Lecture 1

Introduction

Computer Networks

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 What is a Computer Network
◆A set of communication elements connected by
communication links
router
workstation
➭ Communication elements server
● Computers, printers, mobile phones, … mobile
● Routers, switches, ... local ISP
➭ Communication links
● optic fiber
● coaxial cable regional ISP
● twisted pair
● wireless (radio, microwave, satellite)

➭ Topologies
● Ring, Star, Bus, Tree, Mesh
company
ISP: Internet Service Provider
3 network
Introduction
⚫ Computer Network
– an interconnected collection of autonomous computers
Internet: “network of networks”
– loosely hierarchical
– public Internet versus private intranet
WWW a distributed system run on the top of Internet
⚫ Distributed System
– The components interact with one another in order to
achieve a common goal.

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1.1 Uses of Computer Networks
•Business Applications
•Home Applications
•Mobile Users
•Social Issues

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Business Applications of Networks
• A network with two clients and one server.
a. Resource sharing (hardware, software, information, …)
b. Providing communication medium (e-mail, video conferencing)

c. Doing business electronically (B2B, B2C, e-commerce)

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 Goals of Networks for Companies
⚫ Resource sharing: equipment, programs, data
⚫ high reliability
– replicated data
– hardware
⚫ Saving money
– mainframe: 10 times faster, but 1000 times more expensive than PC
– client-server model
⚫ Scalability
– mainframe: replace a larger one
– client-server model: add more servers
⚫ Communication medium for separated employees
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 Business Applications of Networks (2)
a. Two processes are involved

b. A communication network is needed

• The client-server model involves requests and replies.

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Home Network Applications
•Access to remote information
•Person-to-person communication
•Interactive Entertainment
•Electronic commerce

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⚫ Networks for People
– Access to remote information
• e.g.: financial, shopping, customized newspapers, online
digital library, WWW
– Person-to-person communication
• email, video conference, newsgroup
– Interactive Entertainment
• VOD(Video on demand), interactive movies or TVs, game
playing

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Home Network Applications (2)
• In peer-to-peer system there are no fixed clients and servers.

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Home Network Applications
• Some forms of e-commerce models.

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Network Hardware
•Local Area Networks
•Metropolitan Area Networks
•Wide Area Networks
•Wireless Networks
•Home Networks
•Internetworks

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 Network Hardware
• Types of transmission technology
•Broadcast links
•Point-to-point links

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 Network Hardware
– Broadcast networks
• single communication channel shared by all machines
• broadcasting or multicasting (via packets)
– broadcasting: a special code in the address field
– multicasting: reserve one bit to indicate multicasting, the remaining n-1address bits can hold a
group number. Each machine can subscribe to any groups
• used by localized networks (or satellites)
– point-to-point networks
• many hops
• routing algorithms: multiple routes are possible
• used by large networks

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Classification of interconnected processors by
scale

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 Local Area Networks (LANs)
· Characteristics of LANs:
(a) Privately owned, (b) small size,
(c) transmission technology, (d) topology

· Ethernets are most popular (up to 10 Gb/s)

• Two broadcast networks

• (a) Bus
• (b) Ring 17
 Local Area Networks
⚫ Characteristics
• small size
• transmission technology
• single cable
• 10Mbps ~ 10Gb/s
• 10Gb/s : 10,000,000.000 bps
• topology:
• bus
• Ethernet (IEEE 802.3): 10 or 100 Mbps (10Gb/s)
• ring
• IBM token ring (IEEE 802.5): 4 or 16 Mbps

⚫ Channel allocation of broadcast networks

• static: each machine has an allocated time slot
• dynamic

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Metropolitan Area Networks

A metropolitan area network based on cableTV.

