Network Layer

UNIT 1 NETWORK LAYER

Structure Page No.
1.0 Introduction 5
1.1 Objectives 5
1.2 Switching 6
1.3 Routing Algorithm 7
1.3.1 Classification of Routing Algorithms
1.3.2 Non-Adaptive Routing Algorithm (Static Routing)
1.3.3 Dynamic Routing Algorithm (Adaptive)
1.3.4 Comparison Link State Versus Distance Vector Routing
1.4 Congestion Control 15
1.4.1 Algorithm For Congestion Control
1.5 Network Addressing 20
1.5.1 Classful Addressing
1.5.2 NetID and HostID
1.6 Fragmentation 26
1.7 Error Messaging Services 28
1.7.1 ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol)
1.7.2 IGMP(Internet Group Message Protocol)
1.8 Summary 32
1.9 Further Reading 32
1.10 Solution/Answers 33

1.0 INTRODUCTION
As you know, the network layer is one of the important layers of OSI model. It is
responsible for different tasks of networking, but mainly its role is to determine
addresses and finding a route between a source and destination node or between two
intermediate devices. It establishes and maintains a logical connection between these
two nodes, either a connectionless or a connection oriented communication. The basic
purpose of the network layer is to provide a network to network communication
capability in contrast to machine to machine common provided by data line layer. The
network layer controls the operation of the subnet. A key design issue is determining
how packets are routed from source to destination. Routes can be determined based on
static tables that are “wired into” the network and rarely changed. If too many packets
are present in the subnet at the same time, they will get in one another’s way forming
bottlenecks. The controlling such congestion also belongs to the network layer. The
quality of service also depends on network layer issue.

In this unit, we will study the fundamental Issues of network layer. These issues are
designing interface between the host and the network, the routing methods, congestion
control methods and Internetworking issues. In this unit we will study how routing is
done at network layer using adaptive and non adaptive algorithm. We will also discuss
the Network addressing. Further, some Error reporting protocols ICMP and IGMP on
network layer will be discussed.

1.1 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit, you should be able to:
• Know the basic issues of network layer
• Understand the different switching methods used at network layer
• Know the routing mechanisms

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Network, Transport • Understand the congestion control methods
and Application
Layer • Differentiate between adaptive and non adaptive algorithm
• Know process of Error reporting protocols at network layer

1.2 SWITCHING
As you have studied earlier in block 1, unit 3, that Switching is used to determine the
path to be used for forwarding the information to the receiver. You also know that the
Switching methods are mainly divided into Circuit, Message and Packet switching. In
this section, we will explore the other switching mechanism like virtual circuit and
datagram.

Virtual circuit is a connection oriented communication service that is delivered by

means of packet mode communication. After a connection or virtual circuit is
established between two nodes or application processes, a bit stream may be delivered
between the nodes. It is similar to the circuit switching only in virtual circuit
permanent/physical connection are not established. If router fails all virtual circuits
that pass through, the failed router are terminated.

Datagram is opposite of Virtual circuit, it is connection less service. A datagram or

packet needs to be self-contained without any dependency on earlier data-transfer
because there is no connection of fixed duration between the two communicating
nodes as shown in figure 1. Following Table 1 show the difference between circuit
switching, virtual circuit and datagram:

Table 1: Difference Between Circuit Switching, Virtual Circuit and Datagram

S.No. Circuit Switching Virtual Circuit Datagram

1. Dedicated path between Non-dedicated Non-dedicated.

sender and receiver between sender and
receiver.

2. Connection oriented Highly Connection oriented Connection less

Reliable

3. Data transfer in continuous Data transfer in Data transfer in

form. packets packets.

4. Bandwidth is fixed. Not fined dynamic. Dynamic

5. E.g. telephone services Subnet Internet

6. Data transfer in voice form. Data transfer Text form

usually in text from.

7. Call setup delay is Delay Moderate Call set up

maximum. negligible.

8. Transmission delay Moderate Maximum

minimum transmission delay

9. Unused bandwidth is just Moderate No wasted.

wasted

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 Network Layer

Figure 1: Circuit switching, Virtual circuit and Datagram (left to right)

1.3 ROUTING ALGORITHM

The main function of the network layer is routing packets from the source machine to
the destination machine. So, the algorithm that choose the routes and the data
structure that they use are a major area of network layer design.

It is that part of the network layer responsible for deciding which output line an
incoming packet should be transmitted on.

Desired Properties of a Routing Algorithm

1. Correction: The routing should be done properly and correctly so that the
packets may reach their proper destination.

2. Simplicity: The routing should be done in a simple manner so that the over
head is as low as possible.

3. Robustness: Once a major network becomes operative, it may be expected to

run continuously for years without any failure.

4. Stability: The routing algorithm should be stable under all possible

circumstances.

5. Fairness: Every node connected to the network gets a fair change of

transmitting their packets. This is generally done on a first come first serve
basis.

6. Optimality: The routing algorithms should be optimal in terms of throughput

and minimizing mean packet delays. Here there is a trade off and one has to
choose depending on his suitability.

1.3.1 Classification of Routing Algorithms

Routing algorithm may be classified as follows:
1. Adaptive Algorithm

2. Non-adaptive algorithms

Adaptive algorithms use such dynamic information as current topology, load delay
etc to select routes.

Non adaptive algorithms, routes never changes once initial routes have been
selected. Also, called static routing.

7
Network, Transport
and Application Adaptive Routing Algorithm (Dynamic Routing)
Layer
It changes their routing decision to reflect changes in the topology and in traffic as
well. These get their routing information from adjacent routers or from all routers.
Routing decision may be changed when network topology and/or traffic load changes.
The optimization parameters are the distance, number of hops and estimated transit
time.

Adaptive routing algorithms can be further classified as follows:

1. Isolated: Each router makes its routing decisions using only the local
information it has on hand. Specifically, routers do not even exchange
information with their neighbors.

2. Centralized: A centralized node makes all routing decision specifically the

centralized node has access to global information.

3. Distributed: Algorithm that uses a combination of local and global

information.

Isolated: In this method, the node decides the routing without seeking information
from other node. The disadvantage is that the packet may be sent through a congested
route resulting in a delay.
Some of the examples of this type of algorithm for routing are :
• Hot Potato Routing: Form of routing in which the nodes of a network have no
buffer to store packets in before they are moved on to their final predetermined
destination.
• In normal routing situation, when multiple packets contend for a single outgoing
channel, packets that are not buffered are dropped to avoid congestion.
• Backward Learning: In this method the routing tables at each node gets
modified by information from the incoming packets. Backward learning routing
algorithm used for routing traffic that makes decisions by assume that a can
optimally reach B through C.

Centralized Routing
Advantage: Only one node is required to keep the information.

Disadvantage: If the central node goes down the entire network is down, i.e. single
point of failure.

Distributed: It receives information from its neighboring nodes and then takes the
decision about which way to send the packet.

Disadvantages: If in between the interval it receives information and sends the

packet, something changes then packet may be delayed.

Optimality Principle
Optimality principle is a general statement about optimal routes regardless of network
topology or traffic.

Figure 2: An example of Optimality Principle

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With reference to Figure 2 above, Optimality principle states that if router I is on the Network Layer
optimal path from router ‘I’ to router ‘K’ then the optimal path from ‘J’ to ‘K’ also
falls along the same route.

To prove the above statement we can say, if there was a better way from J to K, then
you could use that with the path from I to J for a better path from I to K, so your
starting point (the path from I to K was optimal) is contradicted.

1.3.2 Non-Adaptive Routing Algorithm (Static Routing)

These algorithms do not take their routing decisions on measurements and estimates
of the current traffic and topology. Instead the route to be taken from one node to the
other is computed in advance. This is also known as static routing.

1. Shortest Path Routing: According to this algorithm build a graph of the

subnet, with each node of graph representing a router and each arc of the graph
representing communication line. To choose a route between a pair of routers,
just finds the shortest path between them on the graph.

Two ways of measuring distance

a) Distance in terms of link delay.
b) Measuring path length in number of hops.
In the most general case, the labels on the arc could be computed as a
function of the bandwidth, average traffic communication cost, mean
queue length measured delay, and other factors.
c) Flooding: According to this algorithm every incoming packet is sent out
on every outgoing line except the cone it arrived on.
Flooding generates vast number of duplicate packets unless some
measures are taken to damp the process. One such measure is to have a
hop counter contained in the header of each packet, which is decremented
at each hop with the packet being discarded when the counter reaches
zero. The hop counter should be initialized to the length of path from
source to destination. If the sender does not know how long the path is, it
can be initialize the counter to the worst case, namely, the full diameter of
the subnet. An alternative technique for damming the flood is to keep
track of which packets have been flooded, to avoid sending them out a
second time.
d) Selective Flooding
In this algorithm the routers do not send every incoming packet out on
every line, only on those line that are going approximately in right
direction.
Though flooding is not practical in most application, but (yes) is does
have some uses.
i) In military applications: Tremendous robustness of flooding is
highly desirable.

ii) In distributed data base application: It is sometimes necessary

to update all the data bases concurrently, in which case flooding
can be useful.

Disadvantages:
1. Duplicacy

9
Network, Transport 2. Infinite looping.
and Application
Layer 3. Flow-Based Routing: This algorithm considers two strategies in account to
decide the route.
a) Topology.
b) Load for routing
Previous static algorithm only considers topology in account not the load
for routing. The basic idea behind the analysis is that for a given line, if
capacity and average flow is known, it is possible to compute the mean
packet delay on that line from queuing theory. The routing problem then
reduces to finding the routing algorithm that produces the minimum
average delay for the subnet.
For this technique, certain information must be known in advance.
c) Topology
d) Traffic Matrix Fij
e) Line capacity matrix Cij
1
Now T = µc − λ

Where T = Mean delay

1
µ = Mean packet size
 = Mean flow in packet/sec. (No of arrival
frame on particular line).
C = Capacity
Two common methods are used to calculate the shortest path between two
routers.
1. Distance vector routing (Bellman ford routing algorithm and the Ford Fulkerson
algorithm).
2. Link state routing (based on Dikastra’s algorithm).

