CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO DATA COMMUNICATION

& COMPUTER NETWORKS
Lect By. KIRUBEL G.(MSc)
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Introduction
• How do we define Data Communication?

Data Communication is the exchange of data between devices via some

form of transmission medium such as a wire cable.
For data communications to occur, the communicating devices must be part of
a communication system made up of a combination of hardware (physical
equipment) and software (programs).

The effectiveness of a data communications system depends on four

fundamental characteristics: delivery, accuracy, timeliness, and jitter.
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Cont..
• What does delivery, accuracy, timeliness, and jitter mean?
• Delivery. The system must deliver data to the correct destination. Data must
be received by the intended device or user and only by that device or user.
• 2. Accuracy. The system must deliver the data accurately. Data that have
been altered in transmission and left uncorrected are unusable.
• 3. Timeliness. The system must deliver data in a timely manner. Data
delivered late are useless. In the case of video and audio, timely delivery
means delivering data as they are produced, in the same order that they are
produced, and without significant delay. This kind of delivery is called real-time
transmission.
• 4. Jitter. Jitter refers to the variation in the packet arrival time. It is the uneven
delay in the delivery of audio or video packets.
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Communication Model
• The key elements of a Communication Model are as follows

Figure 1.1 Communication Model

• Source: This device generates the data to be transmitted; examples are telephones and
personal computers.
• Transmitter: The sender is the device that sends the data message. It can be a computer,
workstation, telephone handset, video camera, and so on.
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Cont..
• Transmission medium. The transmission medium is the physical path by which
a message travels from sender to receiver. Some examples of transmission
media include twisted-pair wire, coaxial cable, fiber-optic cable, and radio waves.
• Receiver. The receiver is the device that receives the message. It can be a
computer, workstation, telephone handset, television, and so on.
• Protocol. A protocol is a set of rules that govern data communications. It
represents an agreement between the communicating devices.
Networks
A Network is a set of devices (often referred to as nodes) connected by
communication links. A node can be a computer, printer, or any other device
capable of sending and/or receiving data generated by other nodes on the
network.
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Network Categories
• Local Area Networks
Local area networks, generally called LANs, are privately-owned networks within
a single building or campus of up to a few kilometers in size.
They are widely used to connect personal computers and workstations in
company offices and factories to share resources (e.g., printers) and exchange
information.
• LANs are distinguished from other kinds of networks by three characteristics:
(1) Their size,
(2) Their transmission technology, it can be switched LAN or Wireless LAN and
(3) Their topology.
• LANs come in a number of different configurations. The most common are
switched LANs and wireless LANs.
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Cont..
• Wide Area Networks
A wide area network, or WAN, spans a large geographical area, often a country
or continent.
• Typically, a WAN consists of a number of interconnected switching nodes. A
transmission from any one device is routed through these internal nodes to the
specified destination device.
• These nodes (including the boundary nodes) are not concerned with the
content of the data; rather, their purpose is to provide a switching facility that
will move the data from node to node until they reach their destination.
• Circuit Switching
• In a circuit-switching network, a dedicated communications path is established
between two stations through the nodes of the network.
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Cont..
• Circuit switching:
• That path is a connected sequence of physical links between nodes. On each
link, a logical channel is dedicated to the connection.
• Data generated by the source station are transmitted along the dedicated path
as rapidly as possible. At each node, incoming data are routed or switched to
the appropriate outgoing channel without delay.
• The most common example of circuit switching is the telephone network.
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Network Categories
• Packet Switching
• In this case, it is not necessary to dedicate transmission capacity along a path
through the network. Rather, data are sent out in a sequence of small chunks,
called packets.
• Each packet is passed through the network from node to node along some
path leading from source to destination.
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Cont..
• At each node, the entire packet is received, stored briefly, and then transmitted
to the next node. Packet-switching networks are commonly used for terminal-
to-computer and computer-to-computer communications.
• Frame Relay: Frame relay was developed to take advantage of these high
data rates and low error rates.
• Whereas the original packet-switching networks were designed with a data
rate to the end user of about 64 kbps, frame relay networks are designed to
operate efficiently at user data rates of up to 2 Mbps.
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CONT..
• ATM
• Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), sometimes referred to as cell relay, is a
culmination of developments in circuit switching and packet switching.
• ATM can be viewed as an evolution from frame relay. The most obvious
difference between frame relay and ATM is that frame relay uses variable-
length packets, called frames, and ATM uses fixed-length packets, called cells.
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Protocols and architectures

