SECTION 7.

2 NETWORKING
- A network is a connection of 2 or more computers and different hardware devices
together order to share resources.
Types of computer networks
LAN-a local area network typically interconnects hosts that are up to a few or maybe a few tens
of kilometres apart.
MAN-a metropolitan area network typically interconnect devices that are up to a few hundred
kilometres apart.
WAN-a wide area network interconnects hosts that can be located anywhere on earth.
Internet protocols
- Protocols are basically a set of rules.
- A network communication protocol is a standard method of transmitting data from one
computer to another across
Protocol rules would define:

- The wire connecting is whether is serial or parallel.

- The bit rate used
- The type of priority used i.e. whether even or odd parity.
NB When 2 devices need to communicate the initial contact between them is a signal called the
handshake signal. This involves on exchange of data between the two devices to establish that
they are both ready for the communication to start and that they agree on the rules that one
going to be used for the communication.
The TCP/IP model and OSI models
- There are different types of protocol to allow for the different types of data that might be
transmitted.
- There are a number of models representing the internet group of protocols.
- These includes the OSI which has 7 layers and another one has five and the original
model had four (TCP/IP).
TCP/IP

- TCP ensures that data is transmitted accurately while IP makes that it is delivered to the
correct address.
TCP/IP model

- It has five layers as follows.

Protocol /service layer

modems 1) Physical layer

Wifi, Ethernet 2) Data link layer

Device drivers and Network Interface

Card(NIC),Medium Access
Control(CSMA/CD)
IP(Internet Protocol) ,ARP(Address Resolution 3) Network/internet
Protocol)

Transmission Control protocol 4) Transport

User Datagram Protocol(UDP)

File Transfer Protocol(FTP) 5) Application

Hypertext Transfer Protocol(HTTP)

Telecommunication Network(Telnet)

EMail

Physical Layer

- The physical layer is the layer at which basic communication takes place in very
simplified terms; data is transmitted bit by bit from device to device.
Data link layer

- The data link layer can be considered to be the go-between from the network layer to the
physical layer.
- It acts upon requests services
- It handles physical details of interfacing with the cable.
- It handles data flow control.
- It can support Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI(Fibre Distributed Data Interface)

Network layer

- It is responsible for forwarding packets i.e. making sure that data gets from its source to
its destination.
- It is also responsible for routing i.e. choosing the path that the data is going to take from
source to destination.
- It is a connectionless datagram protocol

Transport layer

- It is responsible for dividing the data to be transmitted into smaller packets and also adds
the address of the source device to the header details of each packet.
Application layer
 - Consists of protocols that use the transport layer to deliver services to the network or
internet layer.
- Provides application access to the communication environment.
- The application sends a continuous data.

OSI – Open System Interconnection

- OSI is not a protocol but it is rather a model for how data should move around a
network.
- It effectively operates like a protocol, i.e. by providing an agreed approach to network
architecture that is adopted by manufactures.
The OSI model has seven layers:
1. The physical layer- is the level of electrical connections, signal transmission and data in raw
binary form
2. The data link layer
- The level at which data is transmitted in small units using suitable protocols to control
and check transmission.
- The units of data are called frames, i.e. asynchronously transmitted characters or
synchronously transmitted blocks of characters.
3. The network layer
- Prevents packets from getting lost when crossing networks.
- Determines the source and destination address
4. The transport layer
- It is the level that provides the control between adjacent sending and receiving points in
the network.
- It deals with addressing, error controls and regulated data transfers.
5. The session layer
- It is the level that handles the establishment of connections between hosts of the
management of the dialog.
6. The presentation layer
- This is the level that handles the standard forms for presenting data, e.g. the layouts used
for VDU displays.
7. The application layer
- This is the level that the user has control over in determining what data is to be
transmitted and how it be located to send or received.
Application layer
Presentation
Session
Transport
Network
Data link
Physical