1.3.3 Dynamic Routing Algorithm (Adaptive)

Routing algorithms can be classified based on inter-domain and
intra-domain as shown in figure 3 given below.
Routing Protocols

Intradomain Interdomain

Distance Vector Link State Path Vector

RIP OSPF BGP

Figure 3: Classification of routing algorithms

RIP  Routing information protocol

OSPF  Open shortest path first
BGP  Border gateway protocol.

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1. Distance vector routing Network Layer

Distance Vector Routing: According to this algorithm, each router maintains a

table (vector) giving the best known distance to each destination and which line
to use to get there. These tables are updated by exchanging information with the
neighbors. This algorithm is also called Bellman-Ford or the Ford-Fulkerson
Algorithm.

In distance vector routing, each router maintains a routing table indexed by, and
containing one entry for each router in the subnet. This entry contains two parts
a) The preferred outgoing line to use for that destination.
b) An estimate of the time as distance to that destination.
The router is assumed to know the distance to each of its neighbors.
For example, consider a subnet as given below in figure 4.
A C

B
C D

Figure 4: Subnet Diagram

To From From From To From

A
A 0 2 4 A 5 A
B 3 0 2 B 6 B
C 8 4 1 C 0 -
D 2 7 0 D 8 D
E 1 11 12 E 6 A
CA=5 CB=6 CD=8

1 2 3

Figure 5: An example of Distance Vector Routing

Part (a) shows a subnet.

Part (b) the first 3 column shows the delay received from neighbor of router ‘C’ is A
and B and D.

For example : as shown in the figure 5, ‘A’ claims to have 3 msec delay to B 8 msec
delay to ‘C’ and so on. Similarly ‘B’ claims to have 2 msec delay to A, 4 msec delay
to ‘C’ and so on.

‘C’ has estimated his delay to neighbour A, B, D as 5, 6, 8 respectively (CA = 5, CB =

6, CD = 8).

Now (4) column shows how router ‘C’ decides his new route to router ‘E’. There are
three ways
a) If ‘C’ follows line ‘A’ then delay is CE = CA ® AE = 5 + 1 = 6 msec.

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Network, Transport c) If ‘C’ follows line ‘B’ then delay is CE = CB ® BE = 6 + 11 = 17 msec.
and Application
Layer d) If ‘C’ follows line ‘D’ then delay is CD ® DE ® 8 + 12 = 20 msec.
Min delay time is via neighbor route ‘A’ so from C to E line is chosen ‘A’ in
column (4)
The same calculations is performed for all destination, with the new routing
table as (4)

Problem of Distance Vector Routing

1.Count to Infinity Problem-Distance vector routing has a serious drawback
in its receptivity. In particular, it reacts rapidly to good news, but slowly to bad
news. Following illustration shows an imagined network and denotes the
distances from router A to every other router in the figure 6. Until now
everything works fine.

Figure 6: Count to Infinity Problem

The illustration shows that link (A, B) is broken. Router B observed it, but in its
routing table he sees, that router C has a route to A with 2 hops.

The problem is, that router B doesn't know that C has router B as successor in
his routing table on the route to A.

That occurs followed count-to-infinity problem. B actualizes his routing table

and takes the route to A over router C.
In the next figure 7; we can see the new distances to A. In C's routing the route
to A contains router B as next hop router, so if B has increase his costs to A, C
is forced to do so. Router C increases his cost to A about B + 1 = 4.
Now we see the consequence of the distributed Bellman-Ford protocol: Because
router B takes the path over C to A, it updates its routing table and so on!
At the end, this problem is going to immobilize the whole network.
1.

Figure 7: Count to Infinity Problem illustration

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2. Hierarchical Routing: As networks grow in size, the router routing tables Network Layer
grow proportionally. Not only the router memory consumed but also the more
CPU time is needed to scan them and more bandwidth is needed.

The problem can be solved to some extent by using Hierarchical routing. In this
routers are divided into regions as depicted in figure 8, with each router
knowing all the details how to route packets to destination within it own region,
but nothing about the internal structure of other regions.

For huge network, a two level hierarchy may be insufficient, it may be

necessary to group the regions into clusters, the clusters into zones, the zones
into groups and so on.

For example : When different networks are connected together, it is natural to

regard each one as a separate region in order to free the routers in one network
from having to know the topological structure of other ones.

Figure 8: Hierarchical Routing

Full Table for 1A (Dest=Destination) Hierarchical Table for 1A

Dest Line Hops Dest Line Hops

1A 1A
1B 1B 1 1B 1B 1
1C 1C 1 1C 1C 1

2A 1B 2 2 1B 2
2B 1B 3 3 1C 2
2C 1B 3 4 1C 3
2D 1B 4 5 16 4
3A 1C 3
3B 1C 2
4A 1C 2
4B 1C 4
4C 1C 4
5A 1C 4
5B 1C 5
5C 1B 5
5D 1C 6
5E 1C 5

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 Network, Transport The full routing table as shown above for 1A has 17 entries but when routing is
and Application done hierarchically there are only 7 entries (e entries for local routers 4 entries
Layer for regions which are considered as single router. All the traffic for region 2
goes by 1B-2A line but rest of traffic goes by 1C-3B line.

The basic concept of Disadvantages:

link-state routing is that
every node constructs a 1. There is a penalty to be paid in the form of increased path length. For example
map of the connectivity the best route from 1A to 5C is via region 2, but with hierarchical routing all
to the network, in the traffic to region 5 goes via region 3, because that is better for most destinations
form of a graph, showing in region 5.
which nodes are
connected to which other 2. If single network become very large then multilevel hierarchy can be used.
nodes. Each node then
independently calculates
The presence of congestion means that the load is (temporarily) greater than the
the next best logical path resources can handle.
from it to every possible
destination in the 3. Link state Routing
network. The collection Link State routing protocols (an adaptive routing algorithm) do not view
of best paths will then networks in terms of adjacent routers and hop counts, but they build a
form the node's routing
comprehensive view of the overall network which fully describes the all
table.
possible routes along with their costs. Using the SPF (Shortest Path First)
algorithm, the router creates a "topological database" which is a hierarchy
reflecting the network routers it knows about. It then puts it's self on the top of
this hierarchy, and has a complete picture from it's own perspective.

The complete working of algorithm can be divided into Five Steps:

1. Discover your neighbors and learn their addresses.

In this process send “Hello”, packet on each point-to-point line. After receiving
the hello packet Destination, node replies with its address.
2. Measure the cost (delay) to each neighbor.

Send an “ECHO” packet over the line. Destination is required to respond to

“ECHO” packet immediately. Measure the time required for this operation.
3. Construct a packet containing all this information

The information tables are creating having all details of neighboring nodes.
4. Send this packet to all other routers.

Use selective flooding. Sequence numbers prevent duplicate packets from being
propagated. Lower sequence numbers are rejected as obsolete
5. Compute the shortest path to every other router.

Dijkstra’s Shortest Path algorithm is used to determine the shortest path to each
destination.

When a router using a Link State protocol, such an OSPF (Open Shortest Path
First) knows about a change on the network, it will broadcast this change
instantly, there for flooding the network with this information. The information
routers require to build their databases is provided in the form of Link State
advertisement packets (LSAP). Routers do not advertise their entire routing
tables; instead each router advertises only its information regarding
immediately adjacent routers.

1.3.4 Comparison Link State Versus Distance Vector Routing

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• Link state has big memory requirements Network Layer

• In link state shortest path computations require many CPU circles

• Link state, If network is stable little bandwidth is used; react quickly to

topology changes

• In link state announcements cannot be “filtered”. All items in the database must
be sent to neighbors

• In link state all neighbors must be trusted

• In link state authentication mechanisms can be used to avoid undesired

adjacencies

• In link state no split horizon techniques are possible

Even though Link State protocols work more efficiently, problem can arise.
Usually problems occur cause of changes in the network topology (links go up-
down), and all routers don't get updated immediately cause they might be on
different line speeds, there for, routers connected via a fast link will receive
these changes faster than the others on a slower link.

Different techniques have been developed to deal with these problem and these are:

1. Dampen update frequency

2. Target link-state updates to multicast

3. Use link-state area hierarchy for topology

4. Exchange route summaries at area borders

5. Use Time-stamps Update numbering & counters

6. Manage partitions using a area hierarchy

1.4 CONGESTION CONTROL

Congestion: When too many packets are in a subnet or a part of subnet, performance
degrades as depicted in figure 9. This situation is called congestion.
Factors Causing the Congestion
1. Many input lines demanding the same output lines.

2. Slow receiver fast sender.

3. Low bandwidth lines can also cause congestion.

4. Congestion itself (duplicacy).

5. Traffic is bursty.

15
Network, Transport
and Application
Layer

Figure 9: capacity of subnet and congestion

Congestion control principles are divided into two categories:

a) Open loop: In open loop solution the good designs are being developed to solve
the problem so that congestion does not occur at first place once the system is
setup and running, no mid pores connection is made. In open loop control, tools
are included to decide when to accept new traffic, when to discard packets and
which ones. And making scheduling decisions at various points in the network.
The decisions are offline decision is not based on current state of network close
loop solution.
The concept of feedback loop is used in closed loop solution. This approach has
three parts, when apply to the congestion control.
i) Monitor the system to detect when and where congestion occurs.
ii) Pass the information to places where the action can be taken.
iii) Adjust system operation to correct the problem.

1.4.1 Algorithm for Congestion Control

Two major criterion of congestion control are
1. To decrease load

2. To increase capacity

Traffic Shaping (Congestion Control Policy in ATM)

One of the main causes of congestion is that traffic is often bursty. If hosts could be
made to transmit a uniform rate, congestion would be less common. Another open
loop method to help manage congestion is forcing the packet to be transmitted at a
more predictable rate. This approach to congestion management is widely used in
ATM networks and is called traffic shaping.

