Computer networks

COMPUTER NETWORKS

UNIT - I

Network architecture – layers – Physical links – Channel

Access on links – Hybrid multiple access techniques – Issues
in the data link layer – Framing – Error correction and
detection – Link-level flow control

Introduction

Computer Network: Definition

Collection of autonomous computers interconnected by single

technology.
Connectivity
Connectivity occurs between two computers through physical
medium like coaxial cable or an optical fiber.

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Physical Medium – Link

Computers - Nodes
When a physical link occurs between a pair of nodes then it is
referred as point-to-point.
When more than two nodes share a single physical link then it is
referred as Multiple access.

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

Data communication between the nodes is done by forwarding the

data from one link to another. The systematic way of organizing these
forwarding nodes form a switched network.

Two common types of switched network are

 Circuit switched – e.g. Telephone System
 Packet switched – e.g. Postal System
Packet Switched Network
In this network nodes send discrete blocks of data to each other.
These blocks can be called as packet or message.
Store and forward strategy:
This network follows this technique. It means “Each node receives
a complete packets over the link, stores in internal memory and then
forwards to next node”.
Circuit Switched Network

It first establishes a circuit across the links and allows source node
to send stream of bits across this circuit to the destination node

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The representation of network is given by cloud symbol

Fig: Switched network.

Cloud represents the network
Nodes inside the cloud (Switches) – Implement the network
Nodes outside the cloud (host) - Use the network
Internetwork
Set of independent network are interconnected to form inter
network or internet. Node that is connected to two or more network is
called router or gateway. It is responsible for forwarding data between
the networks.
Addressing
The final requirement is that each node must be able to say which
of the other node it wants to communicate with.
This is done by assigning address to each node. when a source
node wants to deliver message to destination node, it specifies the
address of destination node.
Switches and Routers use this address to decide how to forward
the message. This process based on address is called Routing.
Unicast – sending message to single node.
Broadcast – Sending message to all the nodes on the network.

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Multicast – Sending message to some subnet not to all.

Resource Sharing
Pblm: How do several hosts share the same link when they all
want to use it at the same time?
Sol: Multiplexing – System resources are shared among multiple users
Methods:
1. Synchronous Time Division Multiplexing(STDM)
Divide time into equal sized quanta
2. Frequency Division Multiplexing(FDM)
Transmit each flow at different frequency
3. Statistical Multiplexing
First two methods are limited in 2 ways
 If one flow does not have data to send then its time
quantum remains idle, even the other flow has data to
transmit.
 No of flows are fixed and known ahead of time, it cannot
be resized.

Statistical methods combine the ideas of both STDM and FDM

 Data from each flow is transmitted on demand so no idle
quantum
 It defines upper bound on size of data and it is referred as
packet.
Common communication patterns
Communication between a pair of processes is done by
request / reply basis. The process which sends request is referred as
client and the one which honors the request is referred as server.
This can be done using channels. Two types of channels are
 Request / Reply channels
 Message stream Channels
Reliability
To get the reliable network, it is necessary to find how network
fails.

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Three classes of failures

 Bit error
 Packet loss
 Physical link and node failure
Network Architecture
Networks do not remain fixed at single point in time, but it must
evolve to accommodate changes based on the technologies on which they
are based and demands made by application programmer.
Network architecture guides the design and implementation of
network. Two commonly used architecture are
 OSI Architecture
 Internet or TCP/IP architecture
Layering and Protocols
When the system gets complex, the system designer introduces
another level of abstraction. It defines unifying model with important
aspects of the system, encapsulated this model in interface objects and
hide it from users
In network, abstraction leads to layering. Layering provides two
nice features.
 It decomposes the problem of building a network into more
manageable components. Rather than implementing a
monolithic piece of software that does everything implement
several layers, each of which solves one part of the problem.
 It provides more modular design. To add some new service, it is
enough to modify the functionality at one layer, reusing the
functions provided at all the other layers.
Protocols
A protocol is a set of rules that governs data communication. It
defines what is communicated, how it is communicated, and when it is
communicated. The key elements of a protocol are syntax, semantics and
timing.
Each protocol defines two different interfaces.

