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Lab 2 Problems

This document contains 18 problems related to computer networks and networking concepts. Some of the problems ask about specific network characteristics like bandwidth, latency, and protocols. Others involve calculating things like file transfer times over different network speeds or estimating future internet growth. The problems touch on topics like layered network protocols, wireless networking standards, and acknowledgement strategies for file transfers.

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1K views

Lab 2 Problems

This document contains 18 problems related to computer networks and networking concepts. Some of the problems ask about specific network characteristics like bandwidth, latency, and protocols. Others involve calculating things like file transfer times over different network speeds or estimating future internet growth. The problems touch on topics like layered network protocols, wireless networking standards, and acknowledgement strategies for file transfers.

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api-251706325
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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PROBLEMS for Chapter 1_ Tanenbaum Computer Networks.

20.10.2015

1. Imagine that you have trained your St. Bernard, Bernie, to carry a box of three 8-mm tapes instead of a flask
of brandy. (When your disk fills up, you consider that an emergency.) These tapes each contain 7 gigabytes. The
dog can travel to your side, wherever you may be, at 18 km/hour. For what range of distances does Bernie have a
higher data rate than a transmission line whose data rate (excluding overhead) is 150 Mbps? How does your
answer change if (i) Bernies speed is doubled; (ii) each tape capacity is doubled; (iii) the data rate of the
transmission line is doubled.

2. The performance of a client-server system is strongly influenced by two major network characteristics: the
bandwidth of the network (that is, how many bits/sec it can transport) and the latency (that is, how many seconds
it takes for the first bit to get from the client to the server). Give an example of a network that exhibits high
bandwidth but also high latency. Then give an example of one that has both low bandwidth and low latency.

3. Besides bandwidth and latency, what other parameter is needed to give a good characterization of the quality
of service offered by a network used for (i) digitized voice traffic? (ii) video traffic? (iii) financial transaction
traffic?

4. A factor in the delay of a store-and-forward packet-switching system is how long it takes to store and forward
a packet through a switch. If switching time is 10 sec, is this likely to be a major factor in the response of a
client-server system where the client is in New York and the server is in California? Assume the propagation
speed in copper and fiber to be 2/3 the speed of light in vacuum.

5. A client-server system uses a satellite network, with the satellite at a height of 40,000 km. What is the bestcase delay in response to a request?

6. Five routers are to be connected in a point-to-point subnet. Between each pair of routers, the designers may
put a high-speed line, a medium-speed line, a low-speed line, or no line. If it takes 100 ms of computer time to
generate and inspect each topology, how long will it take to inspect all of them?

7. What are two reasons for using layered protocols? What is one possible disadvantage of using layered
protocols?

8. The president of the Specialty Paint Corp. gets the idea to work with a local beer brewer to produce an
invisible beer can (as an anti-litter measure). The president tells her legal department to look into it, and they in
turn ask engineering for help. As a result, the chief engineer calls his counterpart at the brewery to discuss the
technical aspects of the project. The engineers then report back to their respective legal departments, which then
confer by telephone to arrange the legal aspects. Finally, the two corporate presidents discuss the financial side
of the deal. What principle of a multilayer protocol in the sense of the OSI model does this communication
mechanism violate?

9. Two networks each provide reliable connection-oriented service. One of them offers a reliable byte stream and
the other offers a reliable message stream. Are these identical? If so, why is the distinction made? If not, give an
example of how they differ.

10. What does negotiation mean when discussing network protocols? Give an example.

11. What is the main difference between TCP and UDP?

12. The Internet is roughly doubling in size every 18 months. Although no one really knows for sure, one
estimate put the number of hosts on it at 600 million in 2009. Use these data to compute the expected number of
Internet hosts in the year 2018. Do you believe this? Explain why or why not.

13. When a file is transferred between two computers, two acknowledgement strategies are possible. In the first
one, the file is chopped up into packets, which are individually acknowledged by the receiver, but the file
transfer as a whole is not acknowledged. In the second one, the packets are not acknowledged individually, but
the entire file is acknowledged when it arrives. Discuss these two approaches.

14. Mobile phone network operators need to know where their subscribers mobile phones (hence their users) are
located. Explain why this is bad for users. Now give reasons why this is good for users.

15. How long was a bit in the original 802.3 standard in meters? Use a transmission speed of 10 Mbps and
assume the propagation speed in coax is 2/3 the speed of light in vacuum.

16. An image is 1600 1200 pixels with 3 bytes/pixel. Assume the image is uncompressed. How long does it
take to transmit it over a 56-kbps modem channel? Over a 1-Mbps cable modem? Over a 10-Mbps Ethernet?
Over 100-Mbps Ethernet? Over gigabit Ethernet?

17. Ethernet and wireless networks have some similarities and some differences. One property of Ethernet is that
only one frame at a time can be transmitted on an Ethernet. Does 802.11 share this property with Ethernet?
Discuss your answer.

18. Suppose the algorithms used to implement the operations at layer k is changed. How
does this impact operations at layers k 1 and k +1?

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