Traffic shaping is about regulating the average rate (and burstiness) of data
transmission.

Leaky Bucket Algorithm

Imagine a bucket with a small hole in the bottom as depicted in figure 10. No matter
at what rate enters the bucket, the outflow is at a constant rate, when there is any

16
water is bucket and zero when the bucket is empty. Also once the bucket is full, any Network Layer
additional water entering it spills over the sides and is lost.

Figure 10: Normal Leaky bucket

The same idea can be applied to packets conceptually; each host is connected to the
network by an interface containing a leaky bucket, i.e. a finite internal queue. If a
packet arrives at the queue when it is full, the packet is discarded. This arrangement
can be built into the hardware interface. It was first proposed by turner and is called
leaky bucket algorithm as given figure 11.

Leaky bucket algorithm can be understood as “The leaky bucket consists of finite
queue when a packet arrives, if there is room on the queue it is appended to the queue,
otherwise it is discarded. At every clock tick, one packet is transmitted”.

Figure 11: Leaky bucket algorithm

17
Network, Transport Advantage
and Application
Layer This algorithm smoothens the bursts and greatly reduces the chances of congestion.

Disadvantages
1. When the queue is full, packets are discarded.

2. Sometimes it is necessary to speed up the output which is not possible in leaky

bucket algorithm.

Token Bucket Algorithm: The leaky bucket algorithm has a rigid output pattern at
the average rate, no matter how bursty the traffic is.

In many applications, it is better to allow the output to speed up somewhat when large
bursts arrive so a more flexible algorithm is needed, preferably one that never losses
data one such algorithm is token bus algorithm.

In token bucket algorithm, the leaky bucket holds ‘tokens’ generated by a clock at the
rate of one token every DT sec.

Host Host
Computer Computer

One token is
added to the
bucket every ∆ t

The Bucket
Holds Tokens

Networks Networks
(a) (b)

Figure 12: Token Bucket Algorithm

In above figure 12, we see a bucket holding three tokens, with five packets waiting to
be transmitted. For a packet to be transmitted, it must capture and destroy one token.
Three of fine packets have gone through, but other two are waiting for tokens to be
generated.

The token bucket algorithm provides a different kind of traffic shaping than the leaky
bucket algorithm. Bust of up to n. packets can be sent at once, allowing some
burstiness in the output stream and giving faster response to sodden bursts of input.

A token bucket algorithm throws away tokens when the bucket fills up but never
discards packets.

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 Table 1: Token Bucket V/S Leaky Bucket Network Layer

S.No Token Bucket Leaky Bucket

.
1. The algorithm shaping is quite In this there is a trade off between
different. memory and bandwidth and packet
life time.
2. It allows saving up to maximum size It has constant traffic depending on
of ‘n’ i.e. burst can be send of the Leakage.
size ‘n’ at once.
3. Token bucket discarded token when This discards the packets when
bucket fills up. bucket fills

Check Your Progress 1

1. The shortest path in routing can refer to………..
a) The least expensive path
b) The least distant path
c) The path with the smallest number of hops
d) Any or a combination of above

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2. In distance vector routing, each router receives vector from

a) Every router in the network
b) Every router less than two units away
c) A table stored by the software
d) Its neighbor only

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

3. In link state routing, flooding allows changes to be recorded by

a) All router
b) Neighbor router only
c) Some routers
d) All networks

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

4. In which type of switching, do all the datagrams of a message follow the same
channel of a path
a) Circuit switching
b) Datagram packet switching
c) Virtual circuit packet switching
d) Message switching

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

19
Network, Transport 5. Which type of switching uses the entire capacity of a dedicated link
and Application
Layer a) Circuit switching
b) Datagram packet switching
c) Virtual circuit packet switching
d) Message switching

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

1.5 NETWORK ADDRESSING

IP address versions
IP became the official protocol for the internet in 1983.As the internet has evolved, so
has the IP. There have been six versions since its inception. Three versions are main.

1. Version 4(IPv4)

2. Version 5(Ipv5)

3. Version 6(Ipv6)

IP addressing
The identifier used in the IP layer of the TCP/IP protocol suite to identify each device
connected to the Internet is called the Internet address or IP address.

OR
An IP address (Ipv4) is a 32-bit address that uniquely and universally defines the
connection of a host or a router to the Internet.

There are three common ways in which IP addresses can be represented.

1. There is the binary notation which uses the base two number system to
represent numbers.

2. There is the decimal notation which uses the base ten number system to
represent numbers.

3. There is the hexadecimal notation which uses the base sixteen number system to
represent numbers.

Do you know?
An IP address is a 32-bit(4-bytes) address.

Example 1
Assume, IGNOU’s IP address is 142.190.23.180. This IP address consists of four
bytes. The first byte has the value of 142. The second byte has the value of 190. The
third byte has the value of 23, and the fourth byte has the value of 18.

Do you know?
IP addresses are unique.

20
IP addresses are unique in the sense that each address defines one, and only one, Network Layer
connection to the Internet. Two devices on the Internet can never have the same
address.

Do you know?
The address space of IPv4 is 232 or 4,294,967,296.

Notations of IP addresses

Example 1
Change the following IP addresses from binary notation to dotted-decimal notation.

a) 10000001 00001011 00001011 11101111

b. 11000001 10000011 00011011 11111111
c. 11100111 11011011 10001011 01101111
d. 11111001 10011011 11111011 00001111

Solution
We replace each group of 8 bits with its equivalent decimal number and add dots for
separation:
a) 129.11.11.239
b) 193.131.27.255
c) 231.219.139.111
d) 249.155.251.15

Example 2
Change the following IP addresses from dotted-decimal notation to binary notation.
a) 111.56.45.78
b) 221.34.7.82
c) 241.8.56.12
d) 75.45.34.78

Solution
We replace each decimal number with its binary equivalent:
a) 01101111 00111000 00101101 01001110
b) 11011101 00100010 00000111 01010010
c) 11110001 00001000 00111000 00001100
d) 01001011 00101101 00100010 01001110

Example 3
Find the error, if any, in the following IP addresses:
a) 111.56.045.78
b) 221.34.7.8.20
c) 75.45.301.14
d) 11100010.23.14.67

21
Network, Transport
and Application
Layer

Solution
a) There are no leading zeroes in dotted-decimal notation (045).
b) We may not have more than four numbers in an IP address.
c) In dotted-decimal notation, each number is less than or equal to 255; 301 is
outside this range.
d) A mixture of binary notation and dotted-decimal notation is not allowed.

Example 4
Change the following IP addresses from binary notation to hexadecimal notation.
Classless Inter-Domain a) 10000001 00001011 00001011 11101111
Routing allocates address b) 11000001 10000011 00011011 11111111
space to Internet service
providers and end users on
Solution
any address bit boundary,
instead of on 8-bit We replace each group of 4 bits with its hexadecimal equivalent (see Appendix B).
segments. CIDR notation Note that hexadecimal notation normally has no added spaces or dots; however, 0X
is a syntax of specifying IP (or 0x) is added at the beginning or the subscript 16 at the end to show that the
addresses and their number is in hexadecimal.
associated routing prefix.
It appends to the address a a) 0X810B0BEF or 810B0BEF16
slash character and the
b) 0XC1831BFF or C1831BFF16
decimal number of leading
bits of the routing prefix,
e.g., 192.0.2.0/24 for IPv4 1.5.1 Classful Addressing
IP addresses, when started a few decades ago, used the concept of classes. This
architecture is called classful addressing. In the mid-1990s, a new architecture, called
classless addressing, was introduced and will eventually supersede the original
architecture. However, part of the Internet is still using classful addressing, but the
migration is very fast.

Occupation of the address space

Table 13: Addresses per Class

When IP addresses were first started, they used the concept of classes. The range of IP
addresses were divided into five classes: As shown in the figure 13 and 14, A, B, C,
D, and E. Class A used up 50% of the address space, class B used up 25%, class C
used up 12.5%, class D used up 6.25%, and class E also used up 6.25%.

22
 Figure 14: Address Spaces of IPv4 classes Network Layer
The way you recognize which class an IP address belongs to is by analyzing the first
byte. If the number in the first byte is between 0-127, then the IP address is in the
Class A range as shown in figure 15. If it is between 128-191 it is in Class B. If it is
between 192-223 it is in the Class C range. If it is between 224-239 it is in the Class D
range, and if it is between 240-255, then it belongs to Class E.

Class in decimal notations

Figure 15: Classes of IPv4in decimal notation

Example
If IGNOU’s IP address is 140.192.23.180. Looking at this address we can see that the
first byte is 140. Since 140 is between the numbers 128-191, we know that it is in the
Class B range.

Class in binary notation

Figure 16: Classes of IPv4in binary notation

According to the figure 16, we can device a mechanism as given figure 17 for finding
the address class in binary notation like:
If first left most bit is 0 then it is class A
If first bit is 1 and second bit is 0 then it is class B
If first two bits are 1 and third bit is 0 then it is class C
If first three bits are 1 and fourth bit is 0 then it is class D
If all the four bits are 1 then it is class E

23
Network, Transport Figure 17: Finding the address class in binary notation
and Application
Layer

Example 5
How can we prove that we have 2,147,483,648 addresses in class A?

Solution
In class A, only 1 bit defines the class. The remaining 31 bits are available for the
address. With 31 bits, we can have 231 or 2,147,483,648 addresses.

