PROTOCOLS

Usually software implemented

Noiseless channel assumption

*Ideal channel

No frames are Lost Duplicated Corrupted Protocol do not implement error control, in this category

1.Simplest Protocol
Do not implement flow control & error control We assume here that receiver can handle any frame it receives, with negligible processing time. The data link layer of the receiver immediately removes the header from the frame and hands the data packet to its network layer, which can also accept the packet immediately. In other words, the receiver can never be overwhelmed with incoming frames.

Simplest protocol Design

Sender site cannot send a frame until its network layer has a data packet to send. The receiver site cannot deliver a data packet to its network layer until a frame arrives. The procedure at the sender site is constantly running; there is no action until there is a request from the network layer. The procedure at the receiver site is also constantly running, but there is no action until notification from the physical layer arrives

No need for ACK in noiseless channel

2. Stop-and-wait protocol
Do not implement error control but implement flow control. If data frames arrive at the receiver site faster than they can be processed, the frames must be stored until their use. Normally, the receiver does not have enough storage space, especially if it is receiving data from many sources. This may result in either the discarding of frames or denial of service. To prevent the receiver from becoming overwhelmed with frames, we somehow need to tell the sender to slow down. So ACK signal is used.

Stop & Wait design

Sender sends one frame, stops until it receives confirmation from the receiver (ACK), and then sends.

At any time, there is either one data frame on the forward channel or one ACK frame on the reverse channel.
We therefore need a half-duplex link, the next frame.

NOISY CHANNEL
noiseless channels are nonexistent

Both flow control & error control has to be implemented.

1.Stop-and-Wait Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ)

Flow control mechanism same as stop-&-wait. Error correction in Stop-and-Wait ARQ is done by keeping a copy of the sent frame and retransmitting of the frame when the timer expires. If no ACK is received.

ACK can also get corrupted/lost so sequence number is used for each frame.

Three possibilities
If a frame with sequence number x is sent 1.Frame arrives safely & ACK arrives at sender asking for transmission of frame with sequence number x+1. 2.If packet arrives safely but ACK get lost, sender retransmits x after time out, however receiver was expecting x+1. 3.The frame get lost/corrupted at never reach at receiver, sender resend x after time-out.

Sequence number
To distinguish between case 1 & 2 sequence number x & x+1 is required. but x+2 is not required. In case 1, the frame can be numbered x again because frames x and x + 1 are acknowledged and there is no ambiguity at either site. In cases 2 and 3, the new frame is x + 1, not x + 2. So we need just two sequence numbers x,x+1.i.e 0,0+1=1 & pattern will be 0,1,0,1 same as mod-2

ACK number
The acknowledgment numbers always announce the sequence number of the next frame expected by the receiver. For example, if frame 0 has arrived safe and sound, the receiver sends an ACK frame with acknowledgment 1 (meaning frame 1 is expected next). If frame 1 has arrived safe and sound, the receiver sends an ACK frame with acknowledgment 0 (meaning frame 0 is expected). In Stop-and-Wait ARQ, the acknowledgment number always announces in modulo-2 arithmetic the sequence number of the next frame expected

Stop-&-wait ARQ design

Sender has control variable SN represents seq, no of frame to be sent next. Receiver has control variable RN represents seq, no of frame expected next. When a sent frame is acknowledged, the value of SN is incremented (modulo-2), which means if it is 0, it becomes 1 and vice versa. When a frame is received, the value of RN is incremented (modulo-2), which means if it is 0, it becomes 1 and vice versa.

Efficiency of stop & wait ARQ

The protocol is inefficient if BW-Delay product is more. If BW is more & round trip delay is more in that case channel remains idle for most of time. The bandwidth-delay product is a measure of the number of bits we can send out of our system while waiting for news from the receiver.

Question
Assume that, in a Stop-and-Wait ARQ system, the bandwidth of the line is 1 Mbps, and 1 bit takes 20 ms to make a round trip. What is the bandwidth-delay product? If the system data frames are 1000 bits in length, what is the utilization percentage of the link?

Answer
BW-delay product is:

The system can send 20,000 bits during the time it takes for the data to go from the sender to the receiver and then back again. However, the system sends only 1000 bits. We can say that the link utilization is only 1000/20,000, or 5 %. For this reason, for a link with a high bandwidth or long delay, the use of Stop-and-Wait ARQ wastes the capacity of the link.

Pipelining
In networking and in other areas, a task is often begun before the previous task has ended. This is known as pipelining. There is no pipelining in Stop-and-Wait ARQ because we need to wait for a frame to reach the destination and be acknowledged before the next frame can be sent. Pipelining improves the efficiency of the transmission especially for the number of bits in transition is large with respect to the bandwidthdelay product.

Ques) What is the utilization percentage of the link in previous question if we have a protocol that can send up to 15 frames before stopping and worrying about the acknowledgments? Ans) The bandwidth-delay product is still 20,000 bits. The system can send up to 15 frames or 15,000 bits during a round trip. This means the utilization is 15,000/20,000, or 75 percent. Of course, if there are damaged frames, the utilization percentage is much less because frames have to be resent.

2.Go-Back-N Automatic Repeat Request

To improve the efficiency of transmission (filling the pipe), multiple frames must be in transition while waiting for acknowledgment. In other words, we need to let more than one frame be outstanding to keep the channel busy while the sender is waiting for acknowledgment.

In this protocol we can send several frames before receiving acknowledgments; we keep a copy of these frames until the acknowledgments arrive.

