protocol What is sliding window protocol? • Sliding window protocols are mainely used in flow control. • Sliding window protocols are data link layer protocols for reliable and sequential delivery of data frames.
• The sliding window is also used in Transmission
Control Protocol.(TCP).
• In this protocol, multiple frames can be sent by a
sender at a time before receiving an acknowledgment from the receiver. Sliding window • Sliding window refers to an imaginary boxes that hold the frames on both sender and receiver side.
• It provides the upper limit on the number of frames that can be transmitted before requiring an acknowledgment.
• Frames may be acknowledged by receiver at any point even when window is not full on receiver side.
• Frames may be transmitted by source even when window is not yet full on sender side. • The windows have a specific size in which the frames are numbered modulo- n, which means they are numbered from 0 to n-l. For e.g. if n = 8, the frames are numbered 0, 1,2,3,4,5,6, 7, 0, 1,2,3,4,5,6, 7, 0, 1, ….
• The size of window is n-1. For e.g. In this case it is 7. Therefore, a maximum of n-l frames may be sent before an acknowledgment. Sliding Window on Sender Side • At the beginning of a transmission, the sender’s window contains n-l frames. • As the frames are sent by source, the left boundary of the window moves inward, shrinking the size of window. • This means if window size is w, if 4 frames are sent by source after the last acknowledgment, then the number of frames left in window is w-4. • When the receiver sends an ACK, the source’s window expand i.e. (right boundary moves outward) to allow in a number of new frames equal to the number of frames acknowledged by that ACK. • For example, Let the window size is 7 (see diagram (a)), if frames 0 through 3 have been sent and no acknowledgment has been received, then the sender’s window contains three frames – 4,5,6.
• •Now, if an ACK numbered 3 is received by source, it
means three frames (0, 1, 2) have been received by receiver and are undamaged.
• The sender’s window will now expand to include the next
three frames in its buffer. At this point the sender’s window will contain six frames (4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 1). (See diagram (b)). Sliding Window on Receiver Side • At the beginning of transmission, the receiver’s window contains n-1 spaces for frame but not the frames. • As the new frames come in, the size of window shrinks. • Therefore the receiver window represents not the number of frames received but the number of frames that may still be received without an acknowledgment (ACK) must be sent. • Given a window of size w, if 3 frames are received without an ACK being returned, the number of spaces in a window is w-3. • As soon as acknowledgment is sent, window expands to include the number of frames equal to the number of frames acknowledged. • For example, let the size of receiver’s window is 7 as shown in diagram. It means window contains spaces for 7 frames. • With the arrival of the first frame, the receiving window shrinks, moving the boundary from space 0 to 1. • Now, window has shrunk by one, so the receiver may accept six more frame before it is required to send an ACK. • As receiver sends an ACK, the window of the receiver expands to include as many new placeholders as newly acknowledged frames. Example
• Suppose that we have sender window and
receiver window each of size 4. So the sequence numbering of both the windows will be 0,1,2,3,0,1,2 and so on. • The following diagram shows the positions of the windows after sending the frames and receiving acknowledgments. Types of Sliding Window Protocols • The Sliding Window ARQ (Automatic Repeat request) protocols are of two categories − Go – Back – N ARQ
• Go – Back – N ARQ provides for sending
multiple frames before receiving the acknowledgment for the first frame. • The frames are sequentially numbered and a finite number of frames are sent. • If the acknowledgment of any frame is not received within the time period, all frames starting from that frame are retransmitted. • we will explain with a help of example. Consider the diagram given below. • We have sender window size of 4. • Now the sender has sent the packets 0, 1, 2 and 3. • After acknowledging the packets 0 and 1, receiver is now expecting packet 2 and sender window has also slided to further transmit the packets 4 and 5. • Now suppose the packet 2 is lost in the network, Receiver will discard all the packets which sender has transmitted after packet 2 as it is expecting sequence number of 2. • On the sender side for every packet sent, there is a time out timer which will expire for packet number 2. • Now from the last transmitted packet 5 sender will go back to the packet number 2 in the current window and transmit all the packets till packet number 5. • That’s why it is called Go Back N. Go back means sender has to go back N places from the last transmitted packet in the unacknowledged window and not from the point where the packet is lost. Selective Repeat ARQ • This protocol also provides for sending multiple frames before receiving the acknowledgment for the first frame.
• If the receiver receives a corrupt frame, it does not
directly discard it. It sends a negative acknowledgment to the sender. The sender sends that frame again as soon as on the receiving negative acknowledgment.
• However, here only the erroneous or lost frames are
retransmitted, while the good frames are received and buffered. Why Selective Repeat Protocol? • The go-back-n protocol works well if errors are less, but if the line is poor it wastes a lot of bandwidth on retransmitted frames. • An alternative strategy, the selective repeat protocol, is to allow the receiver to accept and buffer the frames following a damaged or lost one. • Selective Repeat attempts to retransmit only those packets that are actually lost (due to errors)
