WINTER 2013 ASSIGNMENT MC0087-INTERNETWORKING WITH TCP/IP

1. Discuss the functions of transport layer and Network Interface Layer. Ans. Transport Layer

The transport layer is the third layer of the TCP/IP protocol stack. As the name suggests, the transport layer is responsible for the transport of the data. The transmission and reception of data is handled by the transport layer. This layer is also functions for detecting the errors in the transmitted data. Basically, the transport layer communicates data between the applications running on the computers. The applications and the operating system used are different on different computers. To identify the applications along with the operating systems, the transport layer uses a numbering system. These numbers assigned are associated with the application used and are called port numbers. The transport layer uses two protocols which are: TCP (Transmission Control Protocol): This a connection-oriented protocol. UDP (User Datagram Protocol): This is a connectionless protocol.
Network Interface Layer

The network interface is between the host computer and the network. It refers to the physical network and all related physical components which are responsible for the transmission of data. This layer uses protocol to send packets of information over the network. This protocol is not the same everywhere and varies from network to network. The functionalities of this layer can be seen by the internet user because they are carried out by the operating system and the hardware drivers (network drivers) allow the connection with the computer network. The main functions of network interface layer are routing and synchronizing data over the network, checking the data format, converting signals (analog to digital), error detection in the transmitted data.

2. Brief the following a. ISDN b. X.25 Ans.

a. ISDN: Integrated Services for Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the traditional circuits of the public switched telephone network. It was first defined in 1988 in the CCITT red book.[1] Prior to ISDN, the telephone system was viewed as a way to transport voice, with some special services available for data. The key feature of ISDN is that it integrates speech and data on the same lines, adding features that were not available in the classic telephone system. There are several kinds of access interfaces to ISDN defined as Basic Rate Interface (BRI), Primary Rate Interface (PRI), Narrowband ISDN (N-ISDN), and Broadband ISDN (B-ISDN). ISDN is a circuit-switched telephone network system, which also provides access to packet switched networks, designed to allow digital transmission of voice and data over ordinary telephone copper wires, resulting in potentially better voice quality than an analog phone can provide. It offers circuit-switched connections (for either voice or data), and packet-switched connections (for data), in increments of 64 kilobit/s. A major market application for ISDN in some countries is Internet access, where ISDN typically provides a maximum of 128 kbit/s in both upstream and downstream directions. Channel bonding can achieve a greater data rate; typically the ISDN B-channels of three or four BRIs (six to eight 64 kbit/s channels) are bonded.

b. X.25: It can be carried over the B or D channels of a BRI line, and over the B channels of a PRI line. X.25 over the D channel is used at many point-of-sale (credit card) terminals because it eliminates the modem setup, and because it connects to the central system over a B channel, thereby eliminating the need for modems and making much better use of the central system's telephone lines. X.25 was also part of an ISDN protocol called "Always On/Dynamic ISDN", or AO/DI. This allowed a user to have a constant multi-link PPP connection to the internet over X.25 on the D channel, and brought up one or two B channels as needed.

3. What is congestion? Mention few algorithms to overcome congestion. Ans: TCP is the popular transport protocol for best-effort traffic in Internet. However,

TCP is not well-suited for many applications such as streaming multimedia, because TCP congestion control algorithms introduce large variations in the congestion window size (and corresponding large variations in the sending rate). Such variability in the sending rate is not acceptable to many multimedia applications. Hence, many multimedia applications are built over UDP and use no congestion control at all. The absence of congestion control in applications built over UDP may lead to congestion collapse on the Internet. In addition, the UDP flows may starve any competing TCP flows. To overcome these adverse effects, congestion control needs to be incorporated intoall applications using the Internet, whether at the transport layer or provided by the applicationitself. Furthermore, the congestion control algorithms must be TCPfriendly, i.e. the TCP-friendlyflows should not gain more throughput than competing TCP flows in the long run. Thus, in recentyears, many researchers have focussed on developing TCP-friendly transport protocols whichare suitable for many applications that currently use UDP. In this direction, IETF is currentlyworking on developing a new protocol called, Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP),that provides an unreliable datagram service with congestion control. DCCP is designed to useany suitable TCP- friendly congestion control algorithm. With a multitude of TCPfriendlycongestion control algorithms available, some important questions that need to be answered are:What are the strengths and weakness of the various TCP-friendly algorithms? Is there a singlealgorithm which is uniformly superior over other algorithms?. The first step in answering thesequestions is to study the short-term and long-term behavior of these algorithms. Although the goalof all TCP-friendly algorithms is to emulate the behavior of TCP in the long term, thesealgorithms may have an adverse impact in the short-term on competing TCP flows. Since TCP-friendly algorithms are designed for smoother sending rates than TCP, these algorithms may reactslowly to new connections that share a common bottleneck link. Such a slower response mayhave a deleterious effect on TCP flows. Forexample, a TCP connection suffering losses in itsslow start phase may enter the congestion avoidance phase with a small window, andconsequently obtain lesser throughput than other competing flows. Hence, it is clear that adetailed study is required on the short-term (transient)behavior of TCP friendly flows in additionto their long-term behavior. In this paper, we study the transient behavior of three TCP-friendlycongestion control algorithms: general AIMD congestion control, TFRC and binomial congestioncontrol algorithm. Prior work has studied the transient behavior of these algorithms when REDqueues are used at the bottleneck link. However, as droptail Queues are still widely used inpractice, in this paper we study the transient behavior of these algorithms with droptail queues.

