Solutions for Computer Networks 6th Edition by

Tanenbaum
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Solutions
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COMPUTER NETWORKS

SIXTH EDITION

PROBLEM SOLUTIONS

ANDREW S. TANENBAUM
Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

NICK FEAMSTER
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois

DAVID WETHERELL
Google

PRENTICE HALL PTR

UPPER SADDLE RIVER, NJ 07458
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PROBLEM SOLUTIONS 1
SOLUTIONS TO CHAPTER 1 PROBLEMS

1. Because the raven flies at an average speed of 40 km/h, it needs 160/40 = 4

hours for each one-way trip.
(i) The raven makes only one trip because 1.8 terabytes exactly fits on one
scroll.
1800 GB 1
= GB/s = 1 Gbps
4 h × 3600 8
(ii) To communicate 3.6 TB of data, the raven has to fly back to pick up a
second scroll. This means that it needs to fly a total of 3 × 4 = 12 hours.
3600 GB 1 2
= GB/s = Gbps
12 h × 3600 12 3
(iii) The receiving castle receives 1.8 terabytes of data every 8 hours.
1800 GB 1 1
= GB/s = Gbps
8 h × 3600 16 2

2. There are multiple correct answers. A significant disadvantage is the

increased risk of invading people’s privacy. The increase in the number of net-
worked devices means a larger attack surface for malicious parties trying to
obtain personal information. If the information is not stolen, companies that
process and store data from IoT devices could sell it to third parties such as
advertising companies.
3. Secondly, wireless networks allow people to move around, instead of tying
them to a wall. Secondly, although wireless networks provide lower band-
width than wired networks, their bandwidth has become large enough to sup-
port applications that people find meaningful. Examples include media
streaming and video conferencing. Finally, installing wires in (old) buildings
can be expensive.
4. An advantage for the company is that they do not have to pay the up-front cost
when buying expensive hardware. They lease machines from the data center,
paying only for what they use. A disadvantage for the company is that they
may not know the underlaying infrastructure used by the data center, making it
more difficult to obtain high performance from their applications. The large
amount of resources available in data centers makes it is easier for the com-
pany to scale with user demand, which is an advantage for both. A disadvan-
tage for the users is that it becomes more difficult to track their own data, and
what it is used for.
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2 PROBLEM SOLUTIONS FOR CHAPTER 1

5. The LAN model can be grown incrementally. If the LAN is just a long cable,
it cannot be brought down by a single failure (if the servers are replicated). It
is probably cheaper. It provides more computing power and better interactive
interfaces.
6. A transcontinental fiber link might have many gigabits/sec of bandwidth, but
the latency will also be high due to the speed of light propagation over thou-
sands of kilometers. Similarly, a satellite link may run at megabits/sec but have
a high latency to send a signal into orbit and back. In contrast, a 56-kbps
modem calling a computer in the same building has low bandwidth and low
latency. So do low-end local and personal area wireless technologies such as
Zigbee.
7. No. The speed of propagation is 200,000 km/sec or 400 meters/ µ sec. In 20
µ sec, the signal travels 4 km. Thus, each switch adds the equivalent of 4 km
of extra cable. If the client and server are separated by 5000 km, traversing
even 50 switches adds only 200 km to the total path, which is only 4%. Thus,
switching delay is not a major factor under these circumstances.
8. The delay is 1% of the total time, which means
100 µ s × n
= 0. 01
29, 700 km
+ 100 µ s × n
300, 000 km/s
, where n is the number of satellites.
29, 700 km
+ 100 µ s × n = 100 × 100 µ s × n
300, 000 km/s
29, 700 km
= 99 × 100 µ s × n
300, 000 km/s
29, 700 km
= 10 = n
300, 000 km/s × 99 × 100 µ s
This means the signal must pass 10 satellites for the switching delay to be 1%
of the total delay.
9. The request has to go up and down, and the response has to go up and down.
The total path length traversed is thus 160,000 km. The speed of light in air
and vacuum is 300,000 km/sec, so the propagation delay alone is
160,000/300,000 sec or about 533 msec.
10. Traveling at 2/3 the speed of light means 200,000 km/sec. The signal travels
for 100 milliseconds, or 0.1 seconds. This means the signal traversed a dis-
tance of 200, 000 × 0. 1 = 4000 km.
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PROBLEM SOLUTIONS FOR CHAPTER 1 3

