Transport Layer

o The transport layer is a 4th layer from the top.

o The main role of the transport layer is to provide the communication services
directly to the application processes running on different hosts.
o The transport layer provides a logical communication between application
processes running on different hosts. Although the application processes on
different hosts are not physically connected, application processes use the logical
communication provided by the transport layer to send the messages to each
other.
o The transport layer protocols are implemented in the end systems but not in the
network routers.
o A computer network provides more than one protocol to the network
applications. For example, TCP and UDP are two transport layer protocols that
provide a different set of services to the network layer.
Services provided by the Transport Layer
The services provided by the transport layer are similar to those of the data link layer.
The data link layer provides the services within a single network while the transport layer
provides the services across an internetwork made up of many networks. The data link
layer controls the physical layer while the transport layer controls all the lower layers.

The services provided by the transport layer protocols can be divided into five
categories:

o End-to-end delivery
o Addressing
o Reliable delivery
o Flow control
o Multiplexing

End-to-end delivery:
The transport layer transmits the entire message to the destination. Therefore, it ensures
the end-to-end delivery of an entire message from a source to the destination.

Reliable delivery:
The transport layer provides reliability services by retransmitting the lost and damaged
packets.
The reliable delivery has four aspects:

o Error control
o Sequence control
o Loss control
o Duplication control

Error Control

o The primary role of reliability is Error Control. In reality, no transmission will be

100 percent error-free delivery. Therefore, transport layer protocols are designed
to provide error-free transmission.
o The data link layer also provides the error handling mechanism, but it ensures
only node-to-node error-free delivery. However, node-to-node reliability does
not ensure the end-to-end reliability.
o The data link layer checks for the error between each network. If an error is
introduced inside one of the routers, then this error will not be caught by the
data link layer. It only detects those errors that have been introduced between
the beginning and end of the link. Therefore, the transport layer performs the
checking for the errors end-to-end to ensure that the packet has arrived
correctly.
Sequence Control

o The second aspect of the reliability is sequence control which is implemented at

the transport layer.
o On the sending end, the transport layer is responsible for ensuring that the
packets received from the upper layers can be used by the lower layers. On the
receiving end, it ensures that the various segments of a transmission can be
correctly reassembled.

Loss Control

Loss Control is a third aspect of reliability. The transport layer ensures that all the
fragments of a transmission arrive at the destination, not some of them. On the sending
end, all the fragments of transmission are given sequence numbers by a transport layer.
These sequence numbers allow the receiver?s transport layer to identify the missing
segment.

Duplication Control
Duplication Control is the fourth aspect of reliability. The transport layer guarantees that
no duplicate data arrive at the destination. Sequence numbers are used to identify the
lost packets; similarly, it allows the receiver to identify and discard duplicate segments.

Flow Control
Flow control is used to prevent the sender from overwhelming the receiver. If the
receiver is overloaded with too much data, then the receiver discards the packets and
asking for the retransmission of packets. This increases network congestion and thus,
reducing the system performance. The transport layer is responsible for flow control. It
uses the sliding window protocol that makes the data transmission more efficient as well
as it controls the flow of data so that the receiver does not become overwhelmed.
Sliding window protocol is byte oriented rather than frame oriented.

Multiplexing
The transport layer uses the multiplexing to improve transmission efficiency.

Multiplexing can occur in two ways:

o Upward multiplexing: Upward multiplexing means multiple transport layer connections

use the same network connection. To make more cost-effective, the transport layer
sends several transmissions bound for the same destination along the same path; this is
achieved through upward multiplexing.
o Downward multiplexing: Downward multiplexing means one transport layer
connection uses the multiple network connections. Downward multiplexing
allows the transport layer to split a connection among several paths to improve
the throughput. This type of multiplexing is used when networks have a low or
slow capacity.

Transport Layer protocols

o The transport layer is represented by two protocols: TCP and UDP.
o The IP protocol in the network layer delivers a datagram from a source host to
the destination host.
o Nowadays, the operating system supports multiuser and multiprocessing
environments, an executing program is called a process. When a host sends a
 message to other host means that source process is sending a process to a
destination process. The transport layer protocols define some connections to
individual ports known as protocol ports.
o An IP protocol is a host-to-host protocol used to deliver a packet from source
host to the destination host while transport layer protocols are port-to-port
protocols that work on the top of the IP protocols to deliver the packet from the
originating port to the IP services, and from IP services to the destination port.
o Each port is defined by a positive integer address, and it is of 16 bits.

