DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Computer Networks-CS 2363 (III EEE)

Two-Mark Questions and Answers
UNIT I
1. Group the OSI layers by function?
The seven layers of the OSI model belonging to three subgroups.
Physical,
data link and
network layers are the network support layers;
Session,
presentation and a
application layers are the user support layers;
Transport layer ensures end-to-end reliable data transmission.
2. What are the features provided by layering?
Two features:
It decomposes the problem of building a network into more manageable components.
It provides a more modular design.
3. What are the two interfaces provided by protocols?
Service interface
Peer interface
Service interface- defines the operations that local objects can perform on the protocol.
Peer interface- defines the form and meaning of messages exchanged between protocol peers to implement the
communication service.
4. Mention the different physical media?
Twisted pair(the wire that your phone connects to)
Coaxial cable(the wire that your TV connects to)
Optical fiber(the medium most commonly used for high-bandwidth, long-distance links)
Space(the stuff that radio waves, microwaves and infra red beams propagate through)
5. What is spread spectrum and explain the two types of spread spectrum?
Spread spectrum is to spread the signal over a wider frequency band than normal in such
a way as to minimize the impact of interference from other devices.
Frequency Hopping
Direct sequence
6. What are the different encoding techniques?
NRZ
NRZI
Manchester
4B/5B

7. How does NRZ-L differ from NRZ-I?

In the NRZ-L sequence, positive and negative voltages have specific meanings: positivefor 0 and
negative for 1.
In the NRZ-I sequence, the voltages are meaningless. Instead, the receiver looks for changes from one
level to another as its basis for recognition of 1s.

8. What are the responsibilities of data link layer?

Specific responsibilities of data link layer include the following.
Framing
Physical
Addressing
Flow control
Error control
Access control.
9. What are the ways to address the framing problem?
Byte-Oriented Protocols(PPP)
Bit-Oriented Protocols(HDLC)
Clock-Based Framing(SONET)
10. Mention the types of errors and define the terms?
There are 2 types of errors
Single-bit error.
Burst-bit error.
Single bit error: The term single bit error means that only one bit of a given data unit (such as
Byte character/data unit or packet) is changed from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1.
Burst error: Means that 2 or more bits in the data unit have changed from 1 to 0 from 0 to 1.
11. Write short notes on CRC.
Cyclic Redundancy checks (CRC) CRC is based on binary division.
Here a sequence of redundant bits, called the CRC remainder is appended to the end of data unit.
12. Define checksum.
The error detection method used by the higher layer protocol is called checksum.
Checksum is based on the concept of redundancy.
13. Write short notes on error correction?
It is the mechanism to correct the errors and it can be handled in 2 ways.
When an error is discovered, the receiver can have the sender retransmit the entire data unit.
A receiver can use an error correcting coder, which automatically corrects certain errors.
14. What is redundancy?

It is the error detecting mechanism, which means a shorter group of bits or extra bits may be
appended at the destination of each unit.

15. What is Ethernet?

Ethernet is a multiple-access network, meaning that a set of nodes send and receive frames over a shared link.
16. Define the term carrier sense in CSMA/CD?
All the nodes can distinguish between idle and a busy-link and collision detect means
that a node listens as it transmits and can therefore detect when a frame it is transmitting has
Interfered (collided) with a frame transmitted by another node.
17. Define Repeater?
A repeater is a device that forwards digital signals, much like an amplifier forwards
analog signals. However, no more than four repeaters may be positioned between any pairs of
hosts, meaning that an Ethernet has a total reach of only 2,500m.
18. Define collision detection?
In Ethernet, all these hosts are competing for access to the same link, and as a consequence, they are said to be in
the same collision detection.
19. What is exponential back off?

Once an adaptor has detected a collision and stopped its transmission,

it waits certain amount of time and tries again.
Each time it tries to transmit but fails,
Then it waits doubles the time of before and try again.
This strategy of doubling the delay interval between each transmission attempt known as exponential
back off.

20. What is token holding time (THT)?

It defines that how much data a given node is allowed to transmit

Each time it possesses the token or equivalently, how long a given node is allowed to hold the token.

21. What are the four prominent wireless technologies?

Bluetooth
Wi-Fi(formally known as 802.11)
WiMAX(802.16)
Third generation or 3G cellular wireless.
22. Define Bluetooth?
Bluetooth is very short-range communication between mobile phones,PDAs, notebook computers,
and other personal or peripheral devices.

