CHAPTER—3

LOCAL AREA NETWORK(LAN)

Contents
 Introduction
LAN Components
• REPEATERS
• HUBS
• BRIDGE
• SWITCHES
• ROUTERS
LAN Technologies
 INTRODUCTION
• LANs do not normally operate in isolation. They are
connected to one another or to the Internet.
• To connect LANs, or segments of LANs, we use
connecting devices.
• Connecting devices can operate in different layers of the
Internet model.
 REPEATERS
• A repeater receives a signal, regenerates it, and passes it on.
• It can regenerate signals at the bit level to allow them to travel a
longer distance on the media.
• It operates at Physical Layer of OSI
• No more than four repeaters can be used between hosts on a
LAN.
– This rule is used to limit latency added to frame travel by
each repeater.
• A repeater does not actually connect two LANs; it connects two
segments of the same LAN.
– A repeater is not a device that can connect two LANs of
different protocols.
• A repeater is used to lengthen Ethernet network distance
limitation by creating network segments
• A repeater forwards every frame; it has no filtering capability.
 REPEATERS
• Repeaters and OSI model
Function of Repeater
 HUB
• Hubs are used to connect multiple nodes to a single physical
device, which connects to the network.
• Hubs are actually multiport repeaters.
• Using a hub changes the network topology from a linear bus,
to a star.
• With hubs, data arriving over the cables to a hub port is
electrically repeated on all the other ports connected to the
same network segment.
HUB
 TYPES OF HUB
1. Passive hubs: do not amplify the electrical signal of
incoming packets before broadcasting them out to the
network. It is just a connector. It connects the wires coming
from different branches.
2. Active hubs: a type of hub that can perform amplification,
as does a repeater. Some people use the terms concentrator
when referring to a passive hub and multiport repeater
when referring to an active hub.
3. Intelligent hubs: Add extra features to an active hub that
are of particular importance to businesses.
 HUB
• Some hubs have an additional interface port that
connects to another hub, thus increasing the size of
the network.
• Hubs operate at the physical layer of the OSI model.
• Hubs propagate signals through the network
• They cannot filter network traffic
• They cannot determine best path
 BRIDGE
• Bridges are used to logically separate network segments within the
same network.
• They operate at the OSI physical and data link layer and are
independent of higher-layer protocols.
• As a PHYSICAL layer device , it regenerates the signal it receives
• As a data link layer device, the bridge can check the physical (MAC)
addresses (source and destination) contained in the frame.
• The function of the bridge is to make intelligent decisions about
whether or not to pass signals on to the next segment of a network.
• When a bridge receives a frame on the network, the destination
MAC address is looked up in the bridge table to determine whether
to filter, flood, or copy the frame onto another segment
• Broadcast Packets are forwarded to all directions
• A bridge has a table that maps address to ports.
 BRIDGE
• Filtering: A bridge has filtering capability. It can check the
destination address of a frame and decide if the frame should
be forwarded or dropped. If the frame is to be forwarded, the
decision must specify the port. A bridge has a table that maps
addresses to ports.
 BRIDGE
• In the previous figure, if a frame destined for station
712B13456142 arrives at port 1, the bridge consults its table to
find the departing port. According to its table, frames for
712B13456142 leave through port 1; therefore, there is no
need for forwarding, and the frame is dropped.
• On the other hand, if a frame for 712B13456141 arrives at port
2, the departing port is port 1 and the frame is forwarded.
• In the first case, LAN 2 remains free of traffic; in the second
case, both LANs have traffic.
 How Bridge Works
• Bridges work at the Media Access Control Sub-layer of
the OSI model.
• Routing table is built to record the segment no. of
address.
• If destination address is in the same segment as the
source address, stop transmit.
• Otherwise, forward to the other segment.
Function of Bridge
Cont..
Routing Tables
• Contains one entry per station of network to which bridge is
connected.
• Is used to determine the network of destination station of a
received packet.
Filtering
• Is used by bridge to allow only those packets destined to the
remote network.
• Packets are filtered with respect to their destination and
multicast
addresses
Forwarding
• The process of passing a packet from one network to another.
Learning Algorithm
• The process by which the bridge learns how to reach stations on
the internetwork
 MAC Address Learning
• Bridges MAC table can be static or dynamic.
• To make a table dynamic, we need a bridge that gradually
learns from the frame movements. To do this, the bridge
inspects both the destination and the source addresses. The
destination address is used for the forwarding decision (table
lookup); the source address is used for adding entries to the
table and for updating purposes.
Learning Process-Example
 Learning Process-Example
1. When station A sends a frame to station D, the bridge does not
have an entry for either D or A. The frame goes out from all three
ports; the frame floods the network. However, by looking at the
source address, the bridge learns that station A must be located on
the LAN connected to port 1. This means that frames destined for
A, in the future, must be sent out through port 1. The bridge adds
this entry to its table. The table has its first entry now.
2. When station E sends a frame to station A, the bridge has an entry
for A, so it forwards the frame only to port 1. There is no flooding.
In addition, it uses the source address of the frame, E, to add a
second entry to the table.
3. When station B sends a frame to C, the bridge has no entry for C,
so once again it floods the network and adds one more entry to the
table.
4. The process of learning continues as the bridge forwards frames.
Loop problem
 Loop Problem
• Forwarding and learning processes work without any problem as
long as
there is no redundant bridge in the system. On the other hand,
redundancy is desirable from the viewpoint of reliability, so that the
function of a failed bridge is taken over by a redundant bridge. The
existence of redundant bridges creates the so-called loop problem
• Step 1. Station-A sends a frame to Station-B. Both the bridges
forward the frame to LAN Y and update the table with the source
address of A.
• Step 2. Now there are two copies of the frame on LAN-Y. The copy
sent by Bridge-a is received by Bridge-b and vice versa. As both the
bridges have no information about Station B, both will forward the
frames to LAN-X.
• Step 3. Again both the bridges will forward the frames to LAN-Y
because of the lack of information of the Station B in their database
and again Step-2 will be repeated, and so on.
Advantage & Disadvantage of Bridges