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 Service interface - to the other objects on the same

computer that want to use its communication services. This
service interface defines the operations that local objects can
perform on the protocol.
 Peer interface - to its counterpart (peer) on another
machine. It also defines the form and meaning of messages
exchanged between protocol peers to implement the
communication service.

Fig: Service and peer interfaces.

Except at the hardware level, peer to peer communication is indirect.

We can represent these protocols as protocol graph. Nodes of the

graph correspond to protocols, and the edges represent a depends-on
relation.

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Fig: Example of a protocol graph.

For example, the file access program on host 1 wants to send a
message to its peer on host 2 using the communication service offered by
protocol RRP. In this case, the file application asks RRP to send the
message on its behalf. To communicate with its peer, RRP then invokes
the services of HHP, which in turn transmits the message to its peer on
the other machine. Once the message has arrived at protocol HHP on
host 2, HHP passes the message up to RRP, which in turn delivers the
message to the file application. In this particular case, the application is
said to employ the services of the protocol stack RRP/HHP.
Encapsulation

Control information must be added with the data to instruct the

peer how to handle with the received message. It will be added into the
header or trailer.
Header - Small data structure from few bytes to few kilobytes
attached to the front of message.
Trailer – Information will be added at the end of the message
Payload or message body – Data send by the program
In this case data is encapsulated with new message created by
protocol at each level.

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Fig: High-level messages are encapsulated inside of low-level messages.

In this example HHP encapsulates RRP’s message by attaching a

header of its own. Then HHP sends the message to its peer over some
network, and then when the message arrives at the destination host, it is
processed in the opposite order.

Multiplexing and De-Multiplexing

The fundamental idea of packet switching is to multiplex multiple
flows of data over a single physical link. This can be achieved by adding
identifier to the header message. It is known as demultiplexing or
demux key. It gives the address to which it has to communicate.
The messages are demultiplexed at the destination side. In some
cases same demux key is used on both sides and in some cases different
keys are used.

OSI Architecture

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ISO defines a common way to connect computer by the

architecture called Open System Interconnection(OSI) architecture.
Network functionality is divided into seven layers.

Organization of the layers

The 7 layers can be grouped into 3 subgroups

1. Network Support Layers

Layers 1,2,3 - Physical, Data link and Network are the
network support layers. They deal with the physical aspects of
moving data from one device to another such as electrical
specifications, physical addressing, transport timing and
reliability.
2. Transport Layer
Layer4, transport layer, ensures end-to-end reliable data
transmission on a single link.
3. User Support Layers
Layers 5,6,7 – Session, presentation and application are the
user support layers. They allow interoperability among unrelated
software systems

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An Data exchange using the OSI model

Functions of the Layers

1. Physical Layer
The physical layer coordinates the functions required to transmit a
bit stream over a physical medium.

The physical layer is concerned with the following:

 Physical characteristics of interfaces and media - The physical
layer defines the characteristics of the interface between the
devices and the transmission medium.
 Representation of bits - To transmit the stream of bits, it must be
encoded to signals. The physical layer defines the type of encoding.
 Data Rate or Transmission rate - The number of bits sent each
second – is also defined by the physical layer.

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 Synchronization of bits - The sender and receiver must be

synchronized at the bit level. Their clocks must be synchronized.
 Line Configuration - In a point-to-point configuration, two devices
are connected together through a dedicated link. In a multipoint
configuration, a link is shared between several devices.
 Physical Topology - The physical topology defines how devices are
connected to make a network. Devices can be connected using a
mesh, bus, star or ring topology.
 Transmission Mode - The physical layer also defines the direction
of transmission between two devices: simplex, half-duplex or full-
duplex.
2. Data Link Layer
It is responsible for transmitting frames from one node to next
node.

The other responsibilities of this layer are

 Framing - Divides the stream of bits received into data units called
frames.
 Physical addressing – If frames are to be distributed to different
systems on the n/w , data link layer adds a header to the frame to
define the sender and receiver.
 Flow control- If the rate at which the data are absorbed by the
receiver is less than the rate produced in the sender ,the Data link
layer imposes a flow ctrl mechanism.
 Error control- Used for detecting and retransmitting damaged or
lost frames and to prevent duplication of frames. This is achieved
through a trailer added at the end of the frame.