UDP
o UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol.
o UDP is a simple protocol and it provides non sequenced transport functionality.
o UDP is a connectionless protocol.
o This type of protocol is used when reliability and security are less important than speed
and size.
o UDP is an end-to-end transport level protocol that adds transport-level addresses,
checksum error control, and length information to the data from the upper layer.
o The packet produced by the UDP protocol is known as a user datagram.

User Datagram Format

The user datagram has a 16-byte header which is shown below:

o Source port address: It defines the address of the application process that has delivered
a message. The source port address is of 16 bits address.
o Destination port address: It defines the address of the application process that will
receive the message. The destination port address is of a 16-bit address.
 o Total length: It defines the total length of the user datagram in bytes. It is a 16-bit field.
o Checksum: The checksum is a 16-bit field which is used in error detection.

Disadvantages of UDP protocol

o UDP provides basic functions needed for the end-to-end delivery of a transmission.
o It does not provide any sequencing or reordering functions and does not specify the
damaged packet when reporting an error.
o UDP can discover that an error has occurred, but it does not specify which packet has
been lost as it does not contain an ID or sequencing number of a particular data
segment.

TCP
o TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol.
o It provides full transport layer services to applications.
o It is a connection-oriented protocol means the connection established between both the
ends of the transmission. For creating the connection, TCP generates a virtual circuit
between sender and receiver for the duration of a transmission.

Features of TCP protocol

o Stream data transfer: TCP protocol transfers the data in the form of contiguous stream
of bytes. TCP group the bytes in the form of TCP segments and then passed it to the IP
layer for transmission to the destination. TCP itself segments the data and forward to the
IP.
o Reliability: TCP assigns a sequence number to each byte transmitted and expects a
positive acknowledgement from the receiving TCP. If ACK is not received within a
timeout interval, then the data is retransmitted to the destination.
The receiving TCP uses the sequence number to reassemble the segments if they arrive
out of order or to eliminate the duplicate segments.
o Flow Control: When receiving TCP sends an acknowledgement back to the sender
indicating the number the bytes it can receive without overflowing its internal buffer. The
number of bytes is sent in ACK in the form of the highest sequence number that it can
receive without any problem. This mechanism is also referred to as a window
mechanism.
 o Multiplexing: Multiplexing is a process of accepting the data from different applications
and forwarding to the different applications on different computers. At the receiving end,
the data is forwarded to the correct application. This process is known as demultiplexing.
TCP transmits the packet to the correct application by using the logical channels known
as ports.
o Logical Connections: The combination of sockets, sequence numbers, and window
sizes, is called a logical connection. Each connection is identified by the pair of sockets
used by sending and receiving processes.
o Full Duplex: TCP provides Full Duplex service, i.e., the data flow in both the directions at
the same time. To achieve Full Duplex service, each TCP should have sending and
receiving buffers so that the segments can flow in both the directions. TCP is a
connection-oriented protocol. Suppose the process A wants to send and receive the data
from process B. The following steps occur:
o Establish a connection between two TCPs.
o Data is exchanged in both the directions.
o The Connection is terminated.

Where,

o Source port address: It is used to define the address of the application program in a
source computer. It is a 16-bit field.
o Destination port address: It is used to define the address of the application program in
a destination computer. It is a 16-bit field.
o Sequence number: A stream of data is divided into two or more TCP segments. The 32-
bit sequence number field represents the position of the data in an original data stream.
o Acknowledgement number: A 32-field acknowledgement number acknowledge the
data from other communicating devices. If ACK field is set to 1, then it specifies the
sequence number that the receiver is expecting to receive.
o Header Length (HLEN): It specifies the size of the TCP header in 32-bit words. The
minimum size of the header is 5 words, and the maximum size of the header is 15 words.
Therefore, the maximum size of the TCP header is 60 bytes, and the minimum size of the
TCP header is 20 bytes.
o Reserved: It is a six-bit field which is reserved for future use.
 o Control bits: Each bit of a control field functions individually and independently. A
control bit defines the use of a segment or serves as a validity check for other fields.

