Globally, the number of Internet users is forecast to increase from

approximately 2 billion in 2011 to 3 billion users in 2016. This figure is in fact

misleading, as a single end user may have multiple types of devices. The
estimate for 2016 is that there will be over 20 billion fixed and mobile
networked devices and machine-to-machine connections, up from about 7
billion devices in 2011. The increase in the number of user devices,
especially broadband devices, affects traffic volume in a number of ways. It
enables a user to be continuously consuming network capacity, as well as to
be consuming capacity on multiple devices simultaneously. Also, different
broadband devices enable different applications, which may have greater
traffic generation capability. The result is that the total annual traffic
generated over the Internet and other IP-based networks is forecast to rise
from 372 exabytes (372 x 260 bytes) to 1.3 zettabytes (1.3 x 270 bytes) in
2016 [CISC12]. This traffic demand imposes stiff performance requirements
on communications protocols, which is previewed in Chapter 2, and on
communications and computer networks.
One type of network that has become commonplace is the local area
network. Indeed, LANs are to be found in virtually all medium- and large-
size office buildings. LANs, especially Wi-Fi LANs, are also increasingly used
for small office and home networks. As the number and power of computing
devices have grown, so have the number and capacity of LANs found in
business networks. The development of internationally recognized
standards for LANs has contributed to their proliferation in enterprises.
Although Ethernet has emerged as the dominant LAN architecture, business
managers still have choices to make about transmission rates (ranging from
100 Mbps to 100 Gbps) and the degree to which both wired and wireless
LANs will be combined within an enterprise network. Interconnecting and
managing a diverse collection of local area networks and computing devices
within today’s business networks presents ongoing challenges for
networking professionals.
A business need for a robust (strong) network to support voice, data, image,
and video traffic is not confined to a single office building or LAN; today, it is
an enterprise-wide communication requirement. Advances in LAN switches
and other data communication technologies have led to greatly increased
local area network transmission capacities and the concept of integration.
Integration means that the communication equipment and networks can
deal simultaneously with voice, data, image, and even video. Thus, a memo
or report can be accompanied by voice commentary, presentation graphics,
and perhaps even a short video introduction, demonstration, or summary.
Image and video services that perform adequately within LANs often impose
large demands on wide area network transmission and can be costly.
Moreover, as LANs become ubiquitous and as their transmission rates
increase, the need for enterprise networks to support interconnections
among geographically dispersed areas has increased. This, in turn, has
forced businesses increase wide area network transmission and switching
capacity. Fortunately, the enormous and ever-increasing capacity of fiber
optic and wireless transmission services provides ample resources to meet
these business data communication needs. However, the development of
switching systems that are capable of responding to the increasing
capacities of transmission links and business communication traffic
requirements is an ongoing challenge not yet conquered.
Wide area networks generally cover a large geographical area. They often
require the crossing of public right-of-ways, and typically rely at least in part
on circuits provided by one or more common carriers —companies that
offer communication services to the general public. Typically, a WAN
consists of a number of interconnected switching nodes. A transmission
from any one device is routed through these internal nodes to the specified
destination device. These nodes (including the boundary nodes) are not
concerned with the content of the data; rather, their purpose is to provide a
switching facility that will move the data from node to node until they reach
their destination.
Bridges are also used to interconnect two LANs that are operating two
different networking protocols. For example, LAN A could be an Ethernet
LAN and LAN B could be a token ring. This type of bridge is called a
translation bridge.
Traditionally, WANs have been implemented using one of two technologies:
circuit switching and packet switching. Subsequently, frame relay and ATM
networks assumed major roles. While ATM and, to some extent frame relay,
are still widely used, their use is gradually being supplanted by services
based on gigabit Ethernet and Internet Protocol technologies.
In a circuit-switching network, a dedicated communications path is
established between two stations through the nodes of the network. That
path is a connected sequence of physical links between nodes. On each link,
a logical channel is dedicated++++++++++ to the connection. Data generated
by the source station are transmitted along the dedicated path as rapidly as
possible. At each node, incoming data are routed or switched to the
appropriate outgoing channel without delay. The most common example of
circuit switching is the telephone network.
In a packet-switching network, it is not necessary to dedicate transmission
capacity along a path through the network. Rather, data are sent out in a
sequence of small chunks, called packets. Each packet is passed through the
network from node to node along some path leading from source to
destination. At each node, the entire packet is received, stored briefly, and
then transmitted to the next node. Packet-switching networks are
commonly used for terminal-to-computer and computer-to-computer
communications.
Packet switching was developed at a time when digital long-distance
transmission facilities exhibited a relatively high error rate compared to
today’s facilities. As a result, there is a considerable amount of overhead
built into packet-switching schemes to compensate for errors. The overhead
includes additional bits added to each packet to introduce redundancy and
additional processing at the end stations and the intermediate switching
nodes to detect and recover from errors.