Example 6
Find the class of each address:
a) 00000001 00001011 00001011 11101111
b) 11000001 10000011 00011011 11111111
c) 10100111 11011011 10001011 01101111
d) 11110011 10011011 11111011 00001111

Solution
a) The first bit is 0. This is a class A address.
b) The first 2 bits are 1; the third bit is 0. This is a class C address.
c) The first bit is 1; the second bit is 0. This is a class B address.
d) The first 4 bits are 1s. This is a class E address

Example 7
Find the class of each address:
a) 227.12.14.87
b) 193.14.56.22
c) 14.23.120.8
d) 252.5.15.111
e) 134.11.78.56

Solution
a) The first byte is 227 (between 224 and 239); the class is D.
b) The first byte is 193 (between 192 and 223); the class is C.
c) The first byte is 14 (between 0 and 127); the class is A.
d) The first byte is 252 (between 240 and 255); the class is E.
e) The first byte is 134 (between 128 and 191); the class is B.

Example 8
In Example 5 we showed that class A has 231 (2,147,483,648) addresses. How can
we prove this same fact using dotted-decimal notation?

Solution
The addresses in class A range from 0.0.0.0 to 127.255.255.255. We need to show
that the difference between these two numbers is 2,147,483,648. This is a good
exercise because it shows us how to define the range of addresses between two
addresses. We notice that we are dealing with base 256 numbers here. Each byte in
the notation has a weight. The weights are as follows
2563, 2562, 2561, 2560
Now to find the integer value of each number, we multiply each byte by its weight:

24
Last address: 127 × 2563 + 255 × 2562 + Network Layer

255 × 2561 + 255 × 2560 = 2,147,483,647

First address: = 0
If we subtract the first from the last and add 1 to the result (remember we always add
1 to get the range), we get 2,147,483,648 or 231.

1.5.2 NetID and HostID

An IP address is divided into a network ID (netid) and a host ID (hostid) as depicted
in figure 18. The lengths of the netid vary depending on the class the IP address
belongs to. In class A the netid occupies the first byte and the hostid occupies the
remaining three bytes. In class B the netid occupies the first two bytes and the hostid
occupies the remaining two bytes. In class C the first three bytes define the netid and
the last remaining byte defines the hostid. Class D and E are not divided into netid
and hostid. The following figure 18 shows how the netid and hostid are divided in
Classes A, B, and C.

Figure 18: Network ID and a host ID of IPv4 classes

Do you know?
Class D addresses are used for multicasting; there is only one block in this class and
Class E addresses are reserved for future purposes; most of the block is wasted.

In classful addressing the netid and hostid are easily distinguishable by looking at the
IP address. First you have to determine which class the IP address belongs to and from
there you can tell which part is the netid and which part is the hostid. If it is in Class
A, then the first byte represents the netid and the last three represent the hostid, and so
on.

Disadvantages of class full addressing

It wastes a lot of IP addresses and since the Internet keeps growing larger, we can't
afford to throw away IP addresses.

That is why a new addressing scheme was devised. It is called classless addressing
because it doesn't use the classes which were used in classful addressing.

Do you know?
Millions of class A and class B addresses and are wasted in class full addressing

Do you know?
The number of addresses in class C is smaller than the needs of most organizations.

Example 9

25
Network, Transport Given the network address 17.0.0.0, find the class, the block, and the range of the
and Application addresses.
Layer

Solution
The class is A because the first byte is between 0 and 127. The block has a netid of
17. The addresses range from 17.0.0.0 to 17.255.255.255.

Example 10
Given the network address 132.21.0.0, find the class, the block, and the range of the
addresses.

Solution
The class is B because the first byte is between 128 and 191. The block has a netid of
132.21. The addresses range from 132.21.0.0 to 132.21.255.255.

Example 11
Given the network address 220.34.76.0, find the class, the block, and the range of the
addresses.

Solution
class is C because the first byte is between 192 and 223. The block has a netid of
220.34.76. The addresses range from 220.34.76.0 to 220.34.76.255.

Check Your Progress 2

1. Which IP address class has few hosts per network
a) Class A
b) Class B
c) Class C
d) Class D

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2. Which of the following is true about IP addresses

a) It is divided into exactly two classes
b) It contains a fixed length host-id
c) It was established as a user friendly interface
d) It is 32 bits long

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

3. Which of the following is class C host address

a) 230.0.0.0
b) 130.4.4.6
c) 200.1.2.3
d) 30.4.5.6

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

26
 Network Layer
1.6 FRAGMENTATION
Each network imposes some maximum size on its packets. A problem appears when a
large packet wants to travel through a network whose maximum packet size is too
small. One solution is to make sure the problem does not occur in the first place. In
other words, the internet should use a routing algorithm that avoids sending packets
through networks that cannot handle them. However, this solution is no solution at all.
What happens if the original source packet is too large to be handled by the
destination network? The routing algorithm can hardly bypass the destination.

Basically, the only solution to the problem is to allow gateways to break up packets
into fragments, sending each fragment as a separate internet packet. However,
converting a large object into small fragments is considerably easier than the reverse
process.

Two opposing strategies exist for recombining the fragments back into the original
packet.

1. Transparent Fragmentation
2. Non Transparent Fragmentation

Transparent Fragmentation
The first strategy is to make fragmentation caused by a “small-packet” network
transparent to any subsequent networks through which the packet must pass on its
way to the ultimate destination. This option is shown in Figure 19 (a). In this
approach, the small-packet network has gateways that interface to other networks.
When an oversized packet arrives at a gateway, the gateway breaks it up into
fragments. Each fragment is addressed to the same exit gateway, where the pieces are
recombined. In this way, passage through the small-packet network has been made
transparent. Subsequent networks are not even aware that fragmentation has occurred.

Do you know?
ATM networks have special hardware to provide transparent fragmentation of packets
into cells and then reassembly of cells into packets. In the ATM world, fragmentation
is called segmentation

Transparent fragmentation is straightforward as shown in figure 19 a.

Figure 19 a: Transparent fragmentation

Drawback of transparent fragmentation

1. The exit gateway must know when it has received all the pieces, so either a
count field or an “end of packet” bit must be provided.

2. All packets must exit via the same gateway. By not allowing some fragments to
follow one route to the ultimate destination and other fragments a disjoint route.
some performance may be lost.

27
Network, Transport 3. A last problem is the overhead required to repeatedly reassemble and then re-
and Application fragment a large packet passing through a series of small packet networks.
Layer
Tips
ATM requires transparent fragmentation.

Non Transparent Fragmentation

The nontransparent fragmentation strategy refrains from recombining fragments at
any intermediate gateways. Once a packet has been fragmented, each fragment is
treated as though it were an original packet. All fragments are passed through the exit
gateway (or gateways), as shown in Figure 19 (b). Recombination occurs only at
destination host. IP works this way.

Non Transparent fragmentation also has some problems. For example, it requires
every host to be able to do reassembly. Yet another problem is that when the large
packet is fragmented the total overhead increases, because each fragment must have a
header.

An advantage of this method is that multiple exit gateways can now be used and
higher performance can be achieved

When a packet is fragmented, the fragments must be numbered in such a way that the
original data stream can be reconstructed. One way of numbering the fragments is to
use a tree. If packet 0 must be split up, the pieces are called 0.0, 0.1, 0.2 etc. If these
fragments themselves must be fragmented later on, the pieces are numbered 0.0.0,
0.0.1, 0.0.2, ….0.1.2 etc. If enough fields have been reserved in the header for the
worst case and no duplicates generated anywhere, this scheme is sufficient to ensure
that all the pieces can be correctly reassembled at the destination, no matter what
order they arrive in.
However, if even one network loses or discards packets, end-to-end retransmissions
are needed, with unfortunate effects for the numbering system. Suppose that a 1024-
bit packet is initially fragmented into four equal-sized fragments, 0.0, 0.1, 0.2 and
0.3. Fragment 0.1 is lost, but the other parts arrive at the destination. Eventually, the
source times out and retransmits the original packet again. Only this time the route
taken passes through a network with a 512-bit limit, so two fragments are generated.
When the new fragment 0.1 arrives at the destination, the receiver will think that all
four pieces are now accounted for a reconstruct the packet incorrectly.

Figure 19 b: Nontransparent fragmentation

1.7 ERROR MESSAGING SERVICES

1.7.1 ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol)

The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a helper protocol that supports IP
with facility for Error reporting Simple queries.

ICMP messages are sent in following situations

28
• when a datagram cannot reach its destination, Network Layer

• when the gateway does not have the buffering capacity to forward a datagram,
• When the gateway can direct the host to send traffic on a shorter route.

Do you know?
ICMP is considered an integral part of IP as shown in figure 20.
The Internet Protocol (IP) is not designed to be absolutely reliable. The purpose of
these control messages is to provide feedback about problems in the communication
environment, not to make IP reliable. There are still no guarantees that a datagram
will be delivered or a control message will be returned. Some datagrams may still be
undelivered without any report of their loss. The higher level protocols that use IP
must implement their own reliability procedures if reliable communication is required.
The ICMP messages typically report errors in the processing of datagrams. To avoid
the infinite regress of messages about messages etc., no ICMP messages are sent
about ICMP messages.

TIPS
ICMP provides error reporting, flow control and first-hop gateway redirection.

Position of ICMP in the network layer

Figure 20: Protocols of Internet layer (TCP/IP)

ICMP header format

It consists of following fields
• Type
• Code
• ICMP header checksum
• Data

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Type Code ICMP header checksum
Data

The fields can be described as follows

1. Type. It is of 8 bits. It specifies the format of the ICMP message.

2. Code. It is of 8 bits. It further qualifies the ICMP message.

3. ICMP Header Checksum. It is of 16 bits. It is checksum that covers the ICMP

message. This is the 16-bit one's complement of the one's complement sum of
the ICMP message starting with the Type field. The checksum field should be
cleared to zero before generating the checksum.

4. Data. It is of variable length. It contains the data specific to the message type
indicated by the Type and Code fields

29
Network, Transport Types of ICMP messages
and Application
Layer Each ICMP message contains three fields that define its purpose and provide a
checksum. They are
• TYPE,
• CODE, and
• CHECKSUM fields (described above).
The TYPE field identifies the ICMP message, the CODE field provides further
information about the associated TYPE field, and the CHECKSUM provides a
method for determining the integrity of the message.

