Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, 5e

Larry L. Peterson and Bruce S. Davie

Chapter 1
Foundation

Copyright © 2010, Elsevier Inc. All rights Reserved 1

 Chapter 1
Computer Network
 A computer network is a group of computer
systems and other computing hardware devices
that are linked together through communication
channels to provide communication and
resource-sharing among a wide range of users.

 Networks are commonly categorized based on

their characteristics.

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 Chapter 1
Chapter Outline
 Applications
 Requirements
 Network Architecture
 Implementing Network Software
 Performance

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 Chapter 1
Chapter Goal
 Exploring the requirements that different
applications and different communities place on
the computer network
 Introducing the idea of network architecture
 Define key metrics that will be used to evaluate
the performance of computer network

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 Chapter 1
Applications
 Most people know about the Internet (a
computer network) through applications
 World Wide Web
 Email
 Online Social Network
 Streaming Audio Video
 File Sharing
 Instant Messaging
 …

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 Chapter 1
 URL
 http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~llp/index.html

 17 Messages

 www.cs.Princeton ---- 128.112.136.35

(6 messages)
 TCP connection between browser and

server(3)
 HTTP Get request & the server to respond

with requested page(4)

 Terminate TCP connection(4)

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 Chapter 1
Example of an application

A multimedia application including video-conferencing

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 Chapter 1
Application Protocol
 URL
 Uniform resource locater
 http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~llp/index.html
 HTTP
 Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
 TCP
 Transmission Control Protocol
 17 messages for one URL request
 6 to find the IP (Internet Protocol) address
 3 for connection establishment of TCP
 4 for HTTP request and acknowledgement
 Request: I got your request and I will send the data
 Reply: Here is the data you requested; I got the data
 4 messages for tearing down TCP connection

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 Chapter 1
Requirements
 Application Programmer
 List the services that his application needs: delay
bounded delivery of data
 Network Designer
 Design a cost-effective network with sharable
resources
 Network Provider
 List the characteristics of a system that is easy to
manage

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 Chapter 1
Connectivity
 Need to understand the
following terminologies
 Scale
 Link
 Nodes
 Point-to-point
 Multiple access
 Switched Network
 Circuit Switched
 Packet Switched
 Packet, message
 Store-and-forward

(a) Point-to-point
(b) Multiple access

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 Chapter 1
Connectivity
 Terminologies (contd.)
 Cloud
 Hosts
(a)
 Switches
 internetwork
 Router/gateway
 Host-to-host connectivity
 Address
 Routing
 Unicast/broadcast/multicast

(b)

(a) A switched network

(b) Interconnection of networks

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 Chapter 1
Strategies
 Circuit switching: carry bit streams
 original telephone network

 Packet switching: store-and-forward

messages
 Internet

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 Chapter 1
Addressing and Routing
 Address: byte-string that identifies a node
 usually unique
 Routing: process of forwarding messages to
the destination node based on its address
 Types of addresses
 unicast: node-specific
 broadcast: all nodes on the network
 multicast: some subset of nodes on the network

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 Chapter 1
Cost-Effective Resource Sharing
 Resource: links and
nodes
 How to share a link?
 Multiplexing
 De-multiplexing
 Synchronous Time-division
Multiplexing
 Time slots/data
transmitted in
predetermined slots
Multiplexing multiple logical flows
over a single physical link

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Cost-Effective Resource Sharing
A switch multiplexing packets from
multiple sources onto one shared
link
Chapter 1
 FDM: Frequency Division
Multiplexing
 Statistical Multiplexing
 Data is transmitted based
on demand of each flow.
 What is a flow?
 Packets vs. Messages
 FIFO, Round-Robin,
Priorities (Quality-of-
Service (QoS))
 Congested?
 LAN, MAN, WAN
 SAN (System Area
Networks
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 Chapter 1
Asynchronous TDM

Only three lines actively sending data

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 Chapter 1
Support for Common Services
 Logical Channels
 Application-to-Application communication path or a
pipe

Process communicating over an

abstract channel

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 Chapter 1
Common Communication Patterns
 Client/Server
 Two types of communication channel
 Request/Reply Channels
 Message Stream Channels

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 Chapter 1
Reliability
 Network should hide the errors
 Bits are lost
 Bit errors (1 to a 0, and vice versa)
 Burst errors – several consecutive errors
 Packets are lost (Congestion)
 Links and Node failures
 Messages are delayed
 Messages are delivered out-of-order
 Third parties eavesdrop

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 Chapter 1
Protocols
 Protocol defines the interfaces between the
layers in the same system and with the layers of
peer system
 Building blocks of a network architecture
 Each protocol object has two different interfaces
 service interface: operations on this protocol
 peer-to-peer interface: messages exchanged with
peer
 Term “protocol” is overloaded
 specification of peer-to-peer interface
 module that implements this interface