IP Addressing
- An IP address is an address used to uniquely identify a device on an IP network.
- The address is made up of 32 binary bits which can be divisible into a network portion
and host portion with the help of a subnet mask.
- The 32 binary bits are broken into four octets (1 octet = 8 bits). Each octet is converted to
decimal and separated by a period (dot).
- For this reason, an IP address is said to be expressed in dotted decimal format (for
example, 172.16.81.100). The value in each octet ranges from 0 to 255 decimal, or
00000000 - 11111111 binary.
- So if all binary bits are a one, the decimal equivalent would be 255 as : 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 (128+64+32+16+8+4+2+1=255)
e.g.
- Here is a sample octet conversion when not all of the bits are set to 1.
0 1000001
0 64 0 0 0 0 0 1 (0+64+0+0+0+0+0+1=65)
- And this is sample shows an IP address represented in both binary and decimal.
10. 1. 23. 19 (decimal)
00001010.00000001.00010111.00010011 (binary
Example: 140.179.220.200
- It is very useful to view the values in their binary form.
- 140 .179 .220 .200
- 10001100.10110011.11011100.11001000
Classes
- There are 5 different address classes. You can determine which class any IP address is in
by examining the first 4 bits of the IP address.
- Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D, Class E.
- In a Class A address, the first octet is the network portion (address of 1.0.0.0 -
127.255.255.255)
- In a Class B address, the first two octets are the network portion( 128.0.0.0 -
191.255.255.255)
- In a Class C address, the first three octets are the network portion(192.0.0.0 -
223.255.255.255
Public IP Addresses

- Public IP addresses are addresses that are publicly accessible from the Internet.
- Most of the addresses in the IP address range are public IP addresses.
- A host using a public IP address can be accessed by any other host in the Internet.
- The IP address ranges below have been reserved to be used as private IP addresses:
o 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255 (10.0.0.0/8)
o 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255 (172.16.0.0/12)
o 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255 (192.168.0.0/16)
- A public IP address must be unique throughout the whole Internet.
Private IP addresses

- Private IP addresses are addresses that are only valid within a certain private network.
- These addresses cannot be accessed directly by other hosts in the Internet.
- Used by hosts that require limited or no Internet access
- A private IP address must be unique only within the private network in which it is used.
- A private IP address can be used by multiple hosts, as long as they are located in different
private networks.
-
Comparing Public and Private Addresses

- Private IP addresses are not valid within the public Internet.

 o If an Internet routers receives a packet with destination IP address
10.10.10.100, it cannot forward this packet
- This can cause problem when a host with a private IP address wants to communicate
with an Internet host using a public IP address.
o The problem occurs when the Internet host wants to reply back to the host
with the private IP address.
o The reply cannot be sent because destination address is a private IP address
UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR(URL)

- Trying to remember IP address is as difficult as trying to remember’s phone numbers

- Not many people do it well and you are far more likely to using them to access a
website.
Domain Name System(DNS)

- A domain Name system translates domain names into IP Addresses

- DNS is the service used to convert human readable names of host to IP addresses.
- A fully qualified domain name(FQDN) consists of the host name plus the domain as
shown http://www.zbc.co.zw
- The three main components of the (DNS) are;
o Resolver
o Name
o Database of the resource records
- The DNS is basically a large database which resides on various computers and
contains the name and IP address of various hosts on the Internet and domains
- The Domain Name Systsem is used to provide information

Routing protocols

Routing Information Protocol

- The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is the simplest routing protocol that was
standardised for the TCP/IP
- RIP is a distance vector protocol.
- RIP routers periodically exchange RIP messages.
- A RIP message is sent inside a UDP segment whose destination port is set to 521.
- A RIP message contains several fields.
- The Cmd field indicates whether the RIP message is a request or a response.
- Routers send one of more RIP response messages every 30 seconds.
- These messages contain the distance vectors that summarize the router’s routing table.
- The RIP request messages can be used by routers or hosts to query other routers about the
content of their routing table.
- A typical usage is when a router boots and quickly wants to receive the RIP responses
from its neighbours to compute its own routing table. The current version of RIP is
version 2 defined in RFC 2453 for IPv4 and RFC 2080 for IPv6.
OSPF
 - Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), is the link state routing protocol that has been
standardised by the IETF. The last version of OSPF, which supports IPv6,
- Link-state routing protocols are used in IP networks.
- OSPF is frequently used in enterprise networks and in some ISP networks. However,
- ISP networks often use the IS-IS link-state routing protocol [ISO10589] , which was
developed for the ISO CLNP protocol but was adapted to be used in IP RFC 1195
networks before the finalisation of the standardization of OSPF.
- In a large network, flooding the information about all routers and links to thousands of
routers or more may be costly as each router needs to store all the information about the
entire network.
- It is a hierarchical routing. Hierarchical routing divides the network into regions. All the
routers inside a region have detailed information about the topology of the region but
only learn aggregated information about the topology of the other regions and their
interconnections.
- OSPF supports a restricted variant of hierarchical routing.