For example, Bluetooth can be used to connect mobile phones to a headset, or a notebook computer
to a printer.

24. What is the use of Switch?

It is used to forward the packets between shared media LANs such as Ethernet.
Such switches are sometimes known by the obvious name of LAN switches.
25. Explain Bridge?
It is a collection of LANs connected by one or more bridges is usually said to form an
Extended LAN.
In their simplest variants, bridges simply accept LAN frames on their inputs and forward them out on all
other outputs.
26. Define network architecture.
Network architecture guides the design and implementation of networks.
It is used to help deal with this complexity; network designers have developed general blueprints.
27. What is the use of flow control and error control?
Flow control is a technique for assuring that a transmitting entity does not overload the receiving entity
with data.
Error control allows the sender to know about the damaged or lost frame.
28. What is an ARQ?
ARQ means Automatic repeat request.
If the sender does not receive an ACK for a packet after a certain time period, it assumes that the packet
did not arrive (or was delivered with bit errors) and retransmits it.
Stop-and-wait and sliding window are two example ARQ protocols.
29. What is bit stuffing?
Bit stuffing is a technique used to distinguish control sequences and data on the bitLevel. Used by the HDLC
protocol.
30. What is CSMA/CD?
CSMA/CD means Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detect.
Carrier sense multiple access means that multiple stations can listen to the link and detect when it is in use or
idle; collision detect indicates thatif two or more stations are transmitting on the link simultaneously, they will
detect the collisionof their signals. Ethernet is the best-known technology that uses CSMA/CD.
31. What is 10Base2?
The 10 in 10Base2 means that the network operates at 10 Mbps, Base refers to the
fact that the cable is used in a baseband system, and the 2 means that a given segment can be
no longer than 200 m.
.

UNIT II
1. Define packet switch.
A packet switch is a device with several inputs and outputs leading to and from the hosts that the switch inter
connects. The core job of a switch is to take packets that arrive on an input and forward them to the right output
so that they will reach their appropriate destination.
2. What is LSP?
In link state routing, a small packet containing routing information send by a router to
all other router by a packet called Link State Packet (LSP).
3. What is segmentation and reassembly?
Fragmenting the high-level message into low-level packets at the source, transmit the individual low-level packets
over the network, and then reassemble the fragments back together at the destination. This general technique is
usually called fragmentation and reassembly. In the
case of ATM, however, it is often called segmentation and reassembly (SAR).
4. Define internetwork.
An internetwork is often referred to as a network of networks because it is made up of lots of smaller
networks. An internet is a logical network built out of a collection of physical networks.
5. What is an ARP?
ARP means Address Resolution Protocol. It is the protocol of the Internet architecture,
Used to translate high-level protocol addresses into physical hardware addresses.
Commonly used on the Internet to map IP addresses into Ethernet addresses.
5. What is subnetting?
The use of a single IP network address to denote multiple physical networks.
Routers within the sub network use a subnet mask to discover the physical network to which a
Packet should be forwarded.
Subnetting effectively introduces a third level to the two-level hierarchical IP address.
6. What is reliable flooding?
The basic idea is for a node to send its link-state information out on all of itsdirectly connected links,
With each node that receives this information forwarding it out on all ofits links.
This process continues until the information has reached all the nodes in the network.
7. Write short note on routers.
The nodes that interconnect the networks are called routers.
They are also sometimes called gateways.

They relay packets among multiple interconnected networks.