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 Access control -Used to determine which device has control over

the link at any given time.

3. NETWORK LAYER
This layer is responsible for the delivery of packets from source to
destination.

It is mainly required, when it is necessary to send information from

one network to another.
The other responsibilities of this layer are
 Logical addressing - If a packet passes the n/w boundary, we
need another addressing system for source and destination called
logical address.
 Routing – The devices which connects various networks called
routers are responsible for delivering packets to final destination.
4. TRANSPORT LAYER
 It is responsible for Process to Process delivery.
 It also ensures whether the message arrives in order or not.

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The other responsibilities of this layer are

 Port addressing - The header in this must therefore include a
address called port address. This layer gets the entire message to
the correct process on that computer.
 Segmentation and reassembly - The message is divided into
segments and each segment is assigned a sequence number. These
numbers are arranged correctly on the arrival side by this layer.
 Connection control - This can either be connectionless or
connection-oriented. The connectionless treats each segment as a
individual packet and delivers to the destination. The connection-
oriented makes connection on the destination side before the
delivery. After the delivery the termination will be terminated.
 Flow and error control - Similar to data link layer, but process to
process take place.
5.SESSION LAYER
This layer establishes, manages and terminates connections
between applications.

The other responsibilities of this layer are

 Dialog control - This session allows two systems to enter into a

dialog either in half duplex or full duplex.
 Synchronization-This allows to add checkpoints into a stream of
data.

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6.PRESENTATION LAYER

It is concerned with the syntax and semantics of information

exchanged between two systems.

The other responsibilities of this layer are

 Translation – Different computers use different encoding system,
this layer is responsible for interoperability between these different
encoding methods. It will change the message into some common
format.
 Encryption and decryption-It means that sender transforms the
original information to another form and sends the resulting
message over the n/w. and vice versa.
 Compression and expansion-Compression reduces the number of
bits contained in the information particularly in text, audio and
video.
7 APPLICATION LAYER

This layer enables the user to access the n/w. This allows the user
to log on to remote user.

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The other responsibilities of this layer are

 FTAM(file transfer,access,mgmt) - Allows user to access files in a

remote host.
 Mail services - Provides email forwarding and storage.
 Directory services - Provides database sources to access
information about various sources and objects.

The interaction between layers in the OSI model

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Summary of layers

PHYSICAL LINKS

Guided Media
Guided media conduct signals from one device to another include
Twisted-pair cable, Coaxial Cable and Fiber-optic cable. A signal traveling
along any of these media is directed and contained by the physical limits
of the medium.
Twisted-pair and coaxial cable use metallic (copper) conductors
that accept and transport signals in the form of electric current. Optical
fiber is a glass cable that accepts and transports signals in the form of
light.
Twisted Pair Cable
A twisted pair consists of two conductors (normally copper) each
with its own plastic insulation, twisted together.
 One of the wires is used to carry signals to the receiver
 Other is used as ground reference

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Interference and cross talk may affect both the wires and create
unwanted signals, if the two wires are parallel.
By twisting the pair, a balance is maintained. Suppose in one twist
one wire is closer to noise and the other is farther in the next twist the
reverse is true. Twisting makes it probable that both wires are equally
affected by external influences.
Twisted Pair Cable comes into two forms:
 Unshielded
 Shielded
Unshielded versus shielded Twisted-Pair Cable
 Shielded Twisted-Pair (STP) Cable has a metal foil or braided-
mesh covering that encases each pair of insulated conductors.
 Metal casing improves that quality of cable by preventing the
penetration of noise or cross talk.
 It is more expensive. The following figure shows the difference
between UTP and STP

Applications
 Twisted Pair cables are used in telephone lines to provide voice
and data channels.
 Local area networks also use twisted pair cables.
Connectors
The most common UTP connector is RJ45.