11. There is obviously no single correct answer here, but the following points
seem relevant. The present system has a great deal of inertia (checks and bal-
ances) built into it. This inertia may serve to keep the legal, economic, and
social systems from being turned upside down every time a different party
comes to power. Also, many people hold strong opinions on controversial
social issues, without really knowing the facts of the matter. Allowing poorly
reasoned opinions be to written into law may be undesirable. The potential ef-
fects of advertising campaigns by special interest groups of one kind or anoth-
er also have to be considered. Another major issue is security. A lot of people
might worry about some 14-year kid hacking the system and falsifying the re-
sults.
12. Call the routers A, B, C, D, and E. There are ten potential lines: AB, AC, AD,
AE, BC, BD, BE, CD, CE, and DE. Each of these has four possibilities (three
speeds or no line), so the total number of topologies is 410 = 1, 048, 576. At 50
ms each, it takes 52,428.8 sec, or about 14.6 hours to inspect them all.
13. The mean router-router path is twice the mean router-root path. Number the
levels of the tree with the root as 1 and the deepest level as n. The path from
the root to level n requires n 1 hops and 0.50 of the routers are at this level.
The path from the root to level n 1 has 0.25 of the routers and a length of
n 2 hops. Hence, the mean path length, l, is given by
l = 0. 5 × (n 1) + 0. 25 × (n 2) + 0. 125 × (n 3) + . . .
or
infinity infinity
l= n (0. 5)i i(0. 5)i
i=1 i=1

This expression reduces to l = n 2. The mean router-router path is thus

2n 4.
14. Distinguish n + 2 events. Events 1 through n consist of the corresponding host
successfully attempting to use the channel, i.e., without a collision. The
probability of each of these events is p(1 p)n 1 . Event n + 1 is an idle chan-
nel, with probability (1 p)n . Event n + 2 is a collision. Since these n + 2
events are exhaustive, their probabilities must sum to unity. The probability of
a collision, which is equal to the fraction of slots wasted, is then just
1 np(1 p)n 1 (1 p)n .
15. Instead of trying to foresee bad things and avoid them from happening, suc-
cessful networks are fault-tolerant. They allow bad things to happen but iso-
late or hide them from the rest of the system. Examples include error correc-
tion, error detection, and network routing.
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4 PROBLEM SOLUTIONS FOR CHAPTER 1

16. Because the responsibility of networking is distributed over multiple layers,

each layer only has partial knowledge of where the data needs to go. The link
layer only knows to which machine the data should be sent next. The network
layer knows which machine on the entire network is the correct destination.
The transport layer knows to which process on the destination machine to
deliver the data.
17.
Guarantee Layer
Best effor t delivery Network
Reliable Delivery Transpor t
In-order Delivery Transpor t
Byte-stream abstraction Transpor t
Point-to-point link abstraction Link

18.
Function Interface
send bits over link(bits) Physical layer
send bytes to process(dst, src, bytes) Transpor t layer
send bytes over link(dst, src, bytes) Link layer
send bytes to machine(dst, src, bytes) Network layer

19. 5 × 1500 = 7,500 bytes per 100 milliseconds. So, the rate is 75,000 bytes per
second.
20. In the OSI protocol model, physical communication between peers takes place
only in the lowest layer, not in every layer.
21. Message and byte streams are different. In a message stream, the network
keeps track of message boundaries. In a byte stream, it does not. For ex-
ample, suppose a process writes 1024 bytes to a connection and then a little
later writes another 1024 bytes. The receiver then does a read for 2048 bytes.
With a message stream, the receiver will get two messages, of 1024 bytes
each. With a byte stream, the message boundaries do not count and the re-
ceiver will get the full 2048 bytes as a single unit. The fact that there were
originally two distinct messages is lost.
22. Negotiation has to do with getting both sides to agree on some parameters or
values to be used during the communication. Maximum packet size is one ex-
ample, but there are many others.
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PROBLEM SOLUTIONS FOR CHAPTER 1 5

