2

NETWORK STANDARDS
Last Name: _____________________________________
First Name: _____________________________________
Due Date: ___________________

INSTRUCTIONS
Homework files are in Word for Windows format.
You download them from the book’s website.
In a chapter, your teacher may assign you questions to complete.
To begin typing your answer, click after the right angle brackets.

HOW INTERNET STANDARDS COME TO BE

1. a) What are IETF standards called? (Spell out the name and give the acronym.)
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b) What factors in the Internet’s informal development process lead to rapid standards development and
low-cost products?
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INTRODUCTION
2. a) Distinguish between standards and protocols.
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b) What is a network standard?
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c) What is interoperability?
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d) What are the benefits of standards?
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CREATING STANDARDS
3. a) What standards agency creates Internet standards?
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b) What other two standards agencies work together to create network standards?
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c) Which standards agency(ies) is(are) especially important for internet processes?
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d) For physical transmission processes?
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e) For data link processes?
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f) For transport processes?
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g) For Internet supervisory processes?
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4. a) Why do standards architectures have multiple layers?
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b) To what does a standards layer provide services?
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c) If you change a standard at one layer, do standards at other layers need to be changed?
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d) Why may it be advantageous to change a standard if the standard at the layer below it is upgraded?
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5. a) What are the standards agencies for OSI? Just give the abbreviations.
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b) Distinguish between ISO and OSI.
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c) What is the standards agency for TCP/IP? (Give both the name and the abbreviation.)
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d) What standards architecture do most organizations actually use in practice?
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e) At which layers of this architecture are IETF standards dominant?
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f) At which layers are ISO and ITU-T standards dominant?
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g) Why does it usually not matter what standards agency creates an application layer standard?
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6. a) What layer or layers govern(s) transmission media?
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 b) Application programs?
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c) Transmission through a single network?
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d) Transmission through the Internet?
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e) Application message fragmentation?
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7. a) At what layer will you find standards for routers?
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b) Wireless access points?
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c) Packets?
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d) Switches?
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e) Frames?
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f) IP addresses?
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g) Routes?
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h) EUI-48 addresses?
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i) Data links?
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8. a) If two hosts are connected by five networks, how many packets will there be when one host sends a
packet to the other host? (Hint: draw a picture.)
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b) How many frames?
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c) How many routers?
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d) If every host and router connects with a point-to-point connection, how many physical links will there be?
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MESSAGE ORDERING (PLUS RELIABILITY AND CONNECTION ORIENTATION) IN

STANDARDS
9. a) In HTTP, which application program initiates an interaction?
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 b) Is HTTP a connectionless protocol?
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c) Is HTTP a reliable protocol?
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10. a) What do we call TCP messages?
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b) Describe the three-step opening in TCP.
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c) Is every TCP segment acknowledged?
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d) What is noteworthy about control segments?
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11. a) Is TCP connection-oriented or connectionless?
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b) What benefits do sequence numbers bring?
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c) How many segments are transmitted to open a connection?
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12. a) What kind of message does the destination host send if it receives an error-free segment?
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b) What kind of message does the destination host send if it does not receive a segment during a TCP
connection?
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c) What kind of message does the destination host send if it receives a segment that has an error during a
TCP connection?
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d) Under what conditions will a source host TCP process retransmit a segment?
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13. a) What are the four steps in the four-way close?
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b) When the side that initiates the close sends its FIN segment, does it stop transmitting more TCP segments?
Explain.
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MESSAGE SYNTAX IN STANDARDS

14. a) What are the three general parts of messages?
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b) What higher-layer content does the data field contain?
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c) What is the definition of a header?
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 d) Is there always a data field in a message?
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e) What is the definition of a trailer?
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f) Are trailers common?
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g) Distinguish between headers and header fields.
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15. a) List the first bit number on each IPv4 header row in 2-12, not including options. (Remember that the first
bit in Row 1 is Bit 0.)
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b) What is the bit number of the first bit in the Destination IP Address Field in IPv4?
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c) Describe how the internet process checks an arriving packet for errors.
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d) What does the receiving internet process do if it finds an error?
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e) What does it do if it does not find an error?
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f) Is IP reliable or unreliable? Explain.
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g) Is IP a connectionless or connection-oriented protocol?
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16. a) What are 1-bit fields called?
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b) If someone says that a flag field is set, what does this mean?
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c) If the ACK bit is set, what other field must have a value?
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d) Why are sequence numbers good?
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e) What is the purpose of the Acknowledgment Number Field?
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f) Do SYN segments have data fields?
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g) Can a single TCP segment both send information and provide an acknowledgment?
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17. a) What are the four fields in a UDP header?
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b) Describe the third.
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 c) Describe the fourth.
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d) UDP does error detection and discarding but does not do the retransmission of damaged or lost
datagrams. Is UDP reliable? Explain.
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18. a) What type of port numbers do servers use for common server programs?
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b) What type of port numbers do clients use when they communicate with server programs?
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c) What is the range of port numbers for each type of port?
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d) How are ephemeral port numbers generated?
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e) Why are they called ephemeral?
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19. a) What is the syntax of a socket?
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b) In Figure 2-16, when the client transmits to the mail server, what is the source socket?
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c) What is the destination socket?