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Coaxial Cable
Coaxial cable (coax) carries signals of higher frequency ranges than
twisted pair cable.
Instead of having two wires, coax has a central core conductor of
solid or stranded wire (usually copper) enclosed in an insulating sheath,
and with outer conductor of metal foil.
The outer metallic wrapping serves both as a shield against noise
and as the second conductor and the whole cable is protected by a
plastic cover.

Categories of coaxial cables

Category Impedance Use
RG-59 75 Cable TV
RG-58 50 Thin Ethernet
RG-11 50 Thick Ethernet

Applications
 It is used in analog and digital telephone networks
 It is also used in Cable TV networks
 It is used in Ethernet LAN
Connectors
 BNC connector – to connect the end of the cable to a device
 BNC T - to branch out network connection to computer
 BNC terminator - at the end of the cable to prevent the
reflection of the signal.
Fiber Optic Cable

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A fiber-optic cable is made of glass or plastic and transmits signals

in the form of light.
Properties of light
 Light travels in a straight line as long as it moves through a
single uniform substance. If traveling through one substance
suddenly enters another, ray changes its direction.
Bending of light ray

If the angle of incidence(the angle the ray makes with the line
perpendicular to the interface between the two medium) is less than the
critical angle the ray refracts and move closer to the surface.
If the angle of incidence is equal to the critical angle, the light
bends along the interface.
If the angle of incidence is greater than the critical angle, the ray
reflects and travels again in the denser substance. Critical angle differs
from one medium to another medium.
Optical fiber use reflection to guide light through a channel.

A Glass or plastic core is surrounded by a cladding of less dense glass or

plastic.

Propagation Modes

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Mode

Multimode Single mode

Step- Graded -
Index Index

Multimode
In the multiple mode, multiple light beams from a source move
through the core in different paths.

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 Multimode-Step-Index fiber: The density of core remains constant

from the centre to the edge.
A ray of light moves through this constant density in a straight
line until it reaches the interface of the core and the cladding. At
the interface there is an abrupt change to a lower density that
changes the angle of the beam’s motion.
 Multimode- Graded -Index fiber: The density is varying. Density
is highest at the centre of the core and decreases gradually to its
lowest at the edge.
Single Mode
Single mode uses step-index fiber and a highly focused source of light
that limits beams to a small range of angles, all close to the horizontal.
The single mode fiber itself is manufactured with a much smaller
diameter than that of multimedia fiber.
Connectors
 Subscriber channel (SC) connector is used for cable TV.
 Straight-tip (ST) connector is used for connecting cable to
networking devices.

Advantages of Optical Fiber

 Noise resistance
 Less signal attenuation
 Light weight
Disadvantages
 Cost
 Installation and maintenance
 Unidirectional
 Fragility (easily broken)
Unguided media
Unguided media transport electromagnetic waves without using a
physical conductor. This type of communication is often referred to as
wireless communication.
Signals are normally broadcast through air and thus available to

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anyone who has device capable of receiving them.

Unguided signals can travel from the source to destination in several
ways:
 Ground propagation – waves travel through lowest portion on
atmosphere.
 Sky propagation – High frequency waves radiate upward into
ionosphere and reflected back to earth.
 Line-of-sight propagation – Very high frequency signals travel
in a straight line

Radio Waves
Electromagnetic waves ranging in frequencies between 3 kHz and 1
GHz are normally called radio waves.
Properties
 Radio waves are omnidirectional. When an antenna transmits
radio waves, they are propagated in all directions. This means
that the sending and receiving antennas do not have to be
aligned.
 A sending antenna sends waves that can be received
by any receiving antenna.
 Radio waves, particularly those of low and medium
frequencies, can penetrate walls.
Fig:Omnidirectional
antenna

Disadvantages
 The omnidirectional property has a disadvantage, that the radio
waves transmitted by one antenna are susceptible to

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interference by another antenna that may send signals using

the same frequency or band.
 As Radio waves can penetrate through walls, we cannot isolate a
communication to just inside or outside a building.
Applications
Radio waves are used for multicast communications, such as radio
and television, and paging systems.