23. The service shown is the service offered by layer k to layer k + 1. Another
service that must be present is below layer k, namely, the service offered to
layer k by the underlying layer k 1.
24. The probability, P k , of a frame requiring exactly k transmissions is the
probability of the first k 1 attempts failing, p k 1 , times the probability of the
k-th transmission succeeding, (1 p). The mean number of transmission is
then just
1
kP k = k(1 p) p k 1
=
k=1 k=1 1 p
Or, more directly, if the probability of a message getting through is 1 p, then
the expected number of transmissions per successful message is 1 / ( 1 p ).
25. OSI model: (a) Data link layer. (b) Network layer.
TCP/IP model: (a) Link layer. (b) Internet layer.
26. Frames encapsulate packets. When a packet arrives at the data link layer, the
entire thing—header, data, and all—is used as the data field of a frame. The
entire packet is put in an envelope (the frame), so to speak (assuming it fits).
27. Each layer considers the data from the layer above it as its payload, and adds
their header and/or trailer on the outside of this payload. The resulting order
of headers and trailers is: [1][3][5][M][6][4][2].
28. With n layers and h bytes added per layer, the total number of header bytes per
message is hn, so the space wasted on headers is hn. The total message size is
M + nh, so the fraction of bandwidth wasted on headers is hn/(M + hn). This
estimate does not take into account fragmentation (one higher layer message is
sent as multiple lower layer messages) or aggregation (multiple higher layer
messages are carried as one lower layer message) that may be present. If frag-
mentation is used, it will raise the overhead. If aggregation is used, it will
lower the overhead.
29. Many answers are possible. Most have to do with connecting a otherwise iso-
lated devices to the Internet. (a) A wireless modem is the access point for a
WiFi network and connects to the cable provider’s network. (b) A phone con-
nected to 3G or WiMAX and functioning as the access point for a WiFi net-
work. (c) A phone that is connected to a WiFi network and at the same time
acts as the master in a Bluetooth network. (d) A router at an IXP that connects
an ISP’s network to that from other ISPs. (e) A phone that is connected to two
base stations at the same time during a soft handover. This last answer does
not connect another device to the Internet, but rather creates the illusion of a
continuous connection to the user.
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6 PROBLEM SOLUTIONS FOR CHAPTER 1

30. Observe that many nodes are connected to three other nodes; the others are
connected to more. Three bombs are needed to disconnect one of these nodes.
By a quick check there does not appear to be a group of nodes that are con-
nected to the rest of the network by fewer than three other nodes, so we con-
clude that three bombs are needed to partition the network. For example, the
two nodes in the upper-right corner can be disconnected from the rest by three
bombs knocking out the three nodes to which they are connected. The system
can withstand the loss of any two nodes.
31. Doubling every 18 months means a factor of four gain in 3 years. In 9 years,
the gain is then 43 or 64, leading to 64 billion hosts. That sounds like a lot, but
if every television, cellphone, camera, car, and appliance in the world is online,
maybe it is plausible. It would require the average person to have 10 hosts by
then given that the estimate is much greater than the expected world popula-
tion. But if half the world is connected and they average 20 devices per per-
son, it is at least plausible.
32. If the network tends to lose packets, it is better to acknowledge each one sepa-
rately, so the lost packets can be retransmitted. On the other hand, if the net-
work is highly reliable, sending one acknowledgement at the end of the entire
transfer saves bandwidth in the normal case (but requires the entire file to be
retransmitted if even a single packet is lost).
33. Having mobile phone operators know the location of users lets the operators
learn much personal information about users, such as where they sleep, work,
travel, and shop. This information might be sold to others or stolen; it could let
the government monitor citizens. On the other hand, knowing the location of
the user lets the operator send help to the right place in an emergency. It might
also be used to deter fraud, since a person who claims to be you will usually
be near your mobile phone.
34. The speed of light in coax is about 200,000 km/sec, which is 200 meters/ µ sec.
At 10 Mbps, it takes 0.1 µ sec to transmit a bit. Thus, the bit lasts 0.1 µ sec in
time, during which it propagates 20 meters. Thus, a bit is 20 meters long here.
35. The image is 1600 × 1200 × 3 bytes or 5,760,000 bytes. This is 46,080,000
bits. At 56,000 bits/sec, it takes about 822.857 sec. At 1,000,000 bits/sec, it
takes 46.080 sec. At 10,000,000 bits/sec, it takes 4.608 sec. At 100,000,000
bits/sec, it takes about 0.461 sec. At 1,000,000,000 bits/sec, it takes about 46
msec.
36. The image is 3840 × 2160 × 3 bytes or 8,294,400 bytes. This is 66,355,200
bits. At 56,000 bits/sec, it takes about 1184.91 sec. At 1,000,000 bits/sec, it
takes about 66.36 sec. At 10,000,000 bits/sec, it takes about 6.64 sec. At
100,000,000 bits/sec, it takes about 0.663 sec. At 1,000,000,000 bits/sec it
takes about 64.5 msec.
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PROBLEM SOLUTIONS FOR CHAPTER 1 7