There are total six types of flags in control field:

o URG: The URG field indicates that the data in a segment is urgent.
o ACK: When ACK field is set, then it validates the acknowledgement number.
o PSH: The PSH field is used to inform the sender that higher throughput is needed so if
possible, data must be pushed with higher throughput.
o RST: The reset bit is used to reset the TCP connection when there is any confusion
occurs in the sequence numbers.
o SYN: The SYN field is used to synchronize the sequence numbers in three types of
segments: connection request, connection confirmation ( with the ACK bit set ), and
confirmation acknowledgement.
o FIN: The FIN field is used to inform the receiving TCP module that the sender has
finished sending data. It is used in connection termination in three types of segments:
termination request, termination confirmation, and acknowledgement of termination
confirmation.
o Window Size: The window is a 16-bit field that defines the size of the window.
o Checksum: The checksum is a 16-bit field used in error detection.
o Urgent pointer: If URG flag is set to 1, then this 16-bit field is an offset from the
sequence number indicating that it is a last urgent data byte.
o Options and padding: It defines the optional fields that convey the additional
information to the receiver.

Differences b/w TCP & UDP

Basis for TCP UDP
Comparison

Definition TCP establishes a virtual circuit before UDP transmits the data directly to the
transmitting the data. destination computer without verifying
whether the receiver is ready to receive
 or not.

Connection Type It is a Connection-Oriented protocol It is a Connectionless protocol

Speed slow high

Reliability It is a reliable protocol. It is an unreliable protocol.

Header size 20 bytes 8 bytes

acknowledgement It waits for the acknowledgement of data It neither takes the acknowledgement,
and has the ability to resend the lost nor it retransmits the damaged frame.
packets.

Application Layer
The application layer in the OSI model is the closest layer to the end user which means
that the application layer and end user can interact directly with the software
application. The application layer programs are based on client and servers.

The Application layer includes the following

functions:
o Identifying communication partners: The application layer identifies the availability of
communication partners for an application with data to transmit.
o Determining resource availability: The application layer determines whether sufficient
network resources are available for the requested communication.
o Synchronizing communication: All the communications occur between the applications
requires cooperation which is managed by an application layer.

Services of Application Layers

o Network Virtual terminal: An application layer allows a user to log on to a remote host.
To do so, the application creates a software emulation of a terminal at the remote host.
 The user's computer talks to the software terminal, which in turn, talks to the host. The
remote host thinks that it is communicating with one of its own terminals, so it allows
the user to log on.
o File Transfer, Access, and Management (FTAM): An application allows a user to access
files in a remote computer, to retrieve files from a computer and to manage files in a
remote computer. FTAM defines a hierarchical virtual file in terms of file structure, file
attributes and the kind of operations performed on the files and their attributes.
o Addressing: To obtain communication between client and server, there is a need for
addressing. When a client made a request to the server, the request contains the server
address and its own address. The server response to the client request, the request
contains the destination address, i.e., client address. To achieve this kind of addressing,
DNS is used.
o Mail Services: An application layer provides Email forwarding and storage.
o Directory Services: An application contains a distributed database that provides access
for global information about various objects and services.

Network Application Architecture

Application architecture is different from the network architecture. The network
architecture is fixed and provides a set of services to applications. The application
architecture, on the other hand, is designed by the application developer and defines
how the application should be structured over the various end systems.

Application architecture is of two types:

o Client-server architecture: An application program running on the local machine sends

a request to another application program is known as a client, and a program that serves
a request is known as a server. For example, when a web server receives a request from
the client host, it responds to the request to the client host.

Characteristics Of Client-server architecture:

o n Client-server architecture, clients do not directly communicate with each other. For
example, in a web application, two browsers do not directly communicate with each
other.
 o A server is fixed, well-known address known as IP address because the server is always
on while the client can always contact the server by sending a packet to the sender's IP
address.

Disadvantage Of Client-server architecture:

It is a single-server based architecture which is incapable of holding all the requests

from the clients. For example, a social networking site can become overwhelmed when
there is only one server exists.

o P2P (peer-to-peer) architecture: It has no dedicated server in a data center. The peers
are the computers which are not owned by the service provider. Most of the peers reside
in the homes, offices, schools, and universities.
o The peers communicate with each other without passing the information through a
dedicated server, this architecture is known as peer-to-peer architecture. The
applications based on P2P architecture includes file sharing and internet telephony.

Features of P2P architecture

o Self scalability: In a file sharing system, although each peer generates a workload by
requesting the files, each peer also adds a service capacity by distributing the files to the
peer.
o Cost-effective: It is cost-effective as it does not require significant server infrastructure
and server bandwidth.

Client and Server processes

o A network application consists of a pair of processes that send the messages to each
other over a network.
o In P2P file-sharing system, a file is transferred from a process in one peer to a process in
another peer. We label one of the two processes as the client and another process as the
server.

