Geographical Area:

Wide Area Network (WAN)

 Large geographical area (usually over 100 km)

Towns, cities, states and countries
 Consists of a number of interconnected switching
nodes

Transmission from any device is routed through these
internal nodes to the specified destination device.

Purpose of nodes is to provide switching facility that
will move the data from node to node until they reach
their destination.

Part1 - Introduction 19
 Geographical Area:
Wide Area Network (WAN)
 Public carrier facilities are used

Leasing communication circuits from telephone
companies or other communication carriers
 Examples of WANs include ISDN, frame
relay, Switched Multimegabit Data Service
(SMDS), and Asynchronous Transfer Mode
(ATM) networks.

Part1 - Introduction 20
Geographical Area:
Wide Area Network (WAN)
Local Area Network Local Area Network

Oxford University

Edgewood

Metropolitan
Area Network

W ide
Area Network

DC-LANs Metropolitan
Area Network
Metropolitan
Area Network

Local Area Network

Shepston-LANs UCT Student LAN

Local Area Network

Part1 - Introduction 21
 Simplified Network Model
Wide Area Network
Switching Node

Trans-
Trans- Trans- Desti-
Source mission
mitter mitter nation
system

Source System Destination System

Local Area Network

 Point-to-Point Network
 Consists of nodes that can only
communicate with adjacent nodes
 Communication with non-adjacent node,
indirectly via other adjacent nodes

A B C

Part1 - Introduction 23
 Broadcast Networks
 consists of nodes that share a single
communication channel
 data sent by one node is received by all
other nodes connected to the shared
communication channel
 only the destination host respond - all other
nodes discard the message

Part1 - Introduction 24
 Topologies: Star
 Star

involves a wiring center (or hub) to which all
hubs and nodes are connected and all data
must pass

Star

Part1 - Introduction 25
 Topologies: Loop

 Loop

modified star configuration

nodes are connected Loop
directly

every node has a link to
every other node 
complete loop (fully
meshed)

Part1 - Introduction 26
 Topologies: Tree

 Tree

consists of nodes
interconnected in
a hierarchical
configuration
Tree

Part1 - Introduction 27
 Topologies: Bus

 Bus

nodes are connected to the same channel

Bus

Part1 - Introduction 28
 Topologies: Ring

 Ring

can be configured as a logical ring over a physical
star, or as a logical ring over a physical ring

although data are passed from node to node,
rings are not point-to-point topology, because
nodes share the same communication channel

Part1 - Introduction 29
Topologies: Ring

Ring

logical ring logical ring

over a physical star over a physical ring

Part1 - Introduction 30
 Topologies: Satellite

 Satellite

nodes use an antenna to send and receive data

point-to-point from land based antenna to
satellite

broadcast from the satellite to one or more
ground stations

Part1 - Introduction 31
 Topologies: Satellite

Satellite

Home

Home
TV Company

University Business
Part1 - Introduction 32
 Switched Networks
 Classification

by the type of communication path they use

the manner in which data are transmitted
across this path
 Two particular classification

circuit-switched networks

packet-switched networks

Datagram packet switching

Virtual-circuit packet switching

Part1 - Introduction 33
 1
Switched Networks:
Circuit Switching



dedicated path is
obtained and established
between source and 
destination node for the
duration of the
conversation.

set up end-to-end path 
before sending data

e.g. telephone network

Part1 - Introduction 34
 2
Switched Networks:
Circuit Switching
FDM:

Network resources (e.g. 4 KHz
bandwidth) divided into
“pieces” link
4 KHz

pieces allocated to calls

resource piece idle if TDM:
not used by owning call
(no sharing) 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

dividing link bandwidth Slot Frame
into “pieces”

frequency division All slots labeled 2 are dedicated

time division to a specific sender-receiver pair.

Part1 - Introduction 35