w is at most 2te = 5.4t
P
Channel Efficiency = P+ 2t / A

In terms of the frame length, F, the network bandwidth, B, the cable

length, L, and the speed of signal propagation, c, for the optimal case of e
contention slots per frame.
1
Channel Efficiency = 1+ 2 BLe/cF

When the second term in the denominator is large, network efficiency

will be low. More specifically, increasing network bandwidth or distance
(the BL product) reduces efficiency for a given frame size. The channel
efficiency is plotted versus number of ready stations for 2t = 51.2 µsec
and a data rate of 10 Mbps. Each frame ties up the channel for one
contention period and one frame transmission time, for a total of P + w sec.
The number of frames per second is therefore 1/ (P + w).
If each station generates frames as a mean rate of frames/sec. when the
system is in state k, the total input rate of all unblocked stations combined
is k frames/sec. Virtually all this work has assumed that traffic is Poisson.
The average number of frames in each minute of an hour has a much
variance as the average number of frames in each second of a minute.
Switched Ethernet:
The heart of this system is a switch containing a high-speed
backplane and room for typically 4 to 32 plug-in line cards, each containing
one to eight connectors. Most often, each connector has a 10Base-T twisted
pair connection to a single host computer.

A simple example of switched Ethernet.

When a station wants to transmit an Ethernet frame, it output a
standard frame to the switch. If not, the frame is sent over the high-speed
backplane to the destination station’s card. With this design each cards
forms its own collision domain, independent of the others. With the other
kind of plug-in card. With this design each card forms its own collision
domain independent of the others with the other kind of plug in card, each
input port is buffered. So incoming frames are stored in the card’s on
board RAM as they arrive. Something not possible with CSMA/CD on a
single channel since the switch just Experts Standards Ethernet frames on
each input part it is possible to use some of the parts as concentrators. As
frames arrive as the hub they contend for the other in the usual way.
Fast Ethernet:
At first 10 Mbps seemed like heaven, just as 1200-bps modems
seemed like heaven to the early users of 300-bps acoustic modems.But the
novelty wore off quickly. To pump up the speed, various industry groups
proposed two new ring-based optical LANs. One was called FDDI (Fiber
Distributed Data Interface) and the other was called Fiber Channel. The
failure of the optical LANs to catch fire left a gap for garden-variety
Ethernet at speeds above 10 Mbps. Many installations needed more
bandwidth. One proposal was to keep 802.3 exactly as it was but just make
it go faster. Another proposal was to redo it totally gives its lots of new
features such as real time traffic and digitized voice.
The 802.3 committee decided to go with a souped-up Ethernet for
three primary reasons:
1. The need to be backward compatible with existing Ethernet LANs.
2. The fear that a new protocol might have unforeseen problems.
3. The desire to get the job done before the technology changed.

The work was done quickly and the result 802.3u, was officially
approved by IEEE in June 1995.
Name Cable Max.segment Advantages
Uses category
100Base-T4 Twisted pair 100 m 3 UTP
 Full duplex at
100Base-TX Twisted pair 100 m 100 Mbps
(Cat 5 UTP)
Full duplex at
100Base-FX Twisted pair 2000 m 100Mbps; long
runs

The category 3 UTP scheme called 100Base-T4, uses a signaling speed

of 25 MHz, only 25 percent faster than standard Ethernet’s 20 MHz. Of the
four twisted pair one is always to be hub, one is always from the hub and
other two are switchable to the current transmission direction. For
category 5 wiring, the design 100Base-TX it simpler because the wires can
handle clock rates of 125 MHz. Often 100Base-TX and 100Base-T4 are
collectively referred to as 100Base-T.
The last option, 100Base-FX, uses two strands of multimode fiber, one
for each direction. It is full duplex with 100Mbps in each direction.
As a final note virtually all switches can handle a mix of 10-Mbps and
100 Mbps stations, to make upgrading easier.
Gigabit Ethernet:
The ink was barely dry on the fast Ethernet standard when the 802
committee began working on a yet faster Ethernet. It was quickly dubbed
gigabit Ethernet.
The 802.3z committee’s goals were essentially the same as the 802.3u
committee’s goals. In particular, gigabit Ethernet had to offer
unacknowledged datagram service with both unicast and multicast. All
configuration of gigabit Ethernet are point-to-point rather than multidrop
as in the original to Mbps standard, now honored as classic Ethernet.
Gigabit Ethernet supports two different modes of operations: full-duplex
mode and half-duplex mode. The “normal” mode is full-duplex mode,
which allows traffic in both directions at the same time. The sender does
not have to scene the contention is impossible.
The other mode of operation, half-duplex, is used when the
computers are connected to a hub rather than a switch. The first feature,
called carrier extension, essentially tells the hardware to add its padding
after the normal frame to extend the frame to 512 bytes. The second feature
called frame bursting, allows to transmit a concatenated sequence of
multiple frames in a single transmission.
Gigabit Ethernet supports both copper and fiber cabling as listed.
Signaling at or nearly 1 Gbps over fiber means that the light source has
to be turned on and off in under 1 nsec. LEDs simply cannot operate this
fast. So lasers are required.
Name Cable Max.segment Advantages
Multimode fiber
1000Base-SX Fiber optics 550 m (50, 62.5
microns)
Single (10 µ) or
1000Base-LX Fiber optics 5000 m multimode
(50,62.5 µ)
Shielded twisted
1000Base-CX 2 Pairs of STP 25 m Pair
Standard
1000Base-T 4 Pairs of UTP 100 m category
5 UTP