37. Think about the hidden terminal problem. Imagine a wireless network of five
stations, A through E, such that each one is in range of only its immediate
neighbors. Then A can talk to B at the same time D is talking to E. Wireless
networks have potential parallelism, and in this way differ from Ethernet.
38. One disadvantage is security. Every random delivery man who happens to be
in the building can listen in on the network. Another disadvantage is reliabil-
ity. Wireless networks make lots of errors. A third potential problem is bat-
tery life, since most wireless devices tend to be mobile.
39. One advantage is that if everyone uses the standard, everyone can talk to
everyone. Another advantage is that widespread use of any standard will give
it economies of scale, as with VLSI chips. A disadvantage is that the political
compromises necessary to achieve standardization frequently lead to poor
standards. Another disadvantage is that once a standard has been widely
adopted, it is difficult to change,, even if new and better techniques or methods
are discovered. Also, by the time it has been accepted, it may be obsolete.
40. There are many examples, of course. Some systems for which there is interna-
tional standardization include DVD players and their discs, digital cameras
and their storage cards, and automated teller machines and bank cards. Areas
where such international standardization is lacking include broadcast televis-
ion (NTSC in the U.S., PAL in parts of Europe, SECAM in other countries),
lamps and lightbulbs (different voltages in different countries), electrical sock-
ets and appliance plugs (every country does it differently), photocopiers and
paper (8.5 x 11 inches in the U.S., A4 everywhere else), nuts and bolts (Eng-
lish versus metric pitch), etc.
41. Networks are used in a large number of different environments, and each envi-
ronment imposes different requirements on its protocols. For example, chan-
nels with high error rates may need to use error correction codes to achieve
reasonable effective throughput, public networks may required additional
security not needed in home networks, and commercial networks may need to
offer Quality of Service guarantees to paying customers.
42. This has no impact on the operations at layers k-1 or k+1.
43. There is no impact at layer k-1, but operations in k+1 have to be reimple-
mented.
44. Navigating to a webpage will likely trigger multiple GET requests. Each of
these requests asks for a certain resource, such as the HTML document, the
CSS document, and external resources such as images. Doing these requests
separately can improve performance by, for instance, obtaining and rendering
the page HTML while downloading an external image.
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8 PROBLEM SOLUTIONS FOR CHAPTER 1

45. Below are ten possible answers, although many more exist.
1. Buying consumer goods through an online store.
2. Watching video-on-demand.
3. Listening to music using a streaming service.
4. Communicating with others through email or instant messaging.
5. Storing documents and photos on cloud-based storage.
6. Reading the news on the Web.
7. Handing in homework on your school’s online learning system
8. Doing your taxes on the government’s website.
9. Transferring money via a banking application on your phone.
10. Playing video games with friends.
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PROBLEM SOLUTIONS FOR CHAPTER 2 9

