1 Introduction

Exercise 1.1
A company plans to start an online video on-demand service where movies and news clips are made available
to subscribers. After various market surveys, the company has listed the following qualitative specifications.
Movies
A subscriber pays for a given level of quality (throughput measured in Mb/s). If the quality deteriorates too much, the service becomes free.
One failure (e.g. 1-5 seconds interruption, flicker or snow) during playback is acceptable.
A subscriber should at worst get his/her third choice of movie.
News clips
The latest news clip should be available to all the subscribers
No failure should occur during playback and complete interruptions should be extremely rare.
The number of simultaneous subscribers able to access the latest news clip should be maximized and
for that the picture quality may be degraded to a certain extent.
The news clips of the last 3 years should be available and easily browsable.
Financial penalties may apply for the company if the service provided does not comply with the specifications,
therefore, they commission you to quantify the QoS (Quality of Service) specifications of this service. The used
properties are presented in Sections 1.2.2 and 1.2.3 in the textbook.
Figure 1 shows the relation between the price and the picture quality, Figure 2 the expected variations of the
service usage, and Figure 3 the probability that the number N of failures during playback is at most n. In
Figure 3, the graph at the bottom is a zoom-in of the graph above, and the playback length is given in multiples
of the MTFF , e.g. 2 on the x-axis means 2 MTFF .
Price / minute
Pmax

Pn

0
0.1

10

100

Picture quality (Mb/s)

Figure 1: Relation between the price per minute and the picture quality
a) With the help of the Figures 1 and 2 give a good estimate of the necessary transmission capacity C for the
movies and news clips services, for the latter discuss also the necessary storage capacity. Hint: if necessary,
make educated guesses about the picture quality offered, the news clip length and the number of news clips
per day.

Draft [2014/9/2] - Comments and corrections welcomed at pyse@item.ntnu.no (use [ttm4110] in the subject)

TTM4110 - Exercises

TTM4110 - Dependability and Performance with Discrete Event Simulation

NTNU - Department of Telematics

Number of users

Number of users
50

500

25

250

t
Mon Tue Wed Thu

Fri

Sat

Sun

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri

(a) Movies

Sat

Sun

(b) News clips

Figure 2: Usage model for the on-line video on-demand service

P (N 6 n)
1.0

0.8

0.6
n=2
0.4
n=1
0.2
n=0
0.0

P (N 6 n)
0.0
1.0

0.2

0.4

playback length
(in
MTFF )
8

0.6

0.8

1.0 playback length

(in MTFF )
n=2

0.9
n=1
0.8
0.7
n=0
0.6
0.5
0.4

Figure 3: Probability that the number N of failures during playback is at most n

 Figure 2a shows the service usage model for movies. The highest load is on Friday evenings with approximately 50 simultaneous users (busy hour ). Therefore the service must have sufficient capacity to deliver
movies with a good quality to 50 users at the same time. Good quality is relative, but in any case the
quality should not fall below the level at which the service becomes free, e.g. :
Ct = #users picture quality = 50 10 Mb/s = 500 Mb/s

In Figure 2b, for the news clips, the load is high, up to 500 users, everyday in the afternoon. The quality
does not need to be particularly good, but good enough so that the service is not free, e.g. :
Ct = 500 1 Mb/s = 500 Mb/s

Sufficient storage capacity for the news clip archives depends on the number of news clip per day and the
quality at which they are stored. Assume there are 10 clips per day. The quality must be relatively high so
that freeze-frames with good quality can be extracted, e.g. 100 Mb/s. Assuming that Ln = 10 minutes,
we have:
Cs = 3 365 days 10 clips/day 600 sec/clip = 6.57 1014 bits 82.13 Terabytes
Note that using compression techniques, the storage capacity may be considerably reduced.
Lm
b) Using the graphs in Figure 3, give an upper bound on the ratio MTFF
, where Lm is the average playback length.
Hint: start with choosing a reasonable value for a service failure and use the figure.

One failure during playback is acceptable for movies. Therefore the curve for N 6 1 in Figure 3 is relevant
for this service. It should rarely occur more than one failures, so the probability that one or less failure occurs
should be high, e.g. 95%. From the graph, we read the corresponding time:
P ((N 6 1) > 0.95) playback length 6 0.35 MTFF
Thus we should have the following ratio:
Lm
6 0.35
MTFF
where Lm denotes the movie length.
Do the same for news clips and define MTCF for this service. How should the relation between MTTF and
MTCF be?
No failure should occur during playback of the latest news clip, so the curve for N 6 0 is relevant for the news
clip service. Setting the same requirement as for movies, we have:
P ((N 6 0) > 0.95) playback length 6 0.04 MTFF
and if Ln denotes the length of the latest news clip:
Ln
6 0.04
MTFF
MTCF corresponds to a complete interruption of the service which should rarely occur, so the MTCF should
be high. For instance:
MTCF = 100 MTFF

