Data Link
Data Link
Data Link
Data-link layer is responsible for implementation of point-to-point flow and error control
mechanism.
Flow Control
When a data frame (Layer-2 data) is sent from one host to another over a single medium, it
is required that the sender and receiver should work at the same speed. That is, sender sends
at a speed on which the receiver can process and accept the data. What if the speed
(hardware/software) of the sender or receiver differs? If sender is sending too fast the
receiver may be overloaded, (swamped) and data may be lost.
• Sliding Window
In this flow control mechanism, both sender and receiver agree on the number
of data-frames after which the acknowledgement should be sent. As we
learnt, stop and wait flow control mechanism wastes resources, this protocol
tries to make use of underlying resources as much as possible.
Error Control
When data-frame is transmitted, there is a probability that data-frame may be lost in the
transit or it is received corrupted. In both cases, the receiver does not receive the correct data-
frame and sender does not know anything about any loss.In such case, both sender and
receiver are equipped with some protocols which helps them to detect transit errors such as
loss of data-frame. Hence, either the sender retransmits the data-frame or the receiver may
request to resend the previous data-frame.
• Error detection - The sender and receiver, either both or any, must ascertain
that there is some error in the transit.
• Positive ACK - When the receiver receives a correct frame, it should
acknowledge it.
• Negative ACK - When the receiver receives a damaged frame or a duplicate
frame, it sends a NACK back to the sender and the sender must retransmit the
correct frame.
• Retransmission: The sender maintains a clock and sets a timeout period. If an
acknowledgement of a data-frame previously transmitted does not arrive
before the timeout the sender retransmits the frame, thinking that the frame
or it’s acknowledgement is lost in transit.
There are three types of techniques available which Data-link layer may deploy to control
the errors by Automatic Repeat Requests (ARQ):
• Stop-and-wait ARQ