Microwaves
Electromagnetic waves having frequencies between 1 and 300 GHz
are called microwaves.
Properties
 Microwaves are unidirectional.
 Sending and receiving antennas need to be aligned
 Microwave propagation is line-of-sight
 Very high-frequency microwaves cannot penetrate walls

a) ParabolicDish antenna b)Horn antenna

 Parabolic Dish antenna focus all incoming waves into single

point
 Outgoing transmissions are broadcast through a horn aimed at
the dish.
Disadvantage
 If receivers are inside buildings, they cannot receive these waves
Applications

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 Microwaves are used for unicast communication such as

cellular telephones, satellite networks, and wireless LANs.
Infrared
 Electromagnetic waves with frequencies from 300 GHz to 400
THz are called infrared rays
 Infrared waves, having high frequencies, cannot penetrate walls.
Applications
 Infrared signals can be used for short-range communication
in a closed area using line-of-sight propagation.

Channel Access on links

Multiple Access Techniques
Various multiple access techniques are
 Frequency Division Multiple Access(FDMA)
 Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
 Code Division Multiple Access(CDMA)
Frequency Division Multiple Access
 In frequency-division multiple access (FDMA), the available
bandwidth is divided into frequency bands.
 Each station is allocated a band to send its data.
 In this method when any one frequency level is kept idle and
another is used frequently leads to inefficiency.

f
f5
f4
f3
f2
f1

Time Division Multiple Access

 In time-division multiple access (TDMA), the stations share the
bandwidth of the channel in time.

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 Each station is allocated a time slot during which it can send data.
 The main problem with TDMA lies in achieving synchronization
between the different stations.
 Each station needs to know the beginning of its slot and the
location of its slot.

f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 T

Code Division Multiple Access

 CDMA differs from FDMA because only one channel occupies the
entire bandwidth of the link.
 It differs from TDMA because all stations can send data at the
same time without timesharing.
 CDMA simply means communication with different codes.
 CDMA is based on coding theory. Each station is assigned a code,
which is a sequence of numbers called chips.
 Chips will be added with the original data and it can be
transmitted through same medium.

Code c

C5

c4

c3

c2

c1

Frequency f
Issues in the data link layer
Framing

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To transmit frames over the node it is necessary to mention start

and end of each frame. There are three techniques to solve this frame
 Byte-Oriented Protocols (BISYNC, PPP, DDCMP)
 Bit-Oriented Protocols (HDLC)
 Clock-Based Framing (SONET)
Byte Oriented protocols
In this, view each frame as a collection of bytes (characters)
rather than a collection of bits. Such a byte-oriented approach is
exemplified by the BISYNC (Binary Synchronous Communication)
protocol and the DDCMP (Digital Data Communication Message Protocol)
Sentinel Approach
The BISYNC protocol illustrates the sentinel approach to framing;
its frame format is

Fig: BISYNC Frame format

 The beginning of a frame is denoted by sending a special SYN

(synchronization) character.
 The data portion of the frame is then contained between special
sentinel characters: STX (start of text) and ETX (end of text).
 The SOH (start of header) field serves much the same purpose
as the STX field.
 The frame format also includes a field labeled CRC (cyclic
redundancy check) that is used to detect transmission errors.
The problem with the sentinel approach is that the ETX character
might appear in the data portion of the frame. BISYNC overcomes this
problem by “escaping” the ETX character by preceding it with a DLE
(data-link-escape) character whenever it appears in the body of a frame;
the DLE character is also escaped (by preceding it with an extra DLE) in
the frame body. This approach is called character stuffing.

Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)

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The more recent Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). The format of

PPP frame is

Fig: PPP Frame Format

 The Flag field has 01111110 as starting sequence.
 The Address and Control fields usually contain default values
 The Protocol field is used for demultiplexing.
 The frame payload size can he negotiated, but it is 1500 bytes by
default.
 The PPP frame format is unusual in that several of the field sizes
are negotiated rather than fixed.
 Negotiation is conducted by a protocol called LCP (Link Control
Protocol).
 LCP sends control messages encapsulated in PPP frames—such
messages are denoted by an LCP identifier in the PPP Protocol.