Gigabit Ethernet uses new encoding rules on the fibers:

1. No codeword may have more than four identical bits in a row.
2. No codeword may have more than six 0s and six 1s.

IEEE 802.2: Logical Link Control:

IEEE has defined one that can run on top of the Ethernet and other
802 protocols. In addition, this protocol, called LLC(Logical Link Protocol)
hides the differences between the various kind of 802 network providing a
single format and interface to the network layer.
 For the Internet, best-efforts attempts to deliver IP packets are
sufficient, so no acknowledgements at the LLC level are required.
 WIRELESS LANS
Wireless LANs are increasingly popular, and more office buildings,
airports, and other public places are being outfitted with them. Wireless
LANs can operate in one of two configurations with a base station and
without a base station.
The 802.11 Protocol Stack:
The protocols used by all the 802 variants including Ethernet have a
certain commonality of structure. The physical layer corresponds to the
OSI physical layer fairly well but the data link layer in all the 802 protocols
is split into two or more sublayers. There are two sublayer in protocol stack
the MAC (Medium Access Control) sublayer determines how the channel
is allocated, who get to transmit next. Above it is the LLC (Logical Link
Control) sublayer, whose job is to hide the difference between 802 variants.

Part of the 802.11 protocol stack.

The other two use short range radio using techniques called FHSS
and DSSS. Both of these use a part of the spectrum that does not require
licensing. Cordless telephones and microwave ovens also use this band. In
1999 the two new techniques were introduced to achieve highest
bandwidth. These are called OFDM and HR-DSSS. They operate at up to 54
Mbps and 11 Mbps respectively.

The 802.11 Physical Layer:

Each of the five transmitted techniques makes it possible to send a
MAC frame from one station to another. They differ in the technology used
and speed achievable. The infrared option uses difficult transmission at
0.85 or 0.95 microns. Two speeds are permitted: 1 Mbps and 2Mbps. The
encoding scheme is used in which a group of 4 bits is encoded as 16-bit
codeword containing fifteen 0s and a single 1 , using what is called Gray
code.
FHSS(Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum) uses 79 channels, each 1-
MHz wide starting at the low end of the 2.4-GHz ISM band. The amount of
time spent at each frequency the dwell time is an adjustable parameter.
The third modulation method, DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread
Spectrum) is restricted to 1 or 2 Mbps. The first of the high speed wireless
LANs, 802.11a uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing)
to deliver up to 54 Mbps in the wider 5 GHz ISM band. The term FDM
suggests different frequencies are used-52 of them 48 for data and 4 for
synchronization-not unlike ADSL. Next we come across to HR-DSSS (High
Rate Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum) another spread spectrum technique
which uses 11 million chips/sec to achieve 11 Mbps in the 2-4 GHz band. It
is called 802.11b. the two faster rates run at 1,375 Mband, with 4 and 8 bits
per band, respectively, using Walsh/Hadamard codes.
The 802.11 MAC Sublayer Protocol:
The 802.11 MAC sublayer protocol is quite different from that of
Ethernet due to the inherent complexity of the wireless environment
compared to that of a wired system. In addition most radios are half-
duplex, meaning that they cannot transmit and listen for noise bursts at the
same time on a single frequency. 802.11 support two modes of operation.
The first called DCF (Distributed Coordination Function). The other called
PCF (Point Coordination Function).
 When DCF is employed, 802.11 uses a protocol called
CSMA/CA(CSMA with Collision Avoidance).
The other mode of CSMA/CA operation is based on MACAW and
uses Virtual Channel Sensing.

The use of virtual channel sensing using CSMA/CA.

From the information provided in the RTS request it can estimate how long
the sequence will take including the final ACK. So it asserts a kind of
virtual channel busy for itself, indicated by NAV (Network Allocation
Vector). If a frame is too long, it has very little chance of getting through
undamaged and will probably have to be retransmitted. Once the channel
has been acquired using RTS and CTS, multiple fragments can be sent in a
row. Sequence of fragment is called a Fragment Burst. The basic
mechanism is for the base station to broad cast a beacon frame periodically.