Past work has also identified certain unfairness of AIMD and binomial congestion controlalgorithms to TCP with droptail queues, but has not identified the reasons for this unfairness. In this paper, we analyze the reasons for this unfairness, and validate the analysis by simulations.The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we briefly overview the various TCP-friendly congestioncontrol algorithms proposed in literature. In Section III, we define thetransientbehaviors studied in this paper, and analyze the expected transient behavior of the various TCP-friendly congestion control algorithms. Section IV analyzes in detail the reasons for unfairness of AIMD and binomial congestion control algorithms with droptail queues.
Few algorithms to overcome congestion A. Transient behaviors evaluated in the paper B. Equation-Based Congestion Control Algorithm C. General AIMD-Based Congestion Control Algorithms D. Binomial Congestion Control Algorithm

4. Differentiate between permanent and transient host Groups.

Ans. IP multicasting is defined as the transmission of an IP datagram to a "host group",a set of zero or more hosts identified by a single IP destination address. Amulticast datagram is delivered to all members of its destination host group withthe same "bestefforts" reliability as regular unicast IP datagrams, i.e. the datagram is not guaranteed to arrive at all members of the destination group or inthe same order relative to other datagrams. The membership of a host group is dynamic; that is, hosts may join and leavegroups at any time. There is no restriction on the location or number of membersin a host group, but membership in a group may be restricted to only those hostspossessing a private access key. A host may be a member of more than one groupat a time. A host need not be a member of a group to send datagrams to it.A host group may be permanent or transient. A permanent group has a well-known, administratively assigned IP address. It is the address, not the membershipof the group, that is permanent; at any time a permanent group may have anynumber of members, even zero. A transient group, on the other hand, is assignedan address dynamically when the group is created, at the request of a host. Atransient group ceases to exist, and its address becomes eligible for reassignment,when its membership drops to zero. The creation of transient groups and the maintenance of group membershipinformation is the responsibility of "multicast agents", entities that reside ininternet gateways or other special-purpose hosts. There is at least one multicastagent directly attached to every IP network or subnetwork that supports IPmulticasting. A host requests the creation of new groups, and joins or leavesexisting groups, by exchanging messages with a neighboring agent.Multicast agents are also responsible for internetwork delivery of multicast IPdatagrams. When sending a multicast IP datagram, a host transmits it to a localnetwork multicast address which identifies all neighboring members of thedestination host group. If the group has members on other networks, a multicastagent becomes an additional recipient of the local multicast and relays thedatagram to agents on each of those other networks, via the internet gatewaysystem. Finally, the agents on the other networks each transmit the datagram as alocal multicast to their own neighboring members of the destination group.Level 2: full support for IP multicasting, allows a host to create, join and leave hostgroups, as well as send IP datagrams to host groups. It requires implementation of the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and extension of the IP and localnetwork service interfaces within the host. All of the following sections of thismemo are applicable to level 2 implementations.RFC 988, page 10:Within the IP module, the membership management operations are supported bythe Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP), specified in Appendix I. As well ashaving messages corresponding to each of the operations specified above, IGMPalso specifies a "deadman timer" procedure whereby hosts periodically confirmtheir memberships with the multicast agents. The IP module must maintain a data structure listing the IP addresses of all hostgroups to

which the host currently belongs, along with each group's loopbackpolicy, access key, and timer variables. This data structure is used by the IPmulticast transmission service to know which outgoing datagrams to loop back,and by the reception service to know which incoming datagrams to accept. Thepurpose of IGMP and the management interface operations is to maintain this datastructure. The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is used between IP hosts andtheir immediate neighbor multicast agents to support the creation of transientgroups, the addition and deletion of members of a group, and the periodicconfirmation of group membership. IGMP is an asymmetric protocol and isspecified here from the point of view of a host, rather than a multicast agent.

5. What is domain name resolution? Discuss the domain name resolution process Ans. When using the Internet most people connect to web sites, ftp servers or other Internet servers by connecting to a domain name, as in www.bleepingcomputer.com. Internet applications, though, do not communicate via domain names, but rather using IP addresses, such as 192.168.1.1. Therefore when you type a domain name in your program that you wish to connect to, your application must first convert it to an IP address that it will use to connect to. The way these hostnames are resolved to their mapped IP address is called Domain Name Resolution. On almost all operating systems whether they be Apple, Linux, Unix, Netware, or Windows the majority of resolutions from domain names to IP addresses are done through a procedure called DNS.

