ECEN4533 Exam #1 3 March 2010 Name_______________________________

1) LAN speeds and WAN speeds don't always match up very well. For example, if a 100 Mbps
Ethernet LAN link is to be mapped onto and carried over a WAN by a SONET OC-N leased line,
an OC-3 with a bit rate of 3 x 51.84 Mbps = 155.52 Mbps is required, resulting in almost 33% of
the OC-3 bandwidth being wasted. (Note: An OC-2 at 103.7 Mbps isn't large enough as SONET
overhead and the mapping protocol require too many bits!) Suppose maximum sized Ethernet
packets are carried back-to-back at a 100% Ethernet load over an OC-3 connection.
[25] Compute the percentage of the SONET bits that would actually be carrying end user
application traffic. [Answer: 61.52%. From the point of view of the application traffic that needs
to be carried, almost 40% of the SONET bandwidth is wasted.]

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2) A packet switch has, as input, packets with a mean size of 240 bytes and an average time
between arrivals, E[IAT], of 69 microseconds. The packet size and inter-arrival time distributions
are both known to be exponentially distributed.
2a) [15] Compute the trunk size required such that there are 3 packets in the switch, on average.
[37.11 Mbps]
2b) [10] Given this trunk size, compute the probability there are less than 3 packets in the switch.
[0.5781]

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3) A video on demand network is shown to the

right. This system has a 10 Mbps Ethernet
connection between the TV Set-top Box and
ACME store-and-forward switch, and a 100
Mbps Ethernet system between the switch and
video head end. When a user selects a program,
a small packet with the user's choice is generated
by the set top box and forwarded to the head
end. After the head processes this packet, it
commences downloading the video program to
the end user. Assume the following.
(1) No other traffic is on the download
links.
(2) The head end blasts traffic out at 100 Mbps.
(3) 1000 B packets are used, each of which can carry 940 B of video traffic.
(4) Packets cannot be injected onto a line back-to-back. There must be a 9.6 microsecond
gap between packets on each line.
(5) Propagation delays are negligible.
3a) [15] Compute the time it will take to download a 4.05 GB file (enough for a 90 minute

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movie). [58.14 minutes]
3b) [10] Estimate the amount of buffer space the ACME switch will require to avoid dropping
any packets. [3.83 GB]

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4) A packet switch contains two input links and one 6.8 Mbps output link. A 9.3 Mbps input is
active 46% of the time, while a 1.5 Mbps input link is active 65% of the time. The input links are
statistically independent.
4a) [15] The instantaneous input to the switch clearly varies between 0 Mbps and 10.8 Mbps.
Define a random variable X to be the instantaneous input in bps. Sketch the probability density
function fX(x). [You should sketch a PDF with delta functions a 0, 1.5, 9.3, and 10.8 Mbps.
These delta functions should have weights of 0.189, 0.351, 0.161, and 0.299 respectively.]
4b) [5] Compute the average E[X]. [5.233 Mbps]
4c) [5] Compute the standard deviation óX. [4.690 Mbps]

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