Byte-Counting Approach
The number of bytes contained in a frame can he included as a
field in the frame header. DDCMP protocol is used for this approach. The
frame format is

Fig: DDCMP frame format

 COUNT Field specifies how many bytes are contained in the
frame’s body.
 Sometime count field will be corrupted during transmission, so the
receiver will accumulate as many bytes as the COUNT field
indicates. This is sometimes called a framing error.
 The receiver will then wait until it sees the next SYN character.

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Bit-Oriented Protocols (HDLC)

In this, frames are viewed as collection of bits. High level data

link protocol is used. The format is

Fig: HDLC Frame Format

 HDLC denotes both the beginning and the end of a frame with the
distinguished bit sequence 01111110.
 This sequence might appear anywhere in the body of the frame, it
can be avoided by bit stuffing.
 On the sending side, any time five consecutive 1’s have been
transmitted from the body of the message (i.e., excluding when the
sender is trying to transmit the distinguished 01111110 sequence),
the sender inserts a 0 before transmitting the next bit.
 On the receiving side, five consecutive 1’s arrived, the receiver
makes its decision based on the next bit it sees (i.e., the bit
following the five is).
 If the next bit is a 0, it must have been stuffed, and so the receiver
removes it. If the next bit is a 1, then one of two things is true,
either this is the end-of-frame marker or an error has been
introduced into the bit stream.
 By looking at the next bit, the receiver can distinguish between
these two cases:
8 If it sees a 0 (i.e., the last eight bits it has looked at are 01111110),
then it is the end-of- frame marker.
9 If it sees a 1 (i.e., the last eight bits it has looked at are 01111111),
then there must have been an error and the whole frame is
discarded.

Clock-Based Framing (SONET)

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 Synchronous Optical Network Standard is used for long distance

transmission of data over optical network.
 It supports multiplexing of several low speed links into one high
speed links.
 An STS-1 frame is used in this method.

 It is arranged as nine rows of 90 bytes each, and the first 3 bytes of

each row are overhead, with the rest being available for data.
 The first 2 bytes of the frame contain a special bit pattern, and it
is these bytes that enable the receiver to determine where the
frame starts.
 The receiver looks for the special bit pattern consistently, once in
every 810 bytes, since each frame is 9 x 90 = 810 bytes long.

 The STS-N frame can he thought of as consisting of N STS-1

frames, where the bytes from these frames are interleaved; that is,
a byte from the first frame is transmitted, then a byte from the
second frame is transmitted, and so on.
 Payload from these STS-1 frames can he linked together to form a
larger STS-N payload, such a link is denoted STS-Nc. One of the bit
in overhead is used for this purpose.

Error Detection and Correction

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Data can be corrupted during transmission. For reliable

communication, errors must be detected and corrected.

Types of Errors

Single-bit error
The term Single-bit error means that only one bit of a given data
unit (such as byte, character, data unit or packet) is changed from 1 to 0
or from 0 to 1.

Burst Error
The term Burst Error means that two or more bits in the data unit
have changed from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1.

Redundancy
One method is to send every data twice, so that receiver checks
every bit of two copies and detect error.
Drawbacks
 Sends n-redundant bits for n-bit message.
 Many errors are undetected if both the copies are corrupted.
Instead of adding entire data, some bits are appended to each unit.
This is called redundant bit because the bits added will not give
any new information. These bits are called error detecting codes.
The three error detecting techniques are:
 Parity check
 Check sum algorithm
 Cyclic Redundancy Check
Parity Check

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Simple parity check

Only one redundant bit, called parity bit is added to every data
unit so that the total number of 1’s in unit become even (or odd)
Two Dimensional Parity
 It is based on simple parity.
 It performs calculation for each bit position across each byte
in the frame.
 This adds extra parity byte for entire frame, in addition to a
parity bit for each byte.

Fig: Two-dimensional parity

For example frame containing 6 bytes of data. In this third bit of
the parity byte is 1 since there are an odd number of 1’s is in the third
bit across the 6 bytes in the frame.
In this case, 14 bits of redundant information are added with
original information.

Check sum algorithm

 In the sender side all the words are added and then transmit the
result of sum called checksum with the data.
 The receiver performs the same calculation on the received data
and compares the result with the received checksum.
 If any transmitted data, including the checksum itself, is
corrupted, then the results will not match, so the receiver knows
that an error occurred.