8. What do you mean Packet Switching?

The process of forwarding packets from an input of a switch to one or more outputs of the switch is known as
packet switching.
10. What are the characteristics of Connectionless networks?
A host can send a packet anywhere at any time.
When a Host sends a packet, it has no way of knowing if the network is capable of delivering it.
Each packet is forwarded independently.
A Switch or link failure might not have any serious effect on communication.
11. How IP address is hierarchical?
IP address is hierarchical, by which means that they are made up of many
Interconnected networks. IP addresses consist of 2 parts, a network part and a host part. The
network part of an IP address identifies the network to which the host is attached.
12. List out the various addressing schemes in IP.
CLASS A -> Network 8 bit Host 24 bit
CLASS B -> Network 16 bit Host 16 bit
CLASS C -> Network 24 bit Host 8 bit
13. What is the responsibility of a DHCP server?
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is responsible for providing configuration
information to hosts.
14. Write Short notes on ICMP.
ICMP stands for Internet Control Message Protocol. It can be act as companion protocol of IP, that defines a
collection of error message that are sent back to the source host whenever a router or host unable to process an ip
datagram successfully.
15. What is forwarding?
Forwarding consists of taking a packet,
looking at its destination address, consulting a table, and
sending the packet in a direction determined by the table.
16. What is Routing?
Routing is the process by which forwarding tables are build, which contains the mapping information IP
with MAC address.
17. What do you mean by subnetting?
The idea is to take a single IP network number and allocate the IP address with that network number to
several physical networks, which are now referred to as subnets.
18. What is the use of CIDR?
CIDR is a way to allocate and specify the Internet addresses used in inter-domain routing more flexibly than with

the original system of Internet Protocol (IP) address classes.

19. How does BGP cancel the previously advertised path?
BGP can cancel the previously advertised path with a form of negative advertisement
Known as a withdrawn route.
20. Write short notes on Ipv6?
Ipv6 do not have classes, but the address space is still subdivided in various ways based on the leading bits.
Rather than specifying different address classes, the leading bits specify different uses of the Ipv6 address.
21. What is the Address notation of Ipv6?
Ipv6 address notation is x:x: x:x: x:x: x:x where each x is a hexadecimal
Representation of 16-bit piece of the address.
22. Write the keys for understanding the distance vector routing?
The three keys for understanding the algorithm are,
Knowledge about the whole networks
Routing only to neighbors
Information sharing at regular intervals
23. Write the keys for understanding the link state routing?
The three keys for understanding the algorithm are,
Knowledge about the neighborhood.
Routing to all neighbors.
Information sharing when there is a range.
24. What are the features in OSPF?
Authentication of routing messages.
Additional hierarchy.
Load balancing.
UNIT III
1. Explain the main idea of UDP?
The basic idea is for a source process to send a message to a port and for the destination
Process to receive the message from a port.
2. Define TCP?
TCP guarantees the reliable, in order delivery of a stream of bytes. It is a full-duplex protocol, meaning that each
TCP connection supports a pair of byte streams, one flowing in each direction.
3. Define Congestion Control?
It involves preventing too much data from being injected into the network,
Thereby Causing switches or links to become overloaded.

4. What is meant by segment?

At the sending and receiving end of the transmission,
TCP divides long transmissions Into smaller data units and packages each into a frame called a segment.
5. What is RED?
Random Early Detection in each router is programmed to monitor its own queue length
And when it detects that congestion is imminent,
To notify the source to adjust its congestion window.
6. What is three-way handshake algorithm?
The algorithm used by TCP to establish and terminate a connection is called a threeway
Handshake.
We first describe the basic algorithm and then show how it is used by TCP.
The three-way handshake involves the exchange of three messages between the client and the server.
7. What is silly window syndrome?
Silly window syndrome is a condition occurring in TCP that may arise if each time the
receiver opens its receive window a small amount, the sender sends a small segment to fill the
window. The result is many small segments and an inefficient use of bandwidth.
8. What is meant by congestion?
Congestion in a network occurs if user sends data into the network at a rate greater
than that allowed by network resources.
9. What is the use of slow start?
Slow start is used to increase the congestion window rapidly from a cold start. Slow
start effectively increases the congestion window exponentially, rather than linearly.
10. Give the header format of TCP.

11. Differentiate between TCP and UDP.

TCP is connection oriented and reliable protocol which provides in order delivery of data.

UDP is connectionless and unreliable protocol.

12. Draw the UDP message queue.

13. What is sliding window algorithm?

Sliding window algorithm is an algorithm that allows the sender to transmit multiple packets before
receiving an acknowledgment.
As acknowledgments are returned for those packets in the window that were sent first,
The window slides and more packets may be sent.
The sliding window algorithm combines reliable delivery with a high throughput.

14. Draw the timeline for three-way handshake algorithm.

15. What are the responsibilities of Transport Layer?

The Transport Layer is responsible for source-to-destination delivery of the entire
Message.