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 Chapter 1
Internet Architecture
 Defined by IETF
 Three main features
 Does not imply strict layering. The application is free to bypass
the defined transport layers and to directly use IP or other
underlying networks
 An hour-glass shape – wide at the top, narrow in the middle and
wide at the bottom. IP serves as the focal point for the
architecture
 In order for a new protocol to be officially included in the
architecture, there needs to be both a protocol specification and
at least one (and preferably two) representative implementations
of the specification

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 Chapter 1
Performance Measures
 Computer networks are expected to perform well.
 Bandwidth and Throughput
 Bandwidth and throughput are two of the most
confusing terms used in networking.
 Bandwidth-Common Usage: the physical width of the
available frequency band.
 Example: Voice channel = 300-3300Hz = 3000 Hz
 Example: Ethernet = 10Mbps or 100ηs/bit
 Throughput-Common Usage: the measured
performance of a system.
 Example: an FTP connection over Ethernet 2Mbps due to
round trip delays and packetizing effects.
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 Chapter 1
Performance Measures
 Because of various inefficiencies of implementation, a
pair of nodes connected by a link with a bandwidth of 10
Mbps might achieve a throughput of only 2 Mbps.

 The bandwidth of a communication link, refer to the

number of bits per second that can be transmitted on the
link.

 For example, a network might have a bandwidth of 10

million bits/second(Mbps), meaning that it is able to
deliver10 million bits every second.

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 Chapter 1
Performance Measures
 Bandwidth can also be defined like how long it takes to
transmit each bit of data.

 On a 1-Mbps network, for example, it takes 1

microsecond (μs) to transmit each bit..

 So each bit on a 1-Mbps link is 1 μs wide, while each bit

on a 2-Mbps link is 0.5 μs wide

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 Chapter 1
Bandwidth

Bits transmitted at a particular bandwidth can be regarded as

having some width:
(a) bits transmitted at 1Mbps (each bit 1 μs wide);
(b) bits transmitted at 2Mbps (each bit 0.5 μs wide).

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 Chapter 1
Performance
 The second performance metric, latency, corresponds
to how long it takes a message to travel from one end
of a network to the other.
 Latency is measured strictly in terms of time(Delay).
 One-way latency: Time to send a message only in one
direction.
 RTT Latency: Time to send a message from one end of
a network to the other and back to the original
location.

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 Chapter 1
Performance
 Latency has three components:
 First, there is the speed of light propagation delay.

 Second, there is the amount of time takes to transmit a

unit of data. This is a function of the network
bandwidth and the size of the packet in which the data
is carried.

 Third, there may be queuing delays inside the network,

since packet switches generally need to store packets
for some time before forwarding them on an outbound
link
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 Chapter 1
Performance
 Latency = Propagation + transmit + queue
 Propagation = distance/relative speed of light
 Transmit = size/bandwidth

 One bit transmission => propagation is important

 Large bytes transmission => bandwidth is important

 Bandwidth and latency combine to define the

performance characteristics of a given link or
channel

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 Chapter 1
Bits and Bytes

• A common error is to confuse the b in Mb with the B

in MB. The difference is that b usually stands for
binary bit and B usually stands for Byte(8 bits)
• Unfortunately, we routinely use both terms in net-
working design specifications..

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 Chapter 1
Delay X Bandwidth
 We think the channel between a pair of processes as a
hollow pipe
 Latency (delay) length of the pipe and bandwidth the
width of the pipe
 Delay X Bandwidth Product= maximum number of
bits that could be in transit through the pipe at any
given instant.

Network as a pipe

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 Chapter 1
Delay X Bandwidth
 Delay of 50 ms and bandwidth of 45 Mbps
 Amount of bits that could be transmit through pipe,
 50 x 10-3 seconds x 45 x 106 bits/second
 2.25 x 106 bits ≈ 280 KB data.

Network as a pipe

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 Chapter 1
Delay X Bandwidth
 Relative importance of bandwidth and latency
depends on application
 For large file transfer, bandwidth is critical

 For small messages (HTTP, NFS, etc.), latency is

critical
 Variance in latency (jitter) can also affect some

applications (e.g., audio/video conferencing)

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 Chapter 1
Delay X Bandwidth
 How many bits the sender must transmit before the
first bit arrives at the receiver if the sender keeps
the pipe full is decided by delay X bandwidth
product.
 If the sender needs acknowledgment from the
receiver it takes another one-way latency to
receive a response from the receiver
No of bits= 2 X delay X bandwidth
ie, No of bits= RTT X bandwidth
 If the sender does not fill the pipe—the sender will
not fully utilize the network
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 Chapter 1
Assignment 1

 High Speed Networks- Submit on next monday

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 Chapter 1
Summary
 We have identified what we expect from a computer
network
 We have defined a layered architecture for computer
network that will serve as a blueprint for our design
 We have discussed two performance metrics using
which we can analyze the performance of computer
networks

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