With modern high-speed telecommunications systems, this overhead is

unnecessary and counterproductive. It is unnecessary because the rate of
errors has been dramatically lowered and any remaining errors can easily be
caught in the end systems by logic that operates above the level of the
packet-switching logic. It is counterproductive because the overhead
involved soaks up a significant fraction of the high capacity provided by the
network.

Frame relay was developed to take advantage of these high data rates and
low error rates. Whereas the original packet-switching networks were
designed with a data rate to the end user of about 64 kbps, frame relay
networks are designed to operate efficiently at user data rates of up to 2
Mbps. The key to achieving these high data rates is to strip out most of the
overhead involved with error control.
Asynchronous transfer mode, sometimes referred to as cell relay, is a
culmination of developments in circuit switching and packet switching. ATM
can be viewed as an evolution from frame relay. The most obvious
difference between frame relay and ATM is that frame relay uses variable-
length packets, called frames, and ATM uses fixed-length packets, called
cells. As with frame relay, ATM provides little overhead for error control,
depending on the inherent reliability of the transmission system and on
higher layers of logic in the end systems to catch and correct errors. By using
a fixed packet length, the processing overhead is reduced even further for
ATM compared to frame relay. The result is that ATM is designed to work in
the range of 10s and 100s of Mbps, and in the Gbps range.

ATM can also be viewed as an evolution from circuit switching. With circuit
switching, only fixed-data-rate circuits are available to the end system. ATM
allows the definition of multiple virtual channels with data rates that are
dynamically defined at the time the virtual channel is created. By using
small, fixed-size cells, ATM is so efficient that it can offer a constant-data-
rate channel even though it is using a packet-switching technique. Thus,
ATM extends circuit switching to allow multiple channels with the data rate
on each channel dynamically set on demand.
As with WANs, a LAN is a communications network that interconnects a
variety of devices and provides a means for information exchange among
those devices. There are several key distinctions between LANs and WANs:

1. The scope of the LAN is small, typically a single building or a cluster of

buildings. This difference in geographic scope leads to different technical
solutions, as we shall see.

2. It is usually the case that the LAN is owned by the same organization that
owns the attached devices. For WANs, this is less often the case, or at least a
significant fraction of the network assets is not owned. This has two
implications. First, care must be taken in the choice of LAN, because there
may be a substantial capital investment (compared to dial-up or leased
charges for WANs) for both purchase and maintenance. Second, the
network management responsibility for a LAN falls solely on the user.

3. The internal data rates of LANs are typically much greater than those of
WANs.

LANs come in a number of different configurations. The most common are

switched LANs and wireless LANs. The most common switched LAN is a
switched Ethernet LAN, which may consist of a single switch with a number
of attached devices, or a number of interconnected switches. The most
common type of wireless LANs are Wi-Fi LANs.

As was just mentioned, wireless LANs are widely used in business

environments. Wireless technology is also common for both wide area voice
and data networks. Wireless networks provide advantages in the areas of
mobility and ease of installation and configuration.