Service-point Addressing
Segmentation and reassembly
Connection Control
Flow Control
Error Control

16. What is an End-to-End Protocol?

The process-to-process communication channel is the role played by the transport level of the network
architecture, which, because it supports communication between the end application programs, is sometimes
called the end-to-end protocol.
17. List out the properties that a transport can be expected to provide.

Guarantees message delivery

Delivers message in the same order they are sent
Delivers at most one copy of each message
Supports arbitrarily Large message

18. What is TCP?

TCP is a protocol which grantees the reliable, in-order delivery of a stream of bytes.
It is a full duplex protocol, meaning that each TCP connection supports a pair of byte streams,
one flowing in each direction
19. What are the fields available in the segments?
SrcPort : Source Port
SrcIPlAddr : Sourc IP address
DstPort : Destination Port
DstIPaddr : destion IP address
20. Write short notes on active open and passive open messages?
To open a connection server first invoke a active open message. To establish the
connection with server, client invokes the passive open message
UNIT IV
1. Name four factors needed for a secure network?
Privacy
: The sender and the receiver expect confidentiality.
Authentication: The receiver is sure of the senders identity and that an imposter has not
Sent the message.
Integrity
: The data must arrive at the receiver exactly as it was sent.
Non-Reputation: The receiver must able to prove that a received message came from a

Specific sender.

2. How is a secret key different from public key?

In secret key, the same key is used by both parties.
The sender uses this key and an encryption algorithm to encrypt data;
The receiver uses the same key and the corresponding decryption algorithm to decrypt the data.
In public key, there are two keys: a private key and a public key.
The private key is kept by the receiver. The public key is announced to the public.
3. What is a digital signature?
Digital signature is a method to authenticate the sender of a message.
It is similar to that of signing transactions documents when you do business with a bank.
In network transactions, youcan create an equivalent of an electronic or digital signature by the
way you send data.
4. What are the advantages & disadvantages of public key encryption?
Advantages:
a) Remove the restriction of a shared secret key between two entities. Here each
entity can create a pair of keys, keep the private one, and publicly distribute the other
one.
b) The no. of keys needed is reduced tremendously. For one million users to
communicate, only two million keys are needed.
Disadvantage:
If you use large numbers the method to be effective. Calculating the cipher text
using the long keys takes a lot of time. So it is not recommended for large amounts of
text.
5.What are the advantages & disadvantages of secret key encryption?
Advantage:
Secret Key algorithms are efficient: it takes less time to encrypt a message. The
reason is that the key is usually smaller. So it is used to encrypt or decrypt long messages.
Disadvantages:
a) Each pair of users must have a secret key. If N people in world want to use this
method, there needs to be N (N-1)/2 secret keys. For one million people to communicate,
a half-billion secret keys are needed.
b) The distribution of the keys between two parties can be difficult.
6. Define PGP?
Pretty Good Privacy is used to provide security for electronic mail.
It provides authentication, confidentiality, data integrity, and non repudiation.
7. Define SSH?
Secure Shell is used to provide a remote login, and used to remotely execute commands

And transfer files and also provide strong client/server authentication / message integrity.
8.What are the types of security attacks?
The types of security attacks are,
Passive attacks,
Active attacks.
9. Define the terms Cryptanalysis and Cryptology.
Cryptanalysis : The art of breaking ciphers is called Cryptanalysis.
Cryptology : The art of devising ciphers and breaking them collectively is called as Cryptanalysis.

10. List some of the security services.

Some of the security services are,
Authentication,
Access control,
Data confidentiality,
Integrity.
11. What is the need for data compression?
To send more data than the bandwidth of the network.
12. What are the classes of compression?
Lossless compression-data recovered is exactly the same as original data
Lossy compression-removes certain information
13.What is JPEG?

Joint Photographic Expert Group-for image compression it is used.

It has three phases DCT,
Quantisation and
encoding

14.What is MPEG?

Moving Picture Expert Group-for video compression.

Moving image is a succession of still images also called frames,
each of the frames can be compressed and removes redundancy,

15.What is authenticator?
It includes redundant information about message content and is used to verify the authenticity
and dataintegrity of a message.
16.What is encryption and decryption?
Encryption transforms a original message. Sender encypts the plaintext and generates the ciphertext.Decryption

transforms the ciphertext to plaintext.