Tips
ICMP message are sent as packet so these are also called ICMP packet

ICMP messages are divided into two categories

• Error-reporting messages.
• Query messages.

Tips
ICMP messages are identified by "type" numbers

The error-reporting messages report problems that a router or a host (destination)

may encounter. The query messages get specific information from a router or another
host. For example, this can be used by the hosts to discover the routers present in their
network. The host would send a ICMP query asking for routers to respond. The outers
present in the network will respond with an ICMP reply message. The host would get
information about the router from this reply.

Examples of error reporting messages

• Destination unreachable
• Source quench
• Time exceeded
• Parameter problem
• Redirection

Example of query messages

• Echo request and reply
• Timestamp request and reply
• Address mask request and reply
• Router solicitation and advertisement

1.7.2 IGMP(Internet Group Message Protocol)

IGMP is a protocol that manages group membership. The IGMP protocol gives the
multicast routers information about the membership status of hosts (routers)
connected to the network.

Tips

30
Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is the protocol used to support Network Layer
multicasting.

Position of IGMP in the network layer

Types of messages in IGMP

IGMP has three types of messages:
• the query,
• the membership report,
• and the leave report.
There are two types of query messages as shown in figure 21, general and special

Figure 21: Types of query messages in IGMP

IGMP frame format

It consists of following fields

• Type
• Maximum response time
• Checksum
• Group addresses

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Type Code IGMP Checksum
Identifier
Group Address
Access Key
The fields can be described as follows

1. Type. It is of 8 bits. Following types of IGMP messages are possible

31
Network, Transport 2. Code. It is of 8 bits. In a Create Group Request message, this field indicates if
and Application the new host group is to be public or private. In all other Request messages, this
Layer field is set to zero.

In a Reply message, the Code field specifies the outcome of the request.

3. IGMP Checksum. It is of 16 bits. The checksum is the 16-bit one’s

complement of the one’s complement sum of the IGMP message starting with
the IGMP Type. For computing the checksum, the checksum field should first
be cleared to 0. When the data packet is transmitted, the checksum is computed
and inserted into this field. When the data packet is received, the checksum is
again computed and verified against the checksum field. If the two checksums
do not match then an error has occurred.

4. Identifier. It is of 32 bits. In a confirm Group Request message, the identifier

field contains zero. In all other Request messages, the identifier field contains a
value to distinguish the request from other requests by the same host. In a Reply
message, the identifier field contains the same value as in the corresponding
Request message.

5. Group Address. It is of 32 bits. In a Create Group Request message, the group

address field contains zero. In all other Request messages, the group address
field contains a host group address. In a Create Group Reply message, the group
address field contains either a newly allocated host group address (if the request
is granted) or zero (if denied). In all other Reply messages, the group address
field contains the same host group address as in the corresponding Request
message.

6. Access Key. This field is of 64 bits. In a Create Group Request message, the
access key field contains zero. In all other Request messages, the access key
field contains the access key assigned to the host group identified in the Group
Address field (zero for public groups). In a Create Group Reply message, the
access key field contains either a non-zero 64-bit number (if the request for a
private group is granted) or zero. In all other Reply messages, the access key
field contains the same access key as in the corresponding Request.

Do you know?
IGMP is defined in RFC 1112.

1.8 SUMMARY
In this unit, we studied various design issues of network layer. Network layer provides
best route from source to destination using adaptive routing algorithm like distance
vector routing and link state routing. A serous drawback of distance vector routing is
count to infinity problem. It is also responsible for congestion control using leaky
bucket and token leaky bucket algorithm. The four main protocols that operates on
network layer are ARP, RARP, ICMP, IGMP. Network layer mainly works on IP
address. IP addresses are 32bits.IP addresses have been divided into five classes
namely A,B,C,D,E.ICMP and .ICMP and IGMP are error reporting protocols.ARP
and RARP are used for address translation.

1.9 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING

1. Introduction to Data Communication & Networking, 3rd Edition, Behrouz
Forouzan, Tata McGraw Hill.

32
2. Computer Networks, A. S. Tanenbaum 4th Edition, Practice Hall of India, New Network Layer
Delhi. 2003.
3. Douglas E. Comer, Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols, and
Architecture (4th Edition).

4. James F. Kurose, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the

Internet (3rd Edition).

5. Larry L. Peterson, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, 3rd Edition (The

Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking).

6. www. wikipedia.org

7. W. Richard Stevens, The Protocols (TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1).

8. William Stallings, Data and Computer Communications, Seventh Edition.

1.10 SOLUTION/ANSWERS

Check Your Progress 1

1. D
2. D
3. A
4. C
5. A

Check Your Progress 2

1. C
2. D
3. C

33
Network, Transport
and Application UNIT 2 TRANSPORT LAYER
Layer
Structure Page No.
2.0 Introduction 34
2.1 Objective 34
2.2 Addressing 35
2.3 Reliable delivery 35
2.4 Flow control 38
2.5 Connection Management 38
2.6 Multiplexing 40
2.7 Congestion Control 40
2.8 Quality of Cervices (QoS) 42
2.9 TCP window Management 43
2.10 Ports 44
2.11 Summary 46
2.12 References/Further Reading 46
2.13 Solution /Answers 47

2.0 INTRODUCTION
The transport layer supports two protocols in TCP/IP protocol suite. One is
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). TCP is connection oriented that provides
reliable end-to-end transmission. Another protocol is User Datagram Protocol (UDP).
UDP is simple and provides well sequenced transport function when reliability and
serving are less important than size and speed. Transport layer services are
implemented by transport protocols used between two transport entities. Transport
layer services are similar to the data link services. Data link layer is designed to
provide its services within a single network, while the transport layer provides
services across an inter network made up of many networks. There are seven
categories of services provided by the transport layer. These services are End to end
delivery, Addressing, Reliable delivery, Flow control, Connection management,
Multiplexing and Congestion Control.

2.1 OBJECTIVE
After going through this unit, you should be able to:
• Know the Functions and Services of transport layer
• Understand the Working of transport layer
• Understand the TCP Window management
• Know the different transport layer design issues

End to End Delivery

As shown in figure 1, network layer answers the end to end delivery of individual
packets from a machine to another machine in different network, but does not see any
relationship between those packets. It treats each as an independent entity. Further,
the packet needs to be delivered to the last participating entity, i.e. a process engaged
in data exchanged. But the transport layer makes sure that the entire message (not a
single packets receives) is delivered to a process that is the end (last) entity
participating in message exchange. So it provides process-to-process or end-to-end
delivery of an entire message.

34
 Transport Layer

Figure 1: End to End delivery of packets

2.2 ADDRESSING
Transport layer interact with the functions of session layer. Many protocols combine
session, presentation and application level protocols into a single package called an
application. In these cases delivery to the session layer functions is, in effect delivery
to the application. So communication occurs not just from end machine to end
machine but from end application to end application. Data generated by an application
on one machine must be received not just by other machines but by the correct
application on that machine.

In most cases, we end up with the communication between many to many entities,
called service access points as shown in figure 2 given below. To ensure accurate
delivery from service access point to service access point we used another level of
addressing in addition to the network and data link level.

Upper Upper Upper Upper Upper Upper

Layers Layers Layers Layers Layers Layers
Stack Stack Stack Stack Stack Stack

1 2 3 6 5 9

Transport Transport

Network Network

Data Link Data Link

Physical Physical

Figure 2: Service Access Points

2.3 RELIABLE DELIVERY

It is responsible for reliable delivery of data by providing the following methods also
shown in figure 3:
• Error control
• Sequence control
• Loss control

35
Network, Transport • Duplication control
and Application
Layer Reliable
Delivery

Error Sequence Hass Duplication

Control Control Control Control

Figure 3: Methods of reliable delivery of packets

a) Error Control: When transferring data the primary goal of reliability if occur
control. Data must be delivered to their destination. Exactly as they originated
from the source. The reality of physical data transport are that while 100 per
cent error free delivery is probably impossible, transport layer protocols are
designed to come as close as possible.

Mechanisms full errors handling at this layer are based on error detection and
retransmission. With the error handling, performed using algorithms
implemented in software such as checksum “error detection and correction”.

b) Sequence Control: Second aspect of reliability implemented at the transport

layer is sequence control. On the sending end, the transport layer is responsible
for ensuring that data with received from the upper layers are usable by the
lower layers. ON the receiving end it is responsible for ensuring that the various
pieces of a transmission are correctly reassembled.

Segmentation: When the size of the data units received from the upper layer is
too long for the network layer datagram and data link layer frame to handle, the
transport layer divides it into smaller usable blocks. This dividing process is
called segmentation.

Concatenation: When the sizes of the data units belonging to a single session
are so small that several can fit together into a single data queue are frame, the
transport protocol combines them into a single data unit. This combining
process is called concatenation.

Sequence Number: Most transport layer services add sequence number at the
end of each segment.

If a longer data unit has been segmented the sequence number indicate the
reassembly.

If several shorter units have been concatenated the numbers indicate the end of
each subunit and allow them to be separated accurately at the destination.

c) Loss Control: The third aspect of reliability covered by the transport layer is
loss control as depicted in figure 4. The transport layer ensures all pieces of the
transmission arrive at the destination, not just some of them. When data have
been segmented for delivery, some segments may be lost in transmit. Sequence
number allows the receiver’s transport layer protocol to identify any missing
segment and request in delivery.

36
 Transport Layer

Figure 4: Loss Control

d) Duplication Controls: The fourth aspect of reliability by the transport layer is
duplication control as shown in figure 5. Transport layer functions must
guarantee that no places of data arrive at the receiving system duplicated. As
they allow identification of last packets, sequence no. allows the receiver to
identify and discard duplicate segments.