 Advantages of using Bridges

• Extend physical network
• Reduce network traffic with minor segmentation
• Creates separate collision domains
• Reduce collisions
• Connect different architecture
 Disadvantage of using Bridges
• Slower than repeaters due to filtering
• Do not filter broadcasts
• More expensive than repeaters
 Switch
• Switches are a special type of hub that offers an additional layer of
intelligence to basic, physical-layer repeater hubs. A switch must be
able to read the MAC address of each frame it receives.
• Switches are Multiport Bridges.
• Switches provide a unique network segment on each port, thereby
separating collision domains.
• Today, network designers are replacing hubs in their wiring closets
with switches to increase their network performance and bandwidth
while protecting their existing wiring investments.
• Like bridges, switches learn certain information about the data
packets that are received from various computers on the network.
• Switches use this information to build forwarding tables to
determine the destination of data being sent by one computer to
another computer on the network.
 Switch
• Hosts have direct connection to switch
• Full Duplex: No collisions
• Switching: A-to-A’ and B-to-B’ simultaneously, no collisions
• Switches can be cascaded to expand the network
 Types of switch
1.Cut-through switch :A switch forwards a frame immediately after
receiving the destination address. As a consequence, the switch
forwards the frame without collision and error detection..
2. Collision-free: In this case, the switch forwards the frame after
receiving 64 bytes or partially, which allows detection of collision.
However, error detection is not possible because switch is yet to receive
the entire frame
3. Fully buffered: In this case, the switch forwards the frame only after
receiving the entire frame. So, the switch can detect both collision and
error free frames are forwarded.
Switch versus HUB

 Collision domain is the

segment where devices must
compete to communicate

 All ports of a hub belong to

the same collision domain

 Every port of a switch is a

collision domain on its own

 A switch break the segment

into smaller collision domains,
easing device competition
 Switch versus HUB
• The difference between hubs and switches is in how the devices
deal with the data that they receive. Whereas a hub forwards the
data it receives to all of the ports on the device, a switch
forwards it only to the port that connects to the destination
device. It does this by learning the MAC address of the devices
attached to it, and then by matching the destination MAC
address in the data it receives.
Counting collision domain
 Broadcast Domain
• Broadcast domain is the extend of the network where a
broadcast frame can be heard.
• Switches forward broadcast frames to all ports. Therefore
switches don’t break broadcast domains.
• All ports of a switch (with its default configuration) belong to
the same broadcast domain
• If two or more switches are connected, broadcasts will be
forward to all ports of all switches (except for the port that
originally received the broadcast)
• Routers break broadcast domains
Counting broadcast domain
 Router
• Routes packets based on their logical addresses (host-to-host
addressing).
• A router normally connects LANs and WANs in the Internet
and has a routing table that is used for making decision about
the route.
• The routing tables are normally dynamic and are updated
using routing protocols.
• Routers can increase network efficiency by filtering out
broadcast traffic between networks, thus reducing
unnecessary traffic between networks.
 Router Basic Components
• Input port performs physical and data-link layer functions of
the router
• Output port perform the same functions as the input ports,
but in the reverse order
• The routing processor performs the function of the network
layer. The process involves table lookup.
• The switching fabric, moves the packet from the input queue
to the output queue by using specialized mechanisms. The
switching fabric is realized with the help of multistage
interconnection networks.
 Routing Table
• Routers contain internal tables of information called routing
tables that keep track of all known network addresses and
possible paths throughout the internetwork, along with cost
of reaching each network.
• Routers route packets based on the available paths and their
costs, thus taking advantage of redundant paths that can exist
in a mesh topology network.
• Because routers use destination network addresses of packets,
they work only if the configured network protocol is a
routable protocol such as TCP/IP or IPX/SPX. This is different
from bridges, which are protocol independent.
Cont..
• Routing metrics : which are the means of determining how
much distance or time a packet will require to reach the final
destination. Routing metrics are provided in different forms.
• Ticks: measure the time it takes to traverse a link. Each tick is
1/18 of a second. When the router selects a route based on tick
and hop metrics, it chooses the one with the lowest number of
ticks first
Cont..
• There are two ways that the router can get the information for the
routing table—through static routing or dynamic routing.
– Static routers: routing tables configured manually with all
network addresses and paths in the internetwork.
– Dynamic routers: These automatically create their routing
tables by listening to network traffic. routers use special routing
protocols to communicate.
• The purpose of these protocols is simple; they enable routers to pass
on information about themselves to other routers so that other
routers can build routing tables. There are two types of routing
protocols used—distance vector protocols and link state protocols.
 Distance vector Routing
• The two most commonly used distance vector routing
protocols are both called Routing Information Protocol (RIP).
One version is used on networks running TCP/IP. The other,
sometimes referred to as IPX RIP, is designed for use on
networks running the IPX/SPX protocol