Interframe spacing in 802.11

 The shortest interval is SIFS (Short Inter Frame Spacing). It is used to
allow the parties in a single dialog the chance to go first.
It is fails to make use of its chance and a time PIFS (PCF Inter Frame
Spacing) elapses, the base station may send a beacon frame or poll frame.
A time DIFS (DCF Inter Frame Spacing) is used only by a station may
attempt to acquire the channel to send a frame.
The last time interval EIFS (Extended Inter Frame Spacing) is used
only by a station that has just received a bad or unknown frame to report
the frame.
The 802.11 Frame Structure:
The 802.11 standard defines three different classes of frames on the
wire; data, control and management. Each of these has a header with a
variety of fields used within the MAC sublayer.
The first comes the frame control field. It itself has 11 subfields. The
first of these is the protocol version. Then come the type and subtype
fields. The To DS and From DS bits indicate the frame. The Power
Management bit is used by the base station to put the receiver. The W bit
specifies that the frame body has been encrypted using WEP (Wired
Equivalent Privacy) algorithm.

The 802.11 data frame.

 The second field of the data frame, the Duration field, tells how long
the frame and its acknowledgement will occupy the channel. The other two
addresses are used for the source and destination base station.The
sequence field allows fragments to be numbered. The data field contains
the payload up to 2312 bytes follow by the usual check-sum.Control frames
are shorter still having only one or two addresses no data field and no
sequence field.
Services:
There are five distribution services are provided by the base station.
1. Association: This service is used by mobile stations to connect
themselves to the base stations. The base station may accept or reject
the mobile station.
2. Disassociation: Either the station or the base station may
disassociate thus breaking the relationship.
3. Reassociation: A station may changes its preferred base station
using this service. This facility is useful for mobile stations moving
from one to another.
4. Distribution: This service determines how to route frames sent to
the base station. If the destination is local to the base station, the
frames can sent out directly over the air.
5. Integration: If a frame needs to be sent through a non-802.11
network with a different addressing scheme or frame formats, this
service required by the destination network.
The remaining services are Authentication, Deauthentication,
Privacy, Data delivery.
 BROADBAND WIRELESS
Comparison Of 802.11 With 802.16:
The environments in which 802.11and 802.16 operate are similar in
some ways, primarily in that they were designed to provide high band
width wireless communications. Much of 802.11 deals with mobility.
Because 802.16 runs over part of city the distance involved can be several
kilometers, which means that the perceived power at the base station can
vary widely from station to station. More spectrum is needed than the ISM
bands can provide forcing 802.16 to operate in the much higher 10 to 60
GHz frequency range.
Another issue is quality of service while 802.11 provides some
support for real time traffic it was not really designed for telephony and
heavy duty multimedia usage.
In shot 802.11 was designed to the mobile Ethernet. Whereas 802.16
was designed to be wireless, but stationery cable television. There
differences are so big that the resulting standards are very different as they
try to optimize different things.
The 802.16 Protocol stack:
The general structure is similar to that of the other 802 network but with
more sub layers. The bottom sublayer deals with transmission. Traditional
narrow-band radio is used with conventional Modulation schemes.

The 802.16 protocol stack.

 The data link layer consists of three sublayers. The bottom one deals
with privacy and security when is far more crucial for public outdoor
networks than for private indoor networks.
The service specific convergence sublayer takes the place of the
logical link sublayer in the other 802 protocols. A complication here is that
802.16 were designed to integrate seamlessly with both datagram protocols
and ATM. The problem is that packet protocols are connectionless and
ATM is connection oriented. This means that every ATM connection has
to map on to an 802.16 connection, in principle a straight ward Matters.
The 802.16 Physical layer:
Broadband wireless needs a lot of spectrum and the only place to find
it is in the 10 to 66 GHz range. There millimeter waves have an interesting
property that longer Microwaves do not thy frames in straight lines unlike
found but similar to lights.
Signal strength in the millimeter band falls off sharply with distance
from the base station, the signal – to – Noise ratio also drops with distance
from the base station.
For Medium distance subscribers QAM – 16 is used with 4 bits/band
for distance subscribers QPSK is used with 2 bits/band. Give the goal of
producing a broadband system and subject to the above physical
constraints the 802.16 designers worked hard to used the available
spectrum efficiently. Two schemes are used, FDD Frequency Division
Duplexing) and TDD (Time Division Duplexing)

Frames and time slots for time division duplexing.

Downstream traffic is mapped on to time slots by the base station.
The base station is completely in control for this direction.
The 802.16 Frame Structure:
 All MAC frames begin with a generic header. The header is followed
by an optional payload and an optional checksum (CRC). The payload is
not needed in control frames for example, these requesting channel slots.
The checksum is optional due to the Error Correction in the physical layer
and the fact that no attempt is ever made to retransmit real time frames.