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d) When the SMTP server transmits to the client host, what is the source socket?
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e) What is the destination socket?
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20. a) How is the syntax of Ethernet II frames depicted?
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 b) In what field is the IP packet carried in Ethernet II frames?
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c) Why does this version of the book deal with Ethernet II frames?
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d) How does the receiving data link layer process know what is in the data field of an Ethernet II frame?
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e) Why is Ethernet unreliable despite having a Frame Check Sequence Field that is used to check for errors?
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ENCODING APPLICATION MESSAGES INTO BINARY

21. a) What is encoding?
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b) At what layer is the encoding of application messages done?
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22. a) What is alphanumeric information?
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b) Explain how many bytes it will take to transmit “Go team” without the quotation marks. (Answer: 7)
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c) Explain how many bytes it will take to transmit “Hello World!” without the quotation marks.
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d) Go to a search engine and find a converter to represent characters in ASCII. What are the 7-bit ASCII codes
for “Hello world!” without the quotation marks? (Check: H is 1001000.) Show this in a table with two
columns. The first will show letters or other keyboard characters. The second will show the ASCII code for
that character.
Letter ASCII
H 1001000
23. Answer the following questions without using a calculator or a computer.
a) What is an integer?
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b) Is 4,307 an integer?
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c) Is 45.7 an integer?
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d) To encode a decimal number into binary, is the first bit position on the right in Figure 2-20 a 0 or 1?
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e) Convert the decimal number 6 to binary without using a computer. (Answer 110.)
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f) Convert decimal 0 to binary.
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g) Convert decimal 15 to binary.
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h) Convert 62 to binary.
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i) This time using Excel or a decimal to binary converter, convert 128 to binary. (Answer: 10000000).
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j) Also using Excel or a decimal to binary converter, convert 255 to binary.
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k) Convert the binary number 100 to decimal. (Answer: 4.)
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l) Convert the binary number 1111 to decimal.
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m) Convert the binary number 10110 to decimal.
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n) Convert the binary number 100100 to decimal.
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24. a) How many alternatives can you represent with a 4-bit field? (Answer: 16.)
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b) For each bit you add to an alternatives field, how many additional alternatives can you represent?
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c) How many alternatives can you represent with a 10-bit field? (With 8 bits, you can represent 256
alternatives.)
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d) If you need to represent 129 alternatives in a field, how many bits long must the field be? (Answer: 8.)
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e) If you need to represent 18 alternatives in a field, how many bits long must the field be?
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 f) Come up with three examples of things that should be encoded with 3 bits.
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25. a) In TCP, port number fields are 16 bits long. How many possible port numbers are there?
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b) IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long. How many IPv6 addresses are there? Just represent the formula for
calculating the value.
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c) The IP version number field is 4 bits long. How many possible versions of IP can there be?
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d) UDP length fields are 16 bits long. This field gives the number of bytes in the data field. How many bytes
long may a UDP data field be?
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e) ASCII has a 7-bit code. How many keyboard characters can it represent?
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PROTOCOLS IN THIS CHAPTER

26. a) What protocols that we saw in this chapter are reliable?
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b) Why aren’t all protocols reliable?
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END-OF-CHAPTER QUESTIONS
2-1.How do you think TCP would handle the problem if an acknowledgment were lost, so that the sender
retransmitted the unacknowledged TCP segment, therefore causing the receiving transport process to
receive the same segment twice?
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2-2 a) Compute the minimum number of TCP segments required to open a connection, send an HTTP request
and response message, and close the connection. Justify this number by creating a table showing each
message and its sequence number. (Hint: Do the table in Excel and paste it into your homework document.)

Step Sender Segment

1 BROWSER SYN
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b) Repeat the question, this time if the HTTP response message is damaged during transmission.

Step Sender Segment

1 BROWSER SYN
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2-3 Compute the minimum number of TCP segments required to open a connection, send an HTTP request and
response message, and close the connection if the HTTP response message must be fragmented across ten
packets. Justify this number by creating a table showing each message and its sequence number. (Hint: Do
the table in Excel and paste it into your homework document.)
Step Sender Segment
1 B SYN
2
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25

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2-4.a) In Figure 2-16, what will be the value in the destination port number field if a packet arrives for the e-mail
application? (Yes, this is a repeat question from earlier.)
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b) When the HTTP program on a webserver sends an HTTP response message to a client PC, in what field of
what message will it place the value 80?
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2-5.Do the following without using a calculator or computer, but check your answers with a calculator or a
computer. a) Convert 6 to binary.
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 b) Convert 47 to binary.
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c) Convert 100 to binary.
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d) Convert 110100 to decimal.
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e). Convert 001100 to decimal.
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2-6.Do the following without using a calculator or a computer, but check your answers with a calculator or a
computer. You need to represent 1,026 different city names. How many bits will this take if you give each
city a different binary number? Explain your answer.
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2-7.a) The port number fields in TCP and UDP are 16 bits long. How many port numbers can they represent?
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b) In IP, the Time to Live Field is 8 bits in size. How many values can it represent?
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c) How many values can a flag field represent?
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2-8. Consult the Wikipedia Webpage April Fools' Day Request for Comments
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_Request_for_Comments). Select one of the RFCs listed
on the page and write a paragraph on its claimed purpose. (Don’t just pick the first few.)
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2-9.What was the most surprising thing you learned in this chapter?
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2-10. What was the most difficult material for you in this chapter?
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