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 Instead of sending the checksum as such, one’s complement of

that sum will be send to the receiver. If the receiver gets the result
as zero then it will be the correct one.
 In this, we can represent unsigned number from 0 to 2 n using n
bits.
 If the number has more than n bits, the extra leftmost bits need to
be added to the n rightmost bits.
 Data can be divided in to 16 bit word and the Checksum is
initialized to zero.
Sender Receiver
7 7
5 5
9 9
Sum 21 9
Check Sum 9 Sum 30
Check Sum 0

1010 1
1 1111 0
1
0110
9 1001 15 1111
0 0000

Cyclic Redundancy Check

 It uses small number of redundant bits to detect errors.

 Divisor is calculated by the polynomial functions under two
conditions
a. It should not be divisible by x
b. It should be divisible by x+1
10 Consider the original message as M(x) – n+1 bits
11 Divisor C(x) – K bits
12 Original sent message = M(x) + k-1 bits

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Steps

 Append k-1 zeros with M(x) – P(x)

 Divide P(x) by C(x)
 Subtract the remainder from T(x)
 Subtraction is made by making XOR operation
Eg: 100100 by 1101

Error Correction

Error Correction can be handled in two ways

1. When an error is discovered, the receiver can have the sender to
retransmit the entire data unit.
2. A receiver can use an error correcting code, which automatically
correct certain errors.

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Error correcting codes are more sophisticated than error-detection codes

and require more redundancy bits.
In single bit error detection only two states are sufficient.
1) error
2) no error
Two states are not enough to detect an error but not to correct it.
Redundancy Bits

 To calculate the number of redundancy bit(r) required to correct

a given number of data bits (m), we must find a relationship
between m and r.
 Add m bits of data with r bits. The length of the resulting code is
m+r.
Data and Redundancy bits

 If the total number of bits are m+r, then r must be able to

indicate at least m+r+1 different states. r bits can indicate 2 r
different states. Therefore, 2r must be equal to or greater than
m+r+1
2r >=m+r+1
 For example if the value of m is 7 the smallest r value that can
satisfy this equation is 4.

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Relationship between data and redundancy bits

Number of Data Number of Total bits (m+r)

Bits (m) redundancy Bits(r)
1
2 3
2
3 5
3
3 6
4
3 7
5
4 9
6
4 10
7
4 11

Hamming Code

R.W. Hamming provides a practical solution for the error

correction.
Positioning the Redundancy Bits

For example, a seven-bit ASCII code requires four redundancy bits

that can be added to the end of the data or intersperse with the original
data bits. These redundancy bits are placed in positions 1, 2, 4 and 8.
We refer these bits as r1, r2, r3 and r4

Position of redundancy bits in Hamming code

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The combination used to calculate each of the four r values for a seven-
bit data sequence are as follows
 The r1 bit is calculated using all bits positions whose binary
representation include a 1 in the rightmost position
 r2 is calculated using all bit position with a 1 in the second
position and so on
r1: bits 1,3,5,7,9,11
r2: bits 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11
r3: bits 4, 5, 6, 7
r4: bits 8, 9, 10, 11

Redundancy bits calculation

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Calculating the r values

 Place each bit of the original character in its appropriate

position in the 11-bit unit.
 Calculate the even parities for the various bit combination.
 The parity value for each combination is the value of the
corresponding r bit.

For example,

 The value of r1 is calculated to provide even parity for a

combination of bits 3,5,7,9 and 11.
 The value of r2 is calculated to provide even parity with bits 3,
6, 7, 10 and 11.
 The value of r3 is calculated to provide even parity with bits
4,5,6 and 7.
 The value of r4 is calculated to provide even parity with bits
8,9,10 and 11.

Error Detection and Correction

Now imagine the received data has 7th bit changed from 1 to 0.

Single-bit error

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The receiver takes the transmission and recalculates four new data
using the same set of bits used by the sender plus the relevant parity (r)
bit for each set.