(a) A generic frame. (b) A bandwidth request frame.

The EC bits tells whether the payload is encrypted. The Type find
identifies the frame type, mostly telling whether packing and
fragmentation are present. The length find gives the complete length of
the frame including the header. Finally the header CRC find is a check
sum over the header only using the polynomial x8 + x2 + x + 1.
A second header type, for frames that request bandwidth. It starts
with a 1 bit instead of a 0 bit and is similar to the generic header except
that the second & third bytes form a 16 bit number how much
bandwidth is needed to carry the Specified Number of bytes.
 BLUETOOTH
In 1994 the L.M.Ericsson Company became interested in connecting
its Mobile phones to other devices (e.g.PDA.) without cables. Together
with four other companies (IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba), it formed a
SIG (Special Interest Group, i.e., consortium) to develop a wireless
standard for interconnecting computing and communication devices
and accessories using short-range, low-power, inexpensive wireless
radios. The project was named Bluetooth, after Harald Blaatand
(Bluetooth) II (940-981), a Viking king who unified (i.e., conquered)
Denmark and Norway, also without cables.
Even though IEEE approved the first PAN standard, 802.15.1, in 2002,
the Bluetooth SIG is still active busy with improvements. Although the
Bluetooth SIG and versions are not identical, it is hoped that they will
soon converge to a single standard.
Bluetooth Architecture:
The basic unit of a Bluetooth system is a piconet which consists of a
master node and up to seven active slave nodes within a distance of 10
meters. An interconnected collection of piconets is called a scatternet.

Two piconets can be connected to form a scatternet.

 In addition to the seven active slave in a piconet, there can be up to
255 parked nodes in the net. These are devices that the master has switched
to a low-power state to reduce the drain on their batteries. There are also
two intermediate power states, hold and sniff.

Bluetooth Applications:

Most network protocols just provide channels between communicating

entities and let applications designers. In contrast, the Bluetooth V1.1
specification names 13 specific applications to be supported and provides
different protocol stacks for each one. The 13 applications, which are called
profiles, are listed.

The Bluetooth profiles.

The Bluetooth Protocol Stack:

The Bluetooth standard has many protocols grouped loosely into

layers. The layer structure does not follow the OSI model, the TCP/IP
model the 802 model, or any other known model.
The bottom layer is the physical radio layer, which corresponds fairly well
to the physical layer in the OSI and 802 models. It deals with radio
transmission and modulation.

The baseband layer is somewhat analogous to the MAC sublayer but

also include elements of the physical layer.

The 802.15 version of the Bluetooth protocol architecture

The link manager handles the establishment of logical channels between

devices, including power management, authentication, and quality of
service. The logical link control adaptation protocol shields the upper
layers from the details of transmission. The next layer up is the middleware
layer, which contains a mix of different protocols. RFcomm (Radio
Frequency communication) is the protocol that emulates the standard serial
port found on PCs for connecting the keyboard, mouse, and modem,
among other devices. The top layer is where the applications and profiles
are located.

The Bluetooth Baseband Layer:

The baseband layer is the closest thing Bluetooth has to a sublayer. It

turns the raw bit stream into frames and defines a some key formats.
Frames can be 1, 3, or 5 slots long. The frequency hopping timing allows a
setting time of 250-260 µsec per hop to allow the radio circuits to become
stable. For a single-slot frame, after settling, 366 of the 625 bits are left over.
When five slots are strung together only one settling period is needed.
5 * 625 = 3125bits in five time slots.

Each frame is transmitted over a logical channel, called a link,

between the master and a slave. Two kinds of links exist. The first is the
ACL (Asynchronous Connection-Less) link, which is used for packet-
switched data available at irregular intervals. The other is the SCO
(Synchronous Connection Oriented) link, for real-time data, such as
telephone connections. A slave may have up to three SCO links with its
master. Each SCO link can transmit one 64,000 bps PCM audio channel.

The Bluetooth Frame Structure:

There are several frame formats, the most important of which is

shown. It begins with an access code that usually identifies the master so
that slaves within radio range of two masters can tell which traffic is for
them. Next comes a 54-bit header containing typical MAC sublayer fields.
Then comes the data field, of up to 2744 bits.

A typical Bluetooth data frame.

The address field identifies which of the eight active devices the
frame is intended for. The Type field identifies the frame type (ACL, SCO,
poll, or null). The Flow bit is asserted by a slave when its buffer is full and
cannot receive any more data. The Acknowledgement but is used to
piggyback an ACK onto a frame. Various formats are used for the data
field for ACL frames. Three variants are defined, permitting 80, 160, or 240
bits of actual payload.