Presentation Layer in OSI Model

The presentation layer is the 6th layer from the bottom in the OSI model. This layer
presents the incoming data from the application layer of the sender machine to the
receiver machine.

It converts one format of data to another format of data if both sender and receiver
understand different formats; hence this layer is also called the translation layer.

It deals with the semantics and syntax of the data, so this layer is also called the syntax
layer.

It uses operations such as data compression, data encryption & decryption, data
conversion,

Functions of the presentation layer

o ranslation:
o Data is sent from sender to receiver, but what if the sender device and
receiver device understand different formats of code? For example,
suppose one device understands ASCII code and another device
understands EBCDIC code. In that case, the data must be translated into a
code that the recipient understands to determine what data has been sent.
The presentation layer is responsible for translating ASCII codes to EBCDIC
or vice versa. With the help of the presentation layer, the receiver
understands the data effectively and uses it efficiently.
o Encryption and Decryption:
o Whatever data is being transmitted between the sender and the receiver,
that data must be secure because an intruder can hack the data passing
between the sender and the receiver. Hackers can modify the data and
send the modified data to the receiver to create false communication. .
The plaintext data at the source is encrypted into ciphertext (unreadable
format), then it is sent to the receiver, where the ciphertext is decrypted
into plaintext. Now, if the hacker tries to hack the data, the hacker receives
an encrypted, unreadable form, and if the hacker tries to send modified
data, the receiver can detect the modification during decryption; thereby,
the data remains safe.
o Compression and Decompression:
 o If the file size is large, it becomes difficult to transmit the large file over the
network. File size can be decreased by compressing the file for easy
transmission of data. Compression is the method of diminishing the size of
a file to transmit data easily in less time. When the compressed data
reaches the receiver, the data is reconstructed back to the original size,
and this process is called decompression.

Sublayers of presentation layer in the OSI

model:
The presentation layer in the OSI model is classified into two sublayers:

1. Common Application Service Element (CASE): This sublayer offers services to layer-7,
i.e., the application layer, and requests services from layer-5, i.e., the session layer. It
supports various application services, such as Reliable Transfer Service Element (RTSE),
Remote Operation Service Element (ROSE), Association Control Service Element (ACSE),
and Commitment Concurrency and Recovery (CCR).
2. Specific Application Service Element (SASE): This sublayer offers application-specific
protocols, such as Message Oriented Text Interchange Standard (MOTIS), Remote
Database Access (RDA), File Transfer Access and Manager (FTAM), Common
Management Information Protocol (CMIP), Virtual Terminal (VT), Distributed Transaction
Processing (DTP), Job Transfer and Manipulation (JTM), and others.
Protocols of the Presentation layer:

o Independent Computing Architecture (ICA): It is a presentation layer protocol

in the OSI model, which was formed by Citrix Systems. It is used for transferring
data from server to client. It is a very thin protocol as it does not require much
overhead in order to transmit data from the server over to the client. It is well-
optimized for the WAN.
o Network Data Representation (NDR): It is the protocol that is used to
implement the presentation layer of the OSI model. It provides different kinds of
data representation, such as images, video, audio, numbers, etc. It is used for
Microsoft Remote Procedure Call (Microsoft RPC) and Distributed Computing
Environment (DCE) / Remote Procedure Calls (RPC).
o Apple Filing Protocol (AFP): It is a communication protocol that was specifically
designed for macOS by Apple, Inc. It provides file services for Classic Mac OS and
macOS. This protocol is used to share files over the network.
o NetWare Core Protocol (NCP): It is a protocol that is associated with the client-
server operating system. The user can access the directory, print, message, file,
clock synchronization, etc., with the help of this protocol. It supports many
 platforms, such as Linux, Classic Mac OS, Windows NT, Mac OS X, and Microsoft
Windows.
o Packet Assembler/Disassembler Protocol (PAD): It is a telecommunications
equipment that splits a stream of data into separate packets and formats packet
headers for asynchronous communication on X.25 networks. It receives packets
from the network and converts them into a stream of data. The PAD provides
many asynchronous terminal connectivities to a host computer.
o eXternal Data Representation (XDR): It is a computer network protocol that is
used to transfer data between two systems. It was first published in 1987. XDR is
used by various systems such as NDMP, Network File System, NetCDF, ZFS, Open
Network Computer Remote Procedure Call, and others.
o Lightweight Presentation Protocol (LPP): It is a protocol that offers ISO
presentation services over TCP/IP based networks. This protocol explains an
approach to provide stream-line support for OSI over TCP/IP based networks.