Figure 5: Duplication Control

Check Your Progress 1

1. Which layer ensures the process-to-process or end-to-end delivery of an entire
message? Explain.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2. List the methods or mechanism provided by Transport layer for reliable delivery
of data.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

37
Network, Transport
and Application
2.4 FLOW CONTROL
Layer Like the data link layer transport layer is responsible for flow control. Flow control is
performed end to end rather than across a single link. Transport layer flow control
uses a sliding window protocol. The window at the transport layer can vary in size to
accommodate buffer occupancy as depicted in figure 6 given below.

Sliding window is used to make data transmission more efficient as well as to control
the flow of data so that the receiver does not become overwhelmed. Sliding window
used at the transport layer are usually byte oriented rather than frame oriented.

Figure 6: Sliding Window for Flow Control

Some points about sliding window at the transport layer are as follows:

1. Sender does not have to send a full window’s worth of data.

2. An acknowledgement can expand the size of the window based on the sequence
number of the acknowledged data segment.

3. The size of the window can be increased as decreased by the receiver.

4. The receiver can send acknowledgement at anytime.

2.5 CONNECTION MANAGEMENT

End to end delivery can be accomplished in two ways connection oriented and
connectionless. The connection oriented mode is most commonly used from both two
modes. A connection oriented protocol establishes a virtual circuited or pathway
through the internal between sender and receiver. All of the packets belonging to a
message are then sent over this same path. Using a single pathway for the entire
message facilitates the acknowledgement process and retransmission of damaged and
lost frames connection oriented services is generally considered reliable.
Connection Oriented transmission has three stages:
1. Connection establishment.
2. Data transfer
3. Connection termination.
Connection Establishment: Before communicating device can send data to the other,
the initializing device must first determine the availability of the other to exchange
data and a pathway must be found through the network by which the data can be sent.

38
This step is called connection establishment. Connection establishment requires three Transport Layer
actions called three way handshake as shown in figure 7 given below.
• The computer requesting the connection sends a connection request packet to
the intended receiver.
• The responding computer returns a confirmation packet to the requesting
computer.
• The requesting computing returns a packet acknowledging the confirmation.

Figure 7: Connection Establishment

Connection Termination: Once all of the data have been transferred, the connection
must be terminated.

Connection termination also requires three way handshake as shown in figure 8:

• Requesting computer sends a disconnection request packet.
• Responding computers confirms the disconnection request.
• The requesting computer acknowledges the confirmation.

Figure 8: Connection Termination

39
Network, Transport
and Application
2.6 MULTIPLEXING
Layer To improve transmission efficiency, the transport layer has the option of multiplexing.
Multiplexing at this layer occurs in two ways as shown in figure 9:

1. Upward -meaning that multiple transport layer connections use the same
network connection

2. Downward- (meaning that one transport layer connection uses multiple

network connections.

Upper Upper Upper Upper

Layers Layers Layers Layers
Stack Stack Stack Stack

1 2 3 2

Transport
Layer
Transport
Layer

One Virtual Circuit Three Virtual Circuits

Upward Downward

Figure 9: Upward and downward Multiplexing

Upward Multiplexing: Transport layer uses virtual circuits based on the
services of the lower three layers. The underlying network charge for each
virtual circuit connection. To make well cost-effective use of an established
circuit, the transport layer sends several transmissions based for the same
destination along the same path by upward multiplexing.

Downward Multiplexing: It allows the transport layer to split a single

connection among several different paths to improve throughput (speed of
delivery) as shown in figure 9. This option is useful when the underlying
networks have low or slow capacity. For example, some network layer protocols
have restriction on the sequence number that can be handled .X.25 uses a three
bit numbering code, so sequence number are restricted to the range of 0 to 7. In
this case throughput can be unacceptably low. To counteract this problem the
transport layer can use more than one virtual circuit at the network layer to
improve throughput by sending several data segment at once delivery is faster.

2.7 CONGESTION CONTROL

Congestion control refers to techniques and mechanisms that can either prevent
congestion, before it happens, or remove congestion, after it has happened.
Congestion control mechanism is divided into two broad categories:

40
 Transport Layer

Figure 10:
Open Loop: Polices are applied to prevent congestion before it happens.

Closed Loop: Mechanism try to alleviate congestions after it happens.

Congestion Control Policy

TCP’s general policy for handling congestion is based on 3 phases:

• Slow start,
• Congestion avoidance, and
• Congestion detection
The sender starts with a very slow rate of transmission but increases the rate rapidly to
reach a threshold. When threshold is reached, the data rate is reduced to avoid
congestion.

Congestion Avoidance: Additive Increase

In the congestion avoidance algorithm, the size of the congestion window increases
additively until congestion is detected.

Congestion Detection: Multiplicative Decrease

An implementation reacts to congestion detection in one of the following ways:

1. If detection is by time-out, a new slow-start phase starts.

2. If detection is by three (acknowledgements) Acks, a new congestion Avoidance

phase starts.

Slow Start: Exponential Increase

At the beginning of the connection, set the congestion window size to the maximum
segment size. For each segment that is acknowledged, increase the size of the
congestion window by one maximum size until you reach a threshold of half the
allowable window size. This is some timer called slow start which is totally
misleading because the process is not slow at all.

41
Network, Transport The size of the congestion window increase exponentially. The sender sends one
and Application segment receives one acknowledgement, increases the size to two segments, sends
Layer two segments, receives ack for two segments; increase the size to four and so on.

In other words, after receiving the 3rd ACK, the size of the window has been
increased to eight segments (i.e. 23 = 8). To avoid congestion before it happen one
must slow down this exponential growth. After the size reaches the threshold, the size
is increased one segment for each acknowledgement even if as ACK is for several
segment.

Multiplicative Decrease
If the congestion occurs the congestion windows size must be decreased. The only
way the sender causes that connection has occur through a lost segment. If the sender
does not receive an acknowledgement for a segment before it transmission timer
matured, it assumes that there is congestion.

The strategy says if a time out occurs, the threshold must be set to half of the
congestion window size and the congestion or size should start from one again.

2.8 QUALITY OF SERVICES (QOS)

A stream of packet, from a source to a destination is called a flow. In connection
oriented network, all the packets belonging to a flow the same route. But in
connection less network they may follow different routes. The need of each flow can
be characterized by four primary parameters:

1. Reliability: Reliability is the ability of a system to perform and maintain its

functions in normal conditions as well as under unexpected conditions.

2. Delay is defined as the time interval elapsed between the departures of data
from the source to its arrival at the destination.

3. Jitter: Jitter refers to the variation in time between packets arriving at the
destination.

4. Bandwidth refers to the data rate supported by a network connection or

interface.

Techniques to Improve QOS

1. Over Provisioning: An easy solution is to provide so much router capacity,
buffer space and bandwidth that the packets just fly through costly.

2. Buffering: Flows can be buffered on the receiving side before being delivered.
Buffering those does not affected the reliability of bandwidth and increases the
delay but it smoothes out the jitter.

3. Scheduling: Packets from different flows arrive at a switch or router for

processing. A good scheduling technique treats the different flows in a fair and
appropriate manner.

Here we discuss some scheduling techniques to improve the quality of service such as:

i) FIFO Queuing

ii) Priority Queuing

iii) Weighted Fair Queuing

42
 Transport Layer

FIFO Queuing
In FIFO Queuing packets wait in a buffer (Queue) until the node is ready to
process them. If the average rate is higher than the average processing rate, the
queue will fill up and new packets will be discarded.

Priority Queuing
In this packets are first assigned to priority class. Each priority class has its
own Queue. The packets in the highest priority Queue are processed first. But if
there is a continuous flow in high-priority Queue, the packets in the low priority
Queues will never have a chance to be processes.

Weighted Fair Queuing

In this method, the packets are still assigned to different classes and admitted to
different queues. The queues, however, are weighted based on the priority of
the queues; higher priority means a higher weight.

The system processes packets in each queue in a round-robin fashion with the
number of packets selected from each queue based on the corresponding weight.

For example: If the weights are 3, 2 and 1, three packets are processed from the
first queue, two from the second queue and one from the third queue.

If the system does not impose priority on the classes, all weights can be equal.
In thus way, we have fair queuing with priority.

4. Traffic Shaping
a) Leaky bucket
b) Token bucket

2.9 TCP WINDOW MANAGEMENT

TCP uses two buffers and one window, to control the flow of data coming from the
sending application program. The application program creates data and writes it to the
buffer. The sender imposes a window on this buffer and sends the segments as long as
the size of the window is not zero. The TCP receiver has buffer also. It receives data,
checks them, and stores them in buffer to be consumed by the receiving application
program.

A sliding window is used to make transmission more efficient as well as to control the
flow of data so that the destination does not become over whelmed with data. TCP’s
sliding window is byte oriented

TCP’s Sliding Window

The source does not have to send a full window’s worth of data. The size of the
window can be increased or decreased by the destination. The destination can send an
acknowledgement at any time.

Silly Window Syndrome

Silly Window Syndrome is another problem that can degrade the TCP performance.
This problem occurs when the sender transmits data in large blocks, but an interactive
application on the receiver side reads data 1 byte at a time as shown in figure 11.

43
Network, Transport
and Application
Layer
Receiver Buffer is Full

1 Byte Space Application reads 1 byte

Becomes Empty

Header A Window Update Segment Sent

Header A New Byte Arrives

1 byte
Receiver Buffer is Full

Figure 11: Silly Window Syndrome

1. Initially the receiver’s buffer is full so it sends a window size 0 to block the
sender.

2. But the interactive application reads one byte from the buffer, so one byte space
becomes empty.

3. The receiving TCP sends a window update to the sender informing that it can
send 1 byte.

4. The sender sends 1-new byte.

5. The buffer is full again and the window size is 0. The behavior can continue
forever’s.

Solution to Silly Window Syndrome

A solution to silly window syndrome was suggested as follows:
It was suggested that the receiver should not send a window update for 1 byte.
Instead it must wait until it has a substantial amount of buffer space available and then
sends the window update. To be specific, the receiver should not send a window
update until it can handle the maximum window size, it has advertised at the time of
establishing a connection or its buffer is half empty, whichever is smaller.