• RIP works on the basis of hop counts. Hop is simply a router

that the packet must travel through.

• RIP operate by having each router send updates about all the
other routers it knows about to the routers directly connected
to it. These updates are used by the routers to compile their
routing tables-Periodic update.
 Distance vector Routing
• Each router that the data has to cross to reach its destination
constitutes a hop. The maximum number of hops that RIP can
accommodate is 15. That is to say that in a network that uses
RIP, all routers must be within 15 hops of each other to
communicate.
• hop count that is in excess of 15 is considered unreachable.
• Apart from the periodic updates, routers can also be
configured to send a triggered update if a change in the
network topology is detected. The process by which routers
learn of a change in the network topology is known as
convergence.
 Distance vector Routing
• Drawbacks :
1. periodic update system can make the update process
very slow
2. periodic updates can create large amounts of network
traffic
3. because the routers only know about the next hop in
the journey, incorrect information can be propagated
between routers, creating routing loops
 Distance vector Routing
• Because RIP functions by periodically flooding the entire routing
table out to the network, it generates a lot of traffic. The split
horizon and poison reverse techniques can help reduce the amount
of network traffic originated by RIP hosts and make the
transmission of routing information more efficient.
• If a router receives a set of route advertisements on a particular
interface, RIP determines that those advertisements do not need to
be retransmitted out the same interface. This technique, known as
split horizon, helps limit the amount of RIP routing traffic by
eliminating information that other neighbors on that interface have
already learned.
• Similarly, the poison reverse technique helps to optimize the
transmission of routing information and improve the time to reach
network convergence.
 link state Routing
• Rather than each router telling each other connected router about
the routes it is aware of, routers in a link state environment send out
special packets, called link state advertisements (LSA), which
contain information only about that router.
• These LSAs are forwarded to all the routers on the network, which
enables them to build a map of the entire network.
• Link state protocols do not suffer from the constant updates and
limited hop count, and they are also quicker to correct themselves
(to converge) when the network topology changes.
• distance vector routing is better suited to small networks and link
state routing to larger ones.
 Router versus Bridge
• Addressing
 Routers are explicitly addressed.
 Bridges are not addressed.
• Availability
 Routers can handle failures in links, stations, and other routers.
 Bridges use only source and destination MAC address, which
does not guarantee delivery of frames.
• Message Size
 Routers can perform fragmentation on packets and thus handle
different packet sizes.
 Bridges cannot do fragmentation and should not forward a
frame which is too big for the next LAN.
• Forwarding
 Routers forward a message to a specific destination.
 Bridges forward a message to an outgoing network
 Gate way
• Gateways are multi-purpose connection devices. They
are able to convert the format of data in one computing
environment to a format that is usable in another computer
environment (for example, AppleTalk and DECnet).
The term gateway is sometimes used when referring to
a router. For the purpose of this lesson, gateways are devices
that link different network types and protocols.For example,
gateways translate different electronic mail protocols and
convey email across the Internet.
 LAN Technologies
•Ethernet
• Fast Ethernet
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 10 Gig Ethernet
 Ethernet
• Developed by Xerox in 1976
• Eventually became an IEEE standard (IEEE 802.3)
– Has been modified for wireless applications (IEEE 802.11)
– And for higher speeds (IEEE 802.3ae for 10 Gigabit Ethernet)
• Ethernet is based on the Datagram and functions at the physical and
data link layer.