Test

1.a i) Define serial data transmission. [1]

ii) Explain the difference between serial and parallel data transmission. [2]

iii) Identify the circumstances where it would be appropriate to use [1]

parallel data transmission.

iv) Justify the need for protocol in data communication. [2]

ZIMSEC Qn 3bi,ii,iii,iv Nov 2017

2.a) Explain the role of a Domain Name System(DNS). [2]

b) Compare and contrast public and private IP addresses. [6]

c) Analyse the role of the physical layer in the OSI model. [5]

d) Compare the OSI and TCP/IP models clearly showing any four differences between

these two models.

ZIMSEC Qn 8 Nov 2019

3.a) Draw the OSI model [7]

b) Explain each layer of the OSI model [7]

4) Describe how each of the following elements would be used in the OSI model:
a) switch

b) modem

c) bridge [6]

ZIMSEC Qn 3,4 Nov 2018

5.a) Define the term protocol, giving an example. [2]

b.i) Convert the following IP address to binary

94 98 155 16 [4]

ii) State the type of network the IP address in (i) is suitable for. [1]

iii) Name the two parts which make up the IP address. [2]

ZIMSEC Qn 6 Nov 2020

Marking guide

N2017 P1

1ai) Serial data transmission is the transfer of one bit at a time along a single wire path from
source to the destination

ii) Differences between serial and parallel data transmission

Serial Parallel

- bits are sent via an interface one it at a time - several bits simultaneously over a several
over a single wire from source to destination parallel wires.

- Very high data transfer rates can be - Slower data transfer rates over long
achieved eg using fibre optic cable distances
transfer rates of 64Gbits per second
- Suitable for long distance data - Suitable for short distance transmission
transmission e.g inside a computer for buses and
printer connections
- Very reliable - Produces skew therefore more reliable
over short distance

iii) Parallel transmission is Suitable for short distance transmission e.g inside a computer for buses
and printer connections.
iv) Protocols are needed in data communication in order to allow equipment from different suppliers to
be networked.

N2018 P1

3a) OSI MODEL

Application layer

Presentation Layer

Session Layer

Transport

Network layer

Datalink layer

Physical layer

APPLICATION LAYER

- This is the level that the user has control over in determining what data is to be
transmitted and how it can be located to be send or received

PRESENTATION LAYER

- This is the level that handles the standard forms for presenting data, e.g. the layouts used
for VDU displays.
- Data encryption methods are used to encrypt data
- ASCII standards are also available for data representation

SESSION LAYER

- It is the level that handles the establishment of connections between hosts of the
management of the dialog.
- Handshaking facility, which is the exchange of signals between devices to establish their
readness to send and receive data is available ,
- Provides signals to initiate and terminate the communication
Transport layer

- It is the level that provides the control between adjacent sending and receiving points in
the network.
- It deals with addressing, error controls and regulated data transfers.
 - Makes sure that data reaches its destination accurately
Network LAYER
- Prevents packets from getting lost when crossing networks.
- Determines the source and destination IP addresses

DATALINK LAYER

- The level at which data is transmitted in small units using suitable protocols to control
and check transmission.
- The units of data are called frames, i.e. asynchronously transmitted characters or
synchronously transmitted blocks of characters.

PHYSICAL LAYER

- It is the level of electrical connections, signal transmission and data in raw binary form .
-