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 IEEE 802.6 DQDB (Distributed Queue Dual Bus) is designed
for MANs

It can cover an entire city, up to 160 km at a rate of 44.736 Mbps

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Wide Area Networks (WANs)
WANs are point-to-point networks
WANs consist of two distinct components: transmission lines (copper, fiber, microwave)
and switches (electronics, optics)
Store-and-forward or packet-switched subnet

Relation between hosts on LANs and the subnet. 4

Network Topology

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 Subnet (WANs)

Subnet (WANs) is consists of two components:

– transmission lines (circuits, channels, trunks)
• move bits between machines
– switching elements
• connect transmission lines
• Router: also called packet switching nodes, intermediate systems, and data
switching exchanges
• Operate in store-and-forward, or packet-switched mode.

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 Wide Area Networks

⚫ Routing decisions are made locally·

⚫ How A makes that decision is called the routing algorithm.

A stream of packets from sender to receiver. (virtual- circuit)

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 Wireless Networks
Categories of wireless networks:
• System interconnection
(short-range radio, e.g. Bluetooth)
• Wireless LANs
(802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g)
• Wireless WANs
(802.16, Cellular telephones, Satellites)
• Wireless sensor networks

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Wireless Networks

(a) Bluetooth configuration

(b) Wireless LAN 9
 Home Network Categories

⚫ Computers (desktop PC, PDA, shared peripherals)

⚫ Entertainment (TV, DVD, VCR, camera, stereo, MP3)
⚫ Telecomm (telephone, cell phone, intercom, fax)
⚫ Appliances (microwave, fridge, clock, furnace, airco., light)
⚫ Telemetry (utility meter, smoke/burglar alarm, babycam).

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⚫ Fundamentally different properties
1. Devices have to be easy to install
2. The network and devices have to be foolproof in operation
3. Low price is essential
4. The network needs sufficient capacity ( for multimedia applications)
5. The network interface and wiring have to be stable for
many years
6. Security and reliability will be very important (minimize false
alarms or misalarm)
⚫ Home networks may be wired or wireless

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 Internetworks
• Internetworks connect networks with different hardware and software
• A collection of interconnected networks is called an
internetwork or internet
• Gateways are used to make the connection and to provide the
necessary translation (protocol conversion)

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 Network Software
• Protocol Hierarchies (Layer structure)
• Design Issues for the Layers
• Connection-Oriented and Connectionless Services
• Service Primitives
• The Relationship of Services to Protocols

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 Network
Software
Protocol Hierarchies
– a series of layers (levels)
– lower layer provides service to higher layers
– protocol:
• an agreement between the communication parties on how communication is to proceed
– Peers:
• the corresponding active layers on different machines.
– Network architecture: a set of layers and protocols
– Protocol stack:
• a list of protocols used by a certain system, one protocol per
layer

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 Network Software
Virtual
Protocol Hierarchies Communication

→ Peer

Physical
Communication

Layers, protocols, and interfaces.

Network Architecture: A set of layers and protocols 15
Protocol Stack: A list of protocols used by a certain system, one protocol perlayer.
 Network Software
◆ Layering
➭To make things simple: modularization
➭ Different layer has different functions
➭ Create layer boundary such that
● description of services can be small
● number of interactions across boundary are minimized
● potential for interface standardized
➭ Different level of abstraction in the handling of data (e.g., syntax, semantics)
➭ Provide appropriate services to upper layer
➭ Use service primitives of lower layer

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Protocol Hierarchies

The philosopher-translator-secretary architecture.

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 Protocol Hierarchies
Message segmentation Encapsulation

Example information flow supporting virtual communication in layer 5.