Domain Name Resolutions As discussed above, Domain Name Resolution is the task of converting domain names to their corresponding IP address. This is all done behind the scenes and is rarely noticed by the user. When you enter a domain name in an application that uses the Internet, the application will issue a command to have the operating system convert the domain name into its IP address, and then connect to that IP address to perform whatever operation it is trying to do. The way the operating system resolves the domain name is based upon its configuration. For almost all operating systems the default order for Domain Name resolution is as follows: Hosts File - There is a file called the HOSTS file that you can use to convert domain names to IP addresses. Entries in the HOSTS file override any mappings that would be resolved via a DNS server. Domain Name System - This is the system used on the Internet for converting domain names to their corresponding IP addresses. Your operating system will connect to the DNS server configured on your computer and have that server return to you the IP address for the domain name you queried it with. Netbios - This only applies to Windows machines and will only be used to map names to IP addresses if all previous methods failed. This method will attempt to map the netbios name you are trying to connect to with an IP address.

It is possible though to change the order that your operating system uses when doing Domain Name Resolution. We will discuss these methods for the Windows and Unix/Linux operating systems below.

Domain Name Resolution on Windows Windows by default uses the above order for Domain Name Resolution. This can be changed though by changing certain registry keys. There registry keys are: Registry Key Description DnsPriority Which corresponds to using the Domain Name System LocalPriority This refers to the local name of the computer HostsPriority This is the HOSTS file NetbtPriority This is using Netbios name mapping You assign to these keys a priority based upon values ranging between -32768 and 32767. The lower the number you assign to the entry, the higher the priority for that particular resolution provider. For example, examine the priorities assigned to the values below: DnsPriority = 30 LocalPriority = 200 HostsPriority = 75 NetbtPriority = 100 What this will do is change the Domain Name Resolution order to the following sequence: Domain Name System Hosts file Netbios Mappings The Local Computer Name

As you can see I have changed the default order of how Windows will do domain name resolution and the value that had the lowest number had the highest priority when doing domain name resolution. The location for the above registry subkey's can be found under these registry keys:
Windows 95/98/ME Windows NT, 2000, XP HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSTCP\ServiceProvider HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\ServiceProvider

Domain Name Resolution on Linux and Unix Unix and Linux have a similar default Domain Name Resolution order as Windows. The operating system will first check its /etc/hosts file and if it does not find an entry for the queried domain, it will then query its configured DNS servers.

The order in which server resolves domain names can be changed by editing the /etc/host.conf file. This file determines the order that the operating system uses to resolve domain names. The line that we are concerned with is the one that looks like: order hosts, bind This tells the operating system to first check the hosts file, and if that fails, to use DNS, otherwise known as bind which is the name of the software used to make DNS requests. You can change the order the operating system uses, by changing the order line. For example if we wanted to make it so it queried DNS first and the hosts file second we would change the line to read: order bind, hosts Currently the valid values you can place after order is hosts, bind, or nis. NIS stands for the Network Information Service.

6. Differentiate between Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and Post Office Protocol. Ans. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and POP (Post Office Protocol) are both standards used for emailing. Simply put, SMTP is used when receiving and sending emails (like your very own mailman which picks up and delivers your mail to different locations), while POP is the protocol used for the storing of emails (like your very own Post Office Box for mail storage). SMTP is the protocol in general use at the moment. SMTP has always been very reliable. Since its invention in the eighties, all emails are usually delivered to the receiver without encountering problems. This is why SMTP has become the standard for the transfer of the bulk of emails on the Internet. It is mainly used for outgoing email transport and makes use of the TCPport 25. SMTP is used by MTA or the Mail Transfer Agent. Nowadays, SMTP is more widely used for sending emails than receiving them because POP is used for accessing mail box accounts on an email server (like Internet Message Access Protocol and Lotus Notes). Receiving emails is dependent on the mail/client applications. User-level client mail applications use SMTP for sending out emails to a mail server where it is then relayed. Still, SMTP was not safe from technicalities such as different issues for a lot of present users. One of the problems is the unavailability of a verification service for the sender of the mail. This was not a big problem during its invention because the Internet was used by very few people, usually only those hailing from the academy. Today, though, spam mail is a worldwide phenomenon. Not only that, transfer of different computer viruses is also quite large. Increasing the security for the SMTP has been made although it is still not very effective. Another issue is that SMTP is also dependent on the network/ISP settings. Also, if the message is not delivered, it is bounced back to the sender. SMTP also verifies proper configuration before sending a message. It verifies proper configuration and grants permission to a computer attempting to send a message. POP gives a basic, standardized way for people to use their own mailboxes and for them to be able to download messages to their own computers. How? All emails are downloaded to your computer from the mail server. So even without an Internet connection, the emails are still accessible. STMP servers also make use of a code for easier identification. A clear example would be configuring Hotmail with Outlook Express to produce the code: smtp.hotmail.com. Like the SMTP, POP also needs to be properly configured for an email client so retrieving of messages is permitted. An example of this is mail.hotmail.com which is POP configured with Outlook Express. Messages stored under POP are stored on the server and are then moved to the computers hard drive. This is why having a backup is e xtremely important so all retrieved messages are safe. When an email client is configured with both SMTP and POP, a mailbox is now available for sending and receiving e-mails with just one central location. This mailbox is also protected by a password.