Error detection

 Then it assembles the new parity values into a binary number in

order of r position (r8,r4,r2,r1).
 This step gives us the binary number 0111(7 in decimal) which is
the precise location of the bit in error.
 Once the bit is identified, the receiver can reverse its value and
correct the error.
Hamming Distance
One of the central concepts in coding for error control is the idea of
the Hamming distance.
 The Hamming distance between two words (of the same size) is the
number of differences between the corresponding bits. The
Hamming distance between two words x and y is d(x, y).

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 The Hamming distance can be found by applying the XOR

operation on the two words and count the number of 1’s in the
result.
 In a set of words, the minimum Hamming distance is the smallest
Hamming distance between all possible pairs. We use dmin to
define the minimum Hamming distance in a coding scheme.
Link Level Flow Control

Flow control is a technique that a transmitting entity does not

conquer a receiving entity with data. Two fundamental mechanisms are
acknowledgement and timeouts.
 After getting each frame the receiver will send ACK to sender.
 If the sender does not receive ACK up to reasonable amount of time
then it retransmit the original frame waiting for reasonable amount
of time is called timeout.
The two flow control mechanisms are
 Stop and wait Flow Control
 Sliding Window Flow Control
Stop and Wait Algorithm
 After transmitting one frame, the sender waits for an
acknowledgment before transmitting the next frame.
 If the acknowledgment does not arrive after a certain period of
time, the sender times out and retransmit the original frame.

a) The ACK is received before

the timer expires b) The original frame is lost

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c) The ACK is lost d)The timeout fires too soon

Fig: illustrates four different scenarios that result from this basic
algorithm. The sending side is represented on the left, the receiving side
is depicted on the right, and time flows from top to bottom.

 In Fig (a) ACK is received before the timer expires, (b) and (c) show the
situation in which the original frame and the ACK, respectively, are
lost, and (d) shows the situation in which the timeout fires too soon..
 Suppose the sender sends a frame and the receiver acknowledges it,
but the acknowledgment is either lost or delayed in arriving. This
situation is in (c) and (d). In both cases, the sender times out and
retransmit the original frame, but the receiver will think that it is the
next frame, since it correctly received and acknowledged the first
frame.
 This makes the receiver to receive the duplicate copies. To avoid this
two sequence numbers (0 and 1) must be used alternatively.

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 The main drawback of the stop-and-wait algorithm is that it allows the

sender have only one outstanding frame on the link at a time.
Sliding Window Algorithm
 The sender can transmit several frames before needing an
acknowledgement.
 Frames can be sent one right after another meaning that the link can
carry several frames at once and it s capacity can be used efficiently.
 The receiver acknowledges only some of the frames, using a single
ACK to confirm the receipt of multiple data frames
 Sliding Window refers to imaginary boxes at both the sender and the
receiver.
 Window can hold frames at either end and provides the upper limit on
the number of frames that can be transmitted before requiring an
acknowledgement.
 Frames are numbered modulo-n which means they are numbered
from o to n-1
 For eg. If n=8 the frames are numbered 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7. i.e the size of
the window is n -1.
 When the receiver sends ACK it includes the number of the next frame
it expects to receive.
 When the sender sees an ACK with the number 5, it knows that all
frames up through number 4 have been received.

There are two methods to retransmit the lost frames

 GO-Back N
 Selective Repeat
Go – Back N Method
Sender Window

 At the beginning of transmission, the sender window contains n-1

frames. As frames are sent out, the left boundary of the window
moves inward, shrinking the size of the window

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 If size of window is W if three frames have been transmitted since

the last acknowledgement then the number of frames left in the
window is w -3.
 Once an ACK arrives, the window expands to allow in a number of
new frames equal to the number of frames acknowledged by that
ACK.

Receiver Window
 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.

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When the timer expires, the sender resends all outstanding frames.
For example, suppose the sender has already sent frame 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.

Selective Repeat

Sender Window

Receiver window

 The Selective Repeat Protocol allows as many frames as the size of the
receive window to arrive out of order and be kept until there is a set of
in-order frames to be delivered to the network layer.
 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.
 If any frame lost, sender has to retransmit only that lost frames.

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Unit I 43