Sequence Number
Frames from a sending station are numbered sequentially. However, because we need to include the sequence number of each frame in the header, we need to set a limit. If the header of the frame allows m bits for the sequence number, the sequence numbers range from 0 to 2m - 1.i.e. 0, 1,2,3,4,5,6, 7,8,9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,0, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, 11, ...

Sliding Window
The sliding window is an abstract concept that defines the range of sequence numbers that is the concern of the sender and receiver.

The range which is the concern of the sender is called the send sliding window.
The range that is the concern of the receiver is called the receive sliding window.

 The send window is an imaginary box covering the sequence numbers of the data frames which can be in transit.

In each window position, some of these sequence numbers define the frames that have been sent; others define those that can be sent.
The maximum size of the window is 2m 1 The window at any time divides the possible sequence numbers into four regions.

 The send window is an abstract concept defining an imaginary box of size 2m 1 with three variables: Sf, Sn, and Ssize. Sf :defines the sequence number of the first (oldest) outstanding frame. Sn holds the sequence number that will be assigned to the next frame to be sent. Ssize defines the size of the window, which is fixed (can be variable also)

 The acknowledgments in this protocol are cumulative, meaning that more than one frame can be acknowledged by an ACK frame.

In Figure frames 0, 1, and 2 are acknowledged So the window has slided to the right three slots.
Note that the value of Sf is 3 because frame 3 is now the first outstanding frame

Receive window
The receive window makes sure that the correct data frames are received and that the correct acknowledgments are sent. The receive window is an abstract concept defining an imaginary box of size 1 with one single variable Rn The window slides when a correct frame has arrived; sliding occurs one slot at a time.

Timers
Although there can be a timer for each frame that is sent, in this protocol we use only one.

The reason is that the timer for the first outstanding frame always expires first; we send all outstanding frames when this timer expires.

Acknowledgment The receiver sends a positive acknowledgment if a frame has arrived safe and sound and in order. If a frame is damaged or is received out of order, the receiver is silent and will discard all subsequent frames until it receives the one it is expecting. The silence of the receiver causes the timer of the unacknowledged frame at the sender site to expire. This, in turn, causes the sender to go back and resend all frames, beginning with the one with the expired timer. The receiver does not have to acknowledge each frame received. It can send one cumulative acknowledgment for several frames.

Resending a Frame
When the timer expires, the sender resends all outstanding frames.
E.g. suppose the sender has already sent frame up to 6, but the timer for frame 3 expires. This means that frame 3 has not been acknowledged; the sender goes back and sends frames 3, 4,5, and 6 again. That is why the protocol is called Go-Back-N ARQ

Why Size of send window<2m

Advantage of cumulative acknowledgement

The example shows how cumulative acknowledgments can help if acknowledgments are delayed or lost.

This is an example of a case where the forward channel is reliable, but the reverse is not. No data frames are lost, but some ACKs are delayed and one is lost. After initialization, there are seven sender events. Request events are triggered by data from the network layer; arrival events are triggered by acknowledgments from the physical layer. There is no time-out event here because all outstanding frames are acknowledged before the timer expires. Note that although ACK 2 is lost, ACK 3 serves as both ACK 2 and ACK 3.

3.Selective Repeat ARQ

Go-back-N keeps track of one frame at receiver. All the frame N-are resent if any damage occur to a particular frame. It unnecessary burdens the channel. If only that frame is transmitted which is damaged, it will save a lot of BW. This mechanism is called Selective Repeat-ARQ. It is more efficient for noisy links, but the processing at the receiver is more complex NAK (negative acknowledgement used for damaged frames)

window
There are differences between the windows in this protocol and the ones in Go-Back-N. 1): First, the size of the send window is much smaller; it is 2m-1 instead of 2m-1 2): Second, the receive window is the same size as the send window if m = 4, the sequence numbers go from 0 to 15, but the size of the window is just 8 (it is 15 in the Go-Back-N Protocol).

The smaller window size means less efficiency in filling the pipe, but the fact that there are fewer duplicate frames can compensate for this.

Send window

Receive window

Receive window
Because the sizes of the send window and receive window are the same: All the frames in the send frame can arrive out of order and be stored until they can be delivered. Those slots inside the window that have arrived out of order wait for their neighbors to arrive before delivery to the network layer. Receiver never delivers packets out of order to the network layer

Protocol design

Window size
Why the size of the sender and receiver windows must be at most one half of 2m. e.g. we choose m = 2, which means the size of the window is 2m/2,or 2.

Consider the case when all the Acknowledgments are lost for m=2

In Selective Repeat ARQ, the size of the sender and receiver window must be at most one-half of 2m

If contiguous frames, starting from Rn have been marked, we deliver their data to the network layer and slide the window.

 The timer for frame 0 starts at the first request, but stops when the ACK for this frame arrives.

The timer for frame 1 starts at the second request, restarts when a NAK arrives, and finally stops when the last ACK arrives.
The other two timers start when the corresponding frames are sent and stop at the last arrival event.

 There are two conditions for the delivery of frames to the network layer: First, a set of consecutive frames must have arrived. Second, the set starts from the beginning of the window. In Selective Repeat, ACKs are sent when data are delivered to the network layer. If the data belonging to n frames are delivered in one shot, only one ACK is sent for all of them

Piggybacking
In real life, data frames are normally flowing in both directions: from node A to node B and from node B to node A. This means that the control information (ACK,NAK) also needs to flow in both directions. A technique called piggybacking is used to improve the efficiency of the bidirectional protocols. When a frame is carrying data from A to B, it can also carry control information about arrived (or lost) frames from B When a frame is carrying data from B to A, it can also carry control information about the arrived (or lost) frames from A.

Design of piggybacking in Go-Back-N ARQ