SLIDING WINDOWS - LINUX

Linux Interview Questions Interview Questions Linux Practice Test Practice Test
Pragnyameter Exam All Tutorials All Tutorials All Tutorials Job Search
One of the important functions of data link protocols is to provide a connection-
oriented or reliable transmission service. A reliable service guarantees ordered
packet delivery by doing retransmission of lost or damaged packets. Elsewhere in
this chapter, we discussed several data communication protocols. Some of these
protocols are used to carry IP datagrams, and if so, they would be interfaced to IP
at the link layer. However, it is important to note that TCP/IP does not require
connection-oriented service at the link layer. The TCP transport protocol actually
includes its own version of sliding windows, which in theory works almost
identically to the protocol described in this section. However, later we will see
that the TCP state machine is far more complex. In addition, we will see that TCP
has had many enhancements such as slow start to reduce congestion in busy networks.

Sliding windows provides a means of recovering from lost, erroneous, or out-of-

sequence frames. Earlier protocols had to use a system called start-and-stop
acknowledgment to manage the integrity of the connection. This system wasted
bandwidth because the sending station had to wait for an acknowledgment before
sending another frame. In contrast, sliding windows provides a better mechanism for
acknowledging transmissions. The receiving station sends an accumulative
acknowledgment. This is more efficient because a response from the receiving
station can acknowledge multiple packets from the sending station, and the sending
station need not wait for the ACK frame before sending more frames. When used in
conjunction with packet queuing, this method can provide an excellent mechanism for
flow control. Most modern communication protocols use a method that is in some way
fundamentally derived from sliding windows.

The sliding windows method uses a window size determined by the size of the
sequence number n(s) and the acknowledgment number n(r) fields of the particular
HDLC variant. The window size becomes the number of unacknowledged transmit frames
that can be sent before receiving an ACK frame. Originally, HDLC reserved 3 bits
for the sequence and acknowledgment fields in the information format frame and
supervisory format frames, which allows for a window size of 7. Later variants of
HDLC increased this field width, subsequently increasing the window size. Figure
demonstrates a typical sequence for HDLC sliding windows. In each transmitted
frame, the n(s) field is set to a consecutive sequence number. The sending station
responds by sending acknowledgment frames with n(r) set to the next expected value
of n(s) in a received frame.

Sliding windows.

Sliding windows.