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Design Issues for the Layers
• Addressing (telephone number, e-mail address, IP
address,…)
• Error Control (error correction codes, ARQ, HARQ,…)
• Flow Control (feedback-based, rate-based)
• Multiplexing (gathering several small messages with the
same destination into a single large message or vice
versa → Demultiplexing)
• Routing (directing traffic to the destination)

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 Design Issues for Layers
⚫ Identify senders and receivers
– multiple computers and processes: addressing
⚫ Data transfer
– simplex, half-duplex, full-duplex communication
– # of logical channels per connections, priorities
⚫ Error control
– error detection
– error correction
⚫ Sequencing of pieces

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 Design Issues for Layers
⚫ Flow control
– feedback from the receiver
– agreed upon transmission rate
⚫ Length of messages
– long messages: disassemble, transmit, and reassemble
messages
– short messages: gather several small messages
⚫ Multiplexing and Demultiplexing
– when expensive to set up a separate connection
– needed in physical layer
⚫ Routing: split over two or more layers
– High level: London -> France or Germany -> Rome
– Low level: many available
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 Connection-Oriented and Connectionless
Services

• Six different types of service.

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Service Primitives (Operations)
A service is formally defined by a set of primitives (operations)
available to a user process to access the services.

• Five service primitives for implementing a simple

connection-oriented service.
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 Service Primitives
If the protocol stack is located in the operating system, the primitives are normally system calls.

• Packets sent in a simple client-server interaction

on a connection-oriented
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network.
 Services to Protocols Relationship
·The service defines what operations the layer is prepared to perform on behalf of its users
·A service is a set of primitives that a layer provides to the layer above it.
·A protocol is a set of rules governing the format and meaning of the packets which are
exchanged by the peer entities in the same layer.
Services related to the interfaces between layers;
 Protocols related to the packets sent between peer entities on different machine.
Service Users

Service Providers

• The relationship between a service

42 and a protocol.
Reference Models
•The OSI Reference Model
•The TCP/IP Reference Model
•A Comparison of OSI and TCP/IP
•A Critique of the OSI Model and Protocols
•A Critique of the TCP/IP Reference Model

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The design principle of the OSI reference model
•A layer should be created where a different
abstraction is needed
•Each layer should perform a well defined function
•The function of each layer can be chosen as an
international standard
•The layer boundaries should be chosen to minimize
the information flow across the interfaces
•The number of layers should be not too large or not
too small

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Reference Models

The OSI
reference
model.

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 The functions of the seven layers
• The physical layer is concerned with transmitting raw bits over a
communication channel
• The data link layer performs flow control and also transforms a raw
transmission facility into a line that appears error free (ARQ)
• The network layer controls the operation of the subnet, e.g. routing, flow
control, internetworking,…
• The transport layer performs assembling and disassembling, isolates the
upper layers from the changes in the network hardware, and determines the
type of services
• The session layer establishes sessions (dialog control, …)
• The presentation layer is concerned with the syntax and semantics
• The application layer contains a variety of commonly used protocols (e.g.
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol for WWW, file transfer, e-mail, network news,…)
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The TCP/IP reference model.

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Reference Models
• Protocols and networks in the TCP/IP model initially.

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Firewalls
• Firewall A machine and its software that serve as a special
gateway to a network, protecting it from inappropriate access
• Filters the network traffic that comes in, checking the validity
of the messages as much as possible and perhaps denying
some messages altogether
• A firewall establishes a barrier between secured internal networks
and outside untrusted network, such as the Internet.
Firewalls

Figure A firewall protecting a LAN

Network Addresses
• Network software translates a hostname into its corresponding IP
address
• For example
205.39.145.18

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Network Addresses

Figure
An IP address is stored in four bytes

• An IP address can be split into

• network address, which specifies a specific
network
• host number, which specifies a particular machine in that network
Domain Name System
• A hostname consists of the computer name followed by the domain
name
• csc.villanova.edu is the domain name
• A domain name is separated into two or more sections that specify
the organization, and possibly a subset of an organization, of which
the computer is a part
• Two organizations can have a computer named the same thing
because the domain name makes it clear which one is being
referred to
Domain Name System
• The very last section of the domain is called its top-
level domain (TLD) name

Figure Top-level domains, including some relatively new ones

Domain Name System

Figure
Some of the top-level domain
names based on country codes

• Organizations based in countries other than the United States use a

top-level domain that corresponds to their two-letter country codes