The sender can also help to improve the situation. It should not send tiny segments
instead it must wait and send a full segment or at least one containing half of the
receivers buffers size.

2.10 PORTS
In computer networking of connection-based communication port is like a medium
through which, an application establish a connection with another application by
binding a socket by a port number. Addressing the information and the port number,
accompanied the data transfer over the network.

44
The Ports are used by TCP and UDP to deliver the data to the right application, are Transport Layer
identified by a 16-bit number present in the header of a data packet. Ports are typically
used to map data to a particular process running on a client. If we consider a letter
(data packet) sent to a particular apartment (IP) with house no. (Port no), at this time
the port no. is the most important part for the delivery of the letter. In order for the
delivery to work, the sender needs to include a house number along with the address
to ensure the letter gets to the right destination.

Do you know?
TCP and UDP ports are 16 bit number

The TCP and UDP protocols use ports to map incoming data to a particular process
running on a computer.

• Port is represented by a positive (16-bit) integer value

• Some ports have been reserved to support common/well known services:
o FTP 21/TCP
o TELNET 23/TCP
o SMTP 25/TCP
o LOGIN 513/TCP
• User level process/services generally use port number value >= 1024

Types of Port
1. Well known port (0 to 1023)-They are controlled by IANA

2. Registered Port (1024-49159)

3. Dynamic port (49152-65535)

If we consider the client-server architecture, a server application binds a socket to a

specific port number in connection-based communication. It registered the server with
the system where all the data destined for that port.

Do you know?
Port number permits unique identification of several simultaneous processes using
TCP/UDP

Now we are aware of the importance of the port number. In the same order there are
some ports which are predefine and called reserved ports. Some of them are given in
Table 1given below:

Table 1: Reserved Port Numbers.

Service Port no.
ECHO 7
DAYTIME 13
FTP 21
TELNET 23
SMTP 25
FINGER 79
HTTP 80
POP3 110

45
Network, Transport Do you know?
and Application
Layer If we consider the range of the port numbers, there are 0 to 65,535 ports available.

Tips
The port numbers ranging from 0 - 1023 are reserved ports or we can say that are
restricted ports. All the 0 to 1023 ports are reserved for use by well-known services
such as FTP, telnet and http and other system services. These ports are called well-
known ports.

Check Your Progress 2

1. List three stages of Connection Oriented transmission.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2. Compare and contrast between Upward and Downward Multiplexing.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2.11 SUMMARY
Transport layer is mainly responsible for end to end reliable delivery, segmentation
and concatenation. Two main protocols that operate on transport layer are TCP and
UDP.TCP provides reliable connection oriented service while UDP provides
unreliable connectionless service. The data link and transport layer perform many of
the same duties .The data link layer function in a single network, while the transport
layer operates across an internet. Flow control at the transport layer is handles by
three walled sliding window. Multiplexing can be downward of upward in transport
layer. Connection establishment and termination can be done by using three way
handshakes. Transport layer works on port address. To know more about the
Transport layer and its protocols (TCP and UDP), student may please refer to the
course material of BCS-61TCP/IP Programming or BCS-54 Network Programming.

2.12 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING

1. Computer Networks, A. S. Tanenbaum 4th Edition, Practice Hall of India, New
Delhi. 2003.

2. Introduction to Data Communication & Networking, 3rd Edition, Behrouz

Forouzan, Tata McGraw Hill.

3. Douglas E. Comer, Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols,

and Architecture (4th Edition).

4. James F. Kurose, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the

Internet (3rd Edition).

46
5. Larry L. Peterson, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, 3rd Edition (The Transport Layer
Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking).

6. W. Richard Stevens, The Protocols (TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1).

7. www.wikipedia.org

8. William Stallings, Data and Computer Communications, Seventh Edition.

2.13 SOLUTION /ANSWERS

Check Your Progress 1

1. Transport layer makes sure that the entire message (not a single packets
receives) is delivered to a process that is the end (last) entity participating in
message exchange. So it provides process-to-process or end-to-end delivery of
an entire message.

2. Transport Layer is responsible for reliable delivery of data, it provide following

methods to provide reliable delivery of data.
• Error control
• Sequence control
• Loss control
• Duplication control

Check Your Progress 2

1. Connection Oriented transmission has following three stages:
i) Connection establishment.
ii) Data transfer
iii) Connection termination.

2. Upward Multiplexing: Transport layer uses virtual circuits based on the

services of the lower three layers. The underlying network charge for each
virtual circuit connection. To make well cost-effective use of an established
circuit, the transport layer sends several transmissions based for the same
destination along the same path by upward multiplexing. Downward
Multiplexing: Allows the transport layer to split a single connection among
several different path to improve throughput (speed of delivery). This option is
useful when the underlying networks have low or slow capacity. For example,
some network layer protocols have restriction on the sequence number that can
be handled .X.25 uses a three bit numbering code, so sequence number are
restricted to the range of 0 to 7. In this case throughput can be unacceptably
low. To counteract this problem, the transport layer can use more than one
virtual circuit at the network layer to improve throughput by sending several
data segment at once delivery is faster.

47
Network, Transport
and Application
Layer
UNIT 3 APPLICATION LAYER
Structure Page No.
3.0 Introduction 48
3.1 Objectives 49
3.2 Client Server Architecture 49
3.3 Domain Name Server (DNS) 49
3.3.1 The DNS name space
3.3.2 Resource records
3.3.3 Name servers
3.3.4 Remote login (telnet)
3.3.5 The telnet application
3.3.6 The telnet protocol
3.4 Remote Login (Telnet) 54
3.4.1 The FTP application
3.4.2 The FTP protocol
3.5 File Transfer Protocol (FTP) 55
3.6 Network Management 56
3.6.1 Configuration management
3.6.2 Reconfiguration
3.6.3 Documentation
3.6.4 Fault management
3.6.5 Reactive fault management
3.6.6 Proactive fault management
3.6.7 Performance management
3.6.8 Security management
3.6.9 Accounting management
3.6.10 SNMP protocol
3.7 Word Wide Web and Client Server Applications 61
3.7.1 Architectural overview ( www)
3.8 Electronic Mail 70
3.8.1 Architecture and services
3.8.2 The user agent
3.9 Summary 73
3.10 References/Further Readings 73
3.11 Solutions / Answers 73

3.0 INTRODUCTION
The application layer contains a variety of protocols that are commonly needed by
users. One widely-used application protocol is HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol),
which is the basis for the World Wide Web. When a browser wants a Web page, it
sends the name of the page it wants to the server using HTTP. The server then sends
the page back. Other application protocols are used for file transfer, electronic mail,
and network news. The application layer enables the user, whether human or software,
to access the network. It provides user interfaces and support for services such as
electronic mail, remote file access and transfer, shared database management, and
other types of distributed information services. Application-layer functions typically
include identifying communication partners, determining resource availability, and
synchronizing communication. When identifying communication partners, the
application layer determines the identity and availability of communication partners
for an application that has data to transmit. When determining resource availability,
the application layer must decide whether sufficient network or the requested
communication exists. This unit covers the details of all important functions and

48
`

services of Application layer including different protocols available in Application Application Layer
layer.

3.1 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit, you will be able to:
• define and know the functions of Application layer
• Understand the working of Domain Name Server
• Know the features and services of Telnet and FTP
• Understand the Network Management issues
• Understanding of the WWW Client/Server architecture
• Know the Email Architecture and Services

3.2 CLIENT SERVER ARCHITECTURE

Client/server architecture means one or more computers is/are acting as client one
computer is behaving as serve which preferably of high configuration. In simple
words client is defined as requester of services and server is defined as provider of
services. Client and Servers are nothing but programs, which generally run on
different machines/computers.

Client A Client B Client C

Server

Figure 1: Client/Server Architecture

When client wants some information or wants to perform some task by server it has to
contact the server as shown in figure1. Therefore, the client initially needs the address
of the server, and tries to contact the server using that address. Server is a program
which is always running and waiting to serve clients. Server welcomes the client (if
free) as the client contacts it. After contacting the server, the server welcomes that
client (if free), the client informs about its own address to servers so that server can
reply the client also.

When both clients and servers exchange important information to each other
connection establishes. Once with connection or link established, both client and
server could exchange any information with each other. We will read more details of
client/server architecture further in this unit during discussion about Word Wide Web.

3.3 DOMAIN NAME SERVER (DNS)

Programs theoretically could refer to hosts, mailboxes, and other resources by their
network (e.g., IP) addresses, these addresses are hard for people to remember. Also,
sending e-mail to [email protected] means that if Ravi's ISP or organization moves
the mail server to a different machine with a different IP address, his e-mail address
has to change. Consequently, ASCII names were introduced to decouple machine
names from machine addresses. In this way, Ravi's address might be something like
[email protected]. Nevertheless, the network itself understands only numerical
addresses, so some mechanism is required to convert the ASCII strings to network
addresses.

49
Network, Transport
and Application Way back in the ARPANET, there was simply a file, hosts.txt that listed all the hosts
Layer
and their IP addresses. Every night, all the hosts would fetch it from the site at which
it was maintained. For a network of a few hundred large timesharing machines, this
approach worked reasonably well.

However, when thousands of minicomputers and PCs were connected to the net,
everyone realized that this approach could not continue to work forever. For one
thing, the size of the file would become too large. However, even more important,
host name conflicts would occur constantly unless names were centrally managed,
something unthinkable in a huge international network due to the load and latency. To
solve these problems, DNS (the Domain Name System) was invented.