SOLUTIONS TO CHAPTER 2 PROBLEMS

1. Like a single railroad track, it is half duplex. Oil can flow in either direction,
but not both ways at once. A river is an example of a simplex connection
while a walkie-talkie is another example of a half-duplex connection.
2. Fiber has many advantages over copper. It can handle much higher bandwidth
than copper. It is not affected by power surges, electromagnetic interference,
power failures, or corrosive chemicals in the air. It does not leak light and is
quite difficult to tap. Finally, it is thin and lightweight, resulting in much lower
installation costs. There are some downsides of using fiber over copper. It can
be damaged easily by being bent too much. And fiber interfaces cost more
than electrical interfaces.
3. Use Eq. (2-1) to convert wavelengths of 1 micron plus/minus 0.05 microns to
frequency. We have f low = 3 × 108 / (1. 05 × 10 6 ) = 3/1. 05 × 1014 . Similarly
f high = 3/0. 95 × 1014 . Thus f = (3/0. 95 3/1. 05) × 1014 = 3 × 1013 . This is
a bandwidth of 30,000 GHz.
4. The data rate is 3840 × 2160 × 24 × 60 bps, which is about 11,944 Mbps or
11.944 Gbps.
5. In the text it was stated that the bandwidths (i.e., the frequency ranges) of the
three bands were approximately equal. From the formula in the text we have
f = c/ . For a range of wavelengths to + x we have f lower = c/( + x)
and f upper = c/ . For a fixed value of x, the range will be larger if is smaller.
This is why the range of wavelengths on the left is smaller even though the
range of frequencies is approximately equal in all bands.
6. This would be a major scientific breakthrough. Compared to electrons, which
are subject to electromagnetic forces, it is difficult to make photons interact.
Assuming there are computers that work this way, the maximum data rates
obtained from information theory would not change. However, it is no longer
necessary to translate between optical and electrical signals when using optical
fiber communication. This makes it possible to obtain much higher data rates
using the same optical fibers.
7. Start with f = c. We know that c is 3 × 108 m/s. For = 1 cm, we get 30
GHz. For = 1 m, we get 300 MHz. Thus, the band covered is 300 MHz to
30 GHz.
8. At 1 GHz, the waves are 30 cm long. If one wave travels 15 cm more than the
other, they will arrive out of phase. The fact that the link is 100 km long is
irrelevant.
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10 PROBLEM SOLUTIONS FOR CHAPTER 2

9. If the beam is off by 1 mm at the end, it misses the detector. This amounts to a
triangle with base 100 m and height 0.001 m. The angle is one whose tangent
is thus 0.00001. This angle is about 0.00057 degrees.
1
10. a n = , b = 0, c = 1.
n n
11. Shannon’s theorem gives 5 × log 2(1 + 10000) 66. 44 Gbps. Nyquist theo-
rem gives 2 × 5log 2(2) = 10 Gbps. 10 Gbps is the lowest upper bound. The
Nyquist theorem yields a lower upper-bound because the signal is binary. On a
channel with a 40 dB signal-to-noise ratio, a higher data rate can be achieved
by using more signal levels.
12. A noiseless channel can carry an arbitrarily large amount of information, no
matter how often it is sampled. Just send a lot of data per sample. For the
3-kHz channel, make 6000 samples/sec. If each sample is 16 bits, the channel
can send 96 kbps. If each sample is 1024 bits, the channel can send 8.2 Mbps.
The key word here is ‘‘noiseless.’’ With a normal 3 kHz channel, the Shannon
limit would not allow this. A signal-to-noise ratio of 30 dB means S/N =
1000. With B = 3000 we get a maximum data rate of about 29.895 kbps.
13. The Nyquist theorem is a property of mathematics and has nothing to do with
technology. It says that if you have a function whose Fourier spectrum does
not contain any sines or cosines above f, by sampling the function at a frequen-
cy of 2 f you capture all the information there is. Thus, the Nyquist theorem is
true for all media.
14. Using the Nyquist theorem, we can sample 12 million times/sec. Four-level
signals provide 2 bits per sample, for a total data rate of 24 Mbps.
15. A signal-to-noise ratio of 20 dB means S/N = 100. Since log2 101 is about
6.658, the Shannon limit is about 19.975 kbps. The Nyquist limit is 6 kbps for
a binary signal (with 1 bit per symbol). The bottleneck is therefore the
Nyquist limit, giving a maximum channel capacity of 6 kbps.
16. For every four data bits, 5 bits are sent. The channel sends 80 million bits per
second, which can be done using a 40 MHz channel.
17. Only the distance from the origin differs, thus Amplitude Shift Keying is used.
18. Yes. QAM-16 uses 16 distinct symbols. Each of these symbols can be assign-
ed to a bit sequence, in which case it can send 4 bits per symbol. Alterna-
tively, some of the symbols can be used as control signals, leaving fewer sig-
nals to send bit sequences.
19. In NRZ, the signal completes a cycle at most every 2 bits (alternating 1s and
0s). So, the minimum bandwidth need to achieve B bits/sec data rate is B/2
Hz. In MLT-3, the signal completes a cycle at most every 4 bits (a sequence of
1s), thus requiring at least B/4 Hz to achieve B bits/sec data rate. Finally, in