17.What is keydistribution?
Each participant generates a pair of keys ,
private and public.
Private key is hidden and
public key is distributed by the certification authority called the publickey certificate.
18.How to achieve security in transport layer?
SSL(secure socket layer) provides integrity authentication and confidentiality for web transactions.
Also build a general purpose protocol that sits between HTTP and TCP.

19.What is IPSec?
IPSec is a framework for providing all security services. It is mandatory in IPV6.
It has 2 parts
Authentication header
Encapsulation Security Payload
20.What is wireless security?
It provides authentication , message integrity and confidentiality to 802.11(Wi Fi)
21. What is a firewall ?
A firewall is a system that is the solepoint of connectivity between the site it protects and the
rest of the network. It is usually implemented as part of a router.
UNIT V

1. What is the function of SMTP?

The TCP/IP protocol supports electronic mail on the Internet is called Simple Mail Transfer (SMTP).
It is a system for sending messages to other computer users based on e-mailaddresses.
SMTP provides mail exchange between users on the same or different computers.

2. Why is an application such as POP needed for electronic messaging?

Workstations interact with the SMTP host, which receives the mail on behalf of everyhost in the
organization,

to retrieve messages by using a client-server protocol such as PostOffice Protocol, version 3(POP3).

Although POP3 is used to download messages from the server,

the SMTP client still needed on the desktop to forward messages from the workstationuser to its SMTP
mail server.

3. What is the purpose of Domain Name System?

Domain Name System can map a name to an address and conversely an address to name.

4. Discuss the TCP connections needed in FTP.

FTP establishes two connections between the hosts. One connection is used for data transfer, the other for control
information. The control connection uses very simple rules of communication. The data connection needs more
complex rules due to the variety of data types
transferred.
5. What are the requests messages support SNMP and explain it?
GET
SET
The former is used to retrieve a piece of state from some node and the latter is used to store a new piece of state in
some node.

6. Define URL.
URL means Uniform resource locator.
It is a text string used to identify the location of Internet resources.
It is a standard for specifying any kind of information on the internet.
7. List the types of HTTP messages.
The types of HTTP messages are,
Request message,
Response message.
8. In what way HTTP is similar to SMTP?
HTTP is like SMTP because the data transfer between the client and server look like
SMTP messages.
9. What is mean by IMAP?
IMAP means Internet Message Access Protocol. It is an application-layer protocol that
allows a user to retrieve his or her email from a mail server.
10. What is mean by FTP?
FTP means File Transfer Protocol. It is the standard protocol of the Internet architecture
for transferring files between hosts. It is built on top of TCP.
11. What is mean by DNS?
DNS means Domain name system. It is a client/server application that identifies each
host on the internet with an unique user friendly name.
12. What is mean by HTTP?
HTTP means Hyper Text Transport Protocol. It is an application-level protocol based
on a request/reply paradigm and used in the World Wide Web. HTTP uses TCP connections to
transfer data.
13. What is mean by SNMP?
SNMP means Simple Network Management Protocol. It is an Internet protocol that
allows the monitoring of hosts, networks, and routers.
14. What is Uniform Resource Identifier?
Uniform resource identifier is a generalization of the URL. It is used inconjunction with SIP to set up multimedia

sessions.
15. What is World Wide Web?
World Wide Web is a hypermedia information service on the Internet. It is a repository
or information spread all over the world and linked together.
16. what is an overlay network?
It is a logical network implemented on top of a physical network. Applications make their own
forwarding decisions, by extending traditional routers and switches to support a modest amount
of application specific processing.
17.what is MBONE?
Mulicast backbone is an overlay network that implements IP multicast.Mbone uses tunnels,
implements different forwarding algorithms, forwards packets to all downstream neighbours in a
shortest path multicast tree.
18.what is SOAP?
Simple Object Access Protocol-for mass customization. SOAP is based on web services
description language(WSDL) and both are used together.
19. what are the web services?
Webservices provides us the motivation for application to application communication. Enabling
application to interact directly with eachother called bussiness to bussiness integration, when
they are at different enterprise use enterprise application integration(EAI).
20.Give a note on Multimedia applications?
Audio and video conferencing are the types of multimedia applications
2 protocols are used-RTP,RSVP Multimedia applications need a session control protocol.
The various protocols for session control and call control are-SDP,SIP.SAP, SCCP.
The capabilities of SIP are-user location, user availability, session setup, session management.