The essence of DNS is the invention of a hierarchical, domain-based naming scheme

and a distributed database system for implementing this naming scheme. It is
primarily used for mapping host names and e-mail destinations to IP addresses but can
also be used for other purposes. Very briefly, the way DNS is used as follows. To map
a name onto an IP address, an application program calls a library procedure called the
resolver, passing it the name as a parameter. The resolver sends a UDP packet to a
local DNS server, which then looks up the name and returns the IP address to the
resolver, which then returns it to the caller. Armed with the IP address, the program
can then establish a TCP connection with the destination or send it UDP packets.

3.3.1 The DNS Name Space

Managing a large and constantly changing set of names is a nontrivial problem. In the
postal system, name management is done by requiring letters to specify (implicitly or
explicitly) the country, state or province, city, and street address of the addressee.
Conceptually, the Internet is divided into over 200 top-level domains, where each
domain covers many hosts. Each domain is partitioned into sub domains, and these
are further partitioned, and so on. All these domains can be represented by a tree, as
shown in Figure 2. The leaves of the tree represent domains that have no sub domains
(but do contain machines, of course). A leaf domain may contain a single host, or it
may represent a company and contain thousands of hosts.

Figure 2: A portion of the Internet domain name space

The top-level domains come in two flavors: generic and countries. The original
generic domains were com (commercial), edu (educational institutions), gov (the
Government), int (certain international organizations), mil (the U.S. armed forces), net
(network providers), and org (nonprofit organizations). The country domains include
one entry for every country, as defined in ISO 3166.

50
`

In November 2000, ICANN approved four new, general-purpose, top-level domains, Application Layer
namely, biz (businesses), info (information), name (people's names), and pro
(professions, such as doctors and lawyers). In addition, three more specialized top-
level domains were introduced at the request of certain industries. These are aero
(aerospace industry), coop (co-operatives), and museum (museums). Other top-level
domains will be added in the future.

As an aside, as the Internet becomes more commercial, it also becomes more

contentious. Take pro, for example. It was intended for certified professionals.

In general, getting a second-level domain, such as name-of-company.com, is easy. It

merely requires going to a registrar for the corresponding top-level domain (com in
this case) to check if the desired name is available and not somebody else's trademark.
If there are no problems, the requester pays a small annual fee and gets the name. By
now, virtually every common (English) word has been taken in the com domain. Try
household articles, animals, plants, body parts, etc. Nearly all are taken.

Each domain is named by the path upward from it to the (unnamed) root. The
components are separated by periods (pronounced ''dot''). Domain names can be either
absolute or relative. An absolute domain name always ends with a period (e.g.,
eng.sun.com.), whereas a relative one does not. Relative names have to be interpreted
in some context to uniquely determine their true meaning. In both cases, a named
domain refers to a specific node in the tree and all the nodes under it.

Domain names are case insensitive, so edu, Edu, and EDU mean the same thing.
Component names can be up to 63 characters long, and full path names must not
exceed 255 characters.

In principle, domains can be inserted into the tree in two different ways. For example,
cs.yale.edu could equally well be listed under the US country domain as cs.yale.ct.us.
In practice, however, most organizations in the United States are under a generic
domain, and most outside the United States are under the domain of their country.
There is no rule against registering under two top-level domains, but few
organizations except multinationals do it (e.g., sony.com and sony.nl).

Each domain controls how it allocates the domains under it. For example, Japan has
domains ac.jp and co.jp that mirror edu and com. The Netherlands does not make this
distinction and puts all organizations directly under nl. Thus, all three of the following
are university computer science departments:

1. cs.yale.edu(Yale University, in the United States)

2. cs.vu.nl(Vrije Universiteit, in The Netherlands)

3. cs.keio.ac.jp(Keio University, in Japan)

To create a new domain, permission is required of the domain in which it will be

included. For example, if a VLSI group is started at Yale and wants to be known as
vlsi.cs.yale.edu, it has to get permission from whoever manages cs.yale.edu.

Similarly, if a new university is chartered, say, the University of Northern South

Dakota, it must ask the manager of the edu domain to assign it unsd.edu. In this way,
name conflicts are avoided and each domain can keep track of all its subdomains.
Once a new domain has been created and registered, it can create subdomains, such as
cs.unsd.edu, without getting permission from anybody higher up the tree.

51
Network, Transport Naming follows organizational boundaries, not physical networks. For example, if the
and Application computer science and electrical engineering departments are located in the same
Layer
building and share the same LAN, they can nevertheless have distinct domains.

3.3.2 Resource Records

Every domain, whether it is a single host or a top-level domain, can have a set of
resource records associated with it. For a single host, the most common resource
record is just its IP address, but many other kinds of resource records also exist. When
a resolver gives a domain name to DNS, what it gets back are the resource records
associated with that name. Thus, the primary function of DNS is to map domain
names onto resource records.

A resource record is a five-tuple. Although they are encoded in binary for efficiency,
in most expositions, resource records are presented as ASCII text, one line per
resource record. The format we will use is as follows:

• Domain_name, Time_to_live, Class Type, Value

The Domain_name tells the domain to which this record applies. Normally, many
records exist for each domain and each copy of the database holds information about
multiple domains. This field is thus the primary search key used to satisfy queries.
The order of the records in the database is not significant.

The Time_to_live field gives an indication of how stable the record is. Information
that is highly stable is assigned a large value, such as 86400 (the number of seconds in
1 day). Information that is highly volatile is assigned a small value, such as 60 (1
minute).

The third field of every resource record is the Class. For Internet information, it is
always IN. For non-Internet information, other codes can be used, but in practice,
these are rarely seen.

The Type field tells what kind of record this is. The most important types are listed in
Table. 1.2.2.

Table 1: The principal DNS Resource Record

3.3.3 Name Servers

In theory at least, a single name server could contain the entire DNS database and
respond to all queries about it. In practice, this server would be so overloaded as to be
useless. Furthermore, if it ever went down, the entire Internet would be crippled.

To avoid the problems associated with having only a single source of information, the
DNS name space is divided into non-overlapping zones. One possible way to divide

52
`

the name space is shown in figure 3. Each zone contains some part of the tree and Application Layer
also contains name servers holding the information about that zone.

Normally, a zone will have one primary name server, which gets its information from
a file on its disk, and one or more secondary name servers, which get their
information from the primary name server. To improve reliability, some servers for a
zone can be located outside the zone.

Figure 3: Part of the DNS name space showing the division into zones.
Where the zone boundaries are placed within a zone is up to that zone's administrator.
This decision is made in large part based on how many name servers are desired, and
where.

Check Your Progress 1

1. Select the right choice.
a) Which Layer is not present in TCP/IP model?
(A) Application Layer (B) Internet Layer
(C) Transport Layer (D) Presentation Layer

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

b) Let most segment of a name inn DNS represents

(A) Individual Network. (B) Individual computer.
(C) Domain name (D) Network type.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

c) Address 192.5.48.3 belongs to

(A) Class A. (B) Class B.
(C) Class C. (D) Class D.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2. Discuss the DNS Name Space?

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

3. Write a note on Name Server?

53
Network, Transport ……………………………………………………………………………………
and Application
Layer ……………………………………………………………………………………

3.4 REMOTE LOGIN (TELNET)

Telnet permits a user to connect to an account on a remote machine. A client program
running on the user's machine communicates using the Telnet protocol with a server
program running on the remote machine.

3.4.1 The Telnet Application

The user (say Ravi) has an account on both the local and remote machines.
For example, ‘Ravi’ on farkas.mcmaster.ca types telnet optlab.cas.mcmaster.ca at his
user prompt. Here, farkas.mcmaster.ca is the client and optlab.cas.mcmaster.ca is the
server. The Telnet client would perform a methotrexate() call to determine the IP
address of optlab.cas.mcmaster.ca. Then the client would create a socket to
communicate with the Telnet server. The server prompts ‘Ravi’ for a login identifier -
the name of the user's account on the remote server followed by a password. The
Telnet users interact with the remote machine in the same way they would interact
with their local machine. The client relays Ravi's keystrokes to the remote server, and
the remote server displays them on its pseudo terminal (which is actually the display
screen on the client machine).

3.4.2 The Telnet Protocol

The Telnet client program performs two important functions - interacting with the
user terminal on the local host and exchanging messages with the Telnet server. The
client connects to port 23 on the remote machine, which is the port number reserved
for Telnet servers. The TCP connection persists for the duration of the login session.
The client and the server maintain the connection, even when the user interrupts the
transfer of data, for example by hitting cntl-C. Since Telnet is designed to work over
two hosts on different platforms, the protocol assumes that the two hosts run a
Network Virtual Terminal (NVT).The TCP connection is set up across these two
NVT terminals. The NVT is a very simple character device with a keyboard and a
printer - data typed by the user on the keyboard is translated by the client software
into NVT format and sent via its NVT terminal to the server, and data received in
NVT format from the server is translated by the client into the local machine format
and output to the printer.

The NVT terminals on the two hosts exchange data in the 7-bit U.S. variant of the
ASCII format, with each character sent as an octet with the first bit set to19-21-10.
Some control information, such as end-of-line indication, is transmitted as the
character sequence CR (carriage return) followed by an LF (linefeed). Each Telnet
control message starts with the special octet (Interpret as Command (IAC)) octet of all
1s) to ensure that the recipient interprets the subsequent octets as a command.
Otherwise, each octet is interpreted as data (e.g., a user keystroke). Sending control
messages on the same connection as the data is referred to as inband signaling. The
initial control messages between the client and the server are used to exchange
information about their capabilities (Telnet option negotiation). For example, the
client may indicate the type and speed of its terminal, and whether data is to be sent
one character or one line at a time. After the capabilities exchange, the server instructs
the client to send a login identifier and password. Once the authentication completes,
the user interacts directly with the remote machine. The client application relays user
keystrokes to the server, and the server relays the output back to the client, using
inband signaling, with the interpretation that commands follow the IAC octet of all
ones