Draft [2014/9/2] - Comments and corrections welcomed at pyse@item.ntnu.no (use [ttm4110] in the subject)

TTM4110 - Exercises

TTM4110 - Dependability and Performance with Discrete Event Simulation

NTNU - Department of Telematics

Exercise 1.2
A transmission channel can be described by a layered model. Figure 4 shows such a model where the physical
medium (layer 1) is a cable. This cable is used to transmit bits (layer 2) and bits are grouped in packets (layer 3).
Each layer provides a service to the layer above and uses the service provided by the layer below (if it exists).
The quality of the service provided by a layer depends on the quality of the service provided by the layer below.
Layer 1 provides a signal transmission service to layer 2, layer 2 a bit transmission service to layer 3, and layer 3
a packet delivery service to the layer above. The quality of the service provided by layer 2 is measured in terms
of bit error probability and transmission capacity. The quality of the service provided by layer 3 is measured in
terms of packet loss probability. A packet is lost if there are one or more erroneous bits.
Assume that an ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) protocol is used at layer 3. Upon reception of a packet,
an acknowledgement is sent back. It is either a positive acknowledgement (ACK), if the packet is successfully
received, or a negative acknowledgement (NACK), if the packet is lost. The probability that an acknowledgement
is lost is negligible since these packets are very small.
Let:
Lc
Lp
La
C
c

cable length
packet length
length of an ACK/NACK packet
transmission capacity (bit/s)
propagation speed (m/s)

a) What is the packet loss probability Pp in layer 3 given that the bit error probability in layer 2 is Pb and assuming
independent bit errors? Hint: the packet length is Lp bits.
A packet is lost if there are one or more erroneous (flipped) bits. In other words, a packet is successfully received
if all the bits are unchanged. Assuming independent bit errors, the probability that a packet is successfully
received is therefore:
1 Pp = (1 Pb )Lp
So the packet loss probability is:
Pp = 1 (1 Pb )Lp

b) Draw a message sequence diagram to illustrate how the ARQ protocol works in the case of an ideal transmission
channel (no packet loss).
The figure below shows how the ARQ protocol works in the case of ideal transmission channel (no packet loss).
c) What is the probability that a packet is successfully received after one packet loss?
The probability that a packet is successfully received, resp. lost, is 1 Pp , resp. Pp . The probability that
a packet is successfully received after a packet loss is the probability of the intersection of the corresponding
events. Since bit errors are assumed to be independent, the packet losses are independent as well, and the
probability of the intersection is the product of the probabilities of each event.
P2 = Pp (1 Pp )
Lp
Layer 3: Packet

Layer 2: Bit stream

Layer 1: Cable
Lc

Figure 4: Layered model of a transmission channel

B
Packet 1

ACK 1
Packet 2

ACK 2
Packet 3

ACK 3

After two consecutive packet losses?

The probability that a packet is successfully received after two consecutive packet losses is the probability of
the intersection of the corresponding events. Likewise, because packet losses are independent, the probability
of the intersection is the product of the probabilities of each event.
P3 = Pp Pp (1 Pp ) = Pp2 (1 Pp )

After n 1 consecutive packet losses? (give the probability in terms of Pp )

Generalizing the expressions of P2 and P3 , the probability that a packet is successfully received after n 1
consecutive packet losses is:
Pn = (Pp Pp Pp ) (1 Pp ) = Ppn1 (1 Pp )
|
{z
}
n1

This is the shifted geometric distribution of parameter (1 Pp ).

d) What is the expected number of transmissions of a packet? Hint: start with finding the right distribution.
The number N of transmission of a packet follows a shifted geometric distribution of parameter (1 Pp ). The
expected number of transmissions of a packet is therefore:
E(N ) =

1
1 Pp

e) What is the round trip time for one packet and its acknowledgment (no matter if positive or negative)?
The transmission delay for a packet (including the positive or negative acknowledgement) is the sum of the
time it takes to send the packet of length Lp and the acknowledgement of length La and the propagation time
in the cable.
Lp + La
2Lc
Dt =
+
C
c
f) What is the expected delay to successfully receive a packet?
The expected delay to successfully receive a packet is the product of the expected number of transmissions of
a packet and the transmission delay for a packet.
E(D) = Dt E(N )

Draft [2014/9/2] - Comments and corrections welcomed at pyse@item.ntnu.no (use [ttm4110] in the subject)

TTM4110 - Exercises

TTM4110 - Dependability and Performance with Discrete Event Simulation

NTNU - Department of Telematics