• Consider the transfer of file between two computers. There must be a data path
between the two computers either directly or via a communication network.
Typical tasks to be performed are as follows;
1. The source system must either activate the direct data communication path or
inform the communication network of the identity of the desired destination system.
2. The source system must ascertain that the destination system is prepared to
receive data.
3. The file transfer application on the source system must ascertain that the file
management program on the destination system is prepared to accept and store
the file for this particular user.
4. If the file formats used on the two systems are different, one or the other system
must perform a format translation function.
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Cont..
• In a protocol architecture,
 Modules are arranged in a vertical stack.
 Each layer in the stack performs a related subset of the functions required to
communicate with another system.
• Communication is achieved by having the corresponding, or peer, layers in
two systems communicate. The peer layers communicate by means of
formatted blocks of data that obey a set of rules or conventions known as a
protocol. The key features of a protocol are as follows:
• Syntax: Concerns the format of the data blocks
• Semantics: Includes control information for coordination and error handling
• Timing: Includes speed matching and sequencing
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Protocols & Architectures

THE TCP/IP PROTOCOL ARCHITECTURE
• The TCP/IP protocol architecture is a result of protocol research and development
conducted on the experimental packet-switched network, ARPANET(Advanced
Research Projects Agency).
• And this is generally referred to as TCP/IP Protocol suite.
• This protocol suite consists of a large collection of protocols that have been issued
as Internet standards by the Internet Activities Board (IAB).
• TCP/IP also defined as a protocol or a rule that govern the internet communication.
What are the Layers in TCP/IP?
Physical layer
Network access layer
Internet layer
Host-to-host, or transport layer
Application layer
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TCP/IP
Physical Layer
• The physical layer covers the physical interface between a data transmission
device(e.g workstation, computer) and transmission medium or network.
• Is also responsible for specifying the characteristics of the transmission medium,
the nature of the signals, the data rates and related matters.
Network Access Layer
• It is concerned with the exchange of data between the end systems(server,
workstation, etc) and the network to which it is attached.
• The sending computer provide the network with the address of the destination
computer.
• At this layer it is the type of the network (LAN, Circuit switching or other) that provide
the priority which depends on the specific software used by the network type.
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Layers of tcp/ip
• In other term, it is the concern of Network Access Layer to route data across
network for two end systems attached to the network.
Internet Layer
• In some cases two devices are attached to different networks and in this case
procedures are followed in order to traverse data to multiple interconnected
networks. This is the function of Internet Layer.
• The Internet Protocol (IP) is used at this layer to provide the routing function
across multiple networks.
• This protocol is implemented not only in the end systems but also in routers. A
router is a processor that connects two networks and whose primary function
is to relay data from one network to the other on its route from the source to
the destination end system.
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TCP/IP Layers
Host to Host(Transport Layer)
• In end to end systems there is a requirement of the data to exchanged reliably.
What does Reliability of data exchange means?
 it means that making sure that, all of the data arrive at the destination and that
the data arrive in the same order as they are sent.
• This is the concern of the Host to Host(Transport Layer).
• To Provide the above mentioned functionality Transport Control Protocol is used
under this Layer.
Application Layer
• It contains the logic needed to support the various user applications.
• For each type of applications such as file transfer a separate module is needed
that is particular to that application.
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Protocols & Architectures

The OSI Model
• The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model was developed by
the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)2 as a model for a
computer protocol architecture and as a framework for developing protocol
standards.
• OSI model consists of seven layers:
• Application
• Presentation
• Session
• Transport
• Network
• Data link
• Physical
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OSI Model

Figure 1.2
The OSI Layers
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OSI Model
• Comparison of TCP/IP & OSI Model

Figure1.3 A comparison of TCP/IP & OSI Protocol Architectures

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Implementation of tcp/ip protocol

• Operation of TCP/IP

Figure TCP/IP Concepts

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IMPLEMENTATION OF TCP/IP
• In the previous figure, the communication facility between two end systems
consists of multiple networks, these networks are known to be subnetworks.
• Some sort of network access Protocol such as the Ethernet Logic is used to
connect a computer to a subnetwork.
• IP is implemented to route the data across different network using routers.
• TCP is implemented in only end systems to keep track of the data blocks
delivered reliably to the appropriate application.