6 bytes source address 46 to 1500 bytes data

8 bytes
Preamble 2 bytes type field
6 bytes destination address 4 bytes frame check sequence
•
 Ethernet Datagram Structure
• Preamble: Repeating Flag that ID’s the sequence as an
Ethernet datagram
• Destination Address: Unique identifier found nowhere else
but on the Network Interface Card to whom the datagram is
being sent
• Source Address: Who originated the datagram
• Type Field: Tells the recipient what kind of datagram is being
received (IP, UDP, etc)
• Data: What it is that you are trying to send (text, JEPG, MP3,
etc)
• Frame Check Sequence: Detects and corrects errors
 Ethernet
• If a message has less than 46 bytes of data, “padding” is
added
• Ethernet is often referred to as 100 Base T
– First digit is the speed of the system in Mbps
– Base refers to a cable or wire system
– T refers to the system is UTP: Unshielded Twisted Pair
– What is: 10 Base 5? 10 Mbps on a cable that can go 500 m
 Ethernet address
• End nodes are identified by their Ethernet Addresses (MAC
Address or Hardware Address) which is a unique 6 Byte address.
• MAC Address is represented in Hexa Decimal format e.g.
00:05:5D:FE:10:0A (48 bits)
• The first 3 bytes identify a vendor (also called prefix) and the last 3
bytes are unique for every host or device
• The least significant bit of the first byte defines the type of address.
If the bit is 0, the address is unicast; otherwise, it is multicast.
• The broadcast destination address is a special case of the multicast
address in which all bits are 1s.
 Ethernet address
Example:
• Define the type of the following destination addresses:
– a. 4A:30:10:21:10:1A
– b. 47:20:1B:2E:08:EE
– c. FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Solution
• To find the type of the address, we need to look at the second
hexadecimal digit from the left. If it is even, the address is
unicast. If it is odd, the address is multicast. If all digits are
F’s, the address is broadcast. Therefore, we have the
following:
– a. This is a unicast address because A in binary is 1010.
– b. This is a multicast address because 7 in binary is 0111.
– c. This is a broadcast address because all digits are F’s.
 Standard Ethernet
• 10 Base 5 (Thicknet) (Bus Topology)
• 10 Base 2 (Thinnet) (Bus Topology)
• 10 Base T (UTP) (Star/Tree Topology)
• 10 Base FL (Fiber) (Star/Tree Topology)
 Standard Ethernet
• Physical Media :-
– 10 Base5 - Thick Co-axial Cable with Bus Topology
– 10 Base2 - Thin Co-axial Cable with Bus Topology
– 10 BaseT - UTP Cat 3/5 with Tree Topology
– 10 BaseFL - Multimode/Single-mode Fiber with Tree Topology
• Maximum Segment Length
– 10 Base5 - 500 m with at most 4 repeaters (Use Bridge to
extend the network)
– 10 Base2 - 185 m with at most 4 repeaters (Use Bridge to
extend the network)
– 10 BaseT - 100 m with at most 4 hubs (Use Switch to extend
the network)
 Fast Ethernet
• 100 Mbps bandwidth
• Uses same CSMA/CD media access protocol and packet format as in
Ethernet.
• 100BaseTX (UTP) and 100BaseFX (Fiber) standards
• Physical media :-
– 100 BaseTX - UTP Cat 5e
– 100 BaseFX - Multimode / Single mode Fiber
• Full Duplex/Half Duplex operations.
 Fast Ethernet
• Provision for Auto-Negotiation of media speed:
10 Mbps or 100Mbps (popularly available for copper media only).
• Maximum Segment Length
– 100 Base TX - 100 m
– 100 Base FX - 2 Km (Multimode Fiber)
– 100 Base FX - 20 km (Single mode Fiber)
 Gigabit Ethernet
• 1 Gbps bandwidth.
• Uses same CSMA/CD media access protocol as in Ethernet
and is backward compatible (10/100/100 modules are
available).
• 1000BaseT (UTP), 1000BaseSX (Multimode Fiber) and
1000BaseLX (Multimode/Single mode Fiber) standards.
• Maximum Segment Length
– 1000 Base T - 100m (Cat 5e/6)
– 1000 Base SX - 275 m (Multimode Fiber)
– 1000 Base LX - 512 m (Multimode Fiber)
– 1000 Base LX - 20 Km (Single mode Fiber)
– 1000 Base LH - 80 Km (Single mode Fiber)
 10 Gig Ethernet
• 10 Gbps bandwidth.
• Uses same CSMA/CD media access protocol as in Ethernet.
• Maximum Segment Length
– 10GBase-T - Not available
– 10GBase-LR - 10 Km (Single mode Fiber)
– 10GBase-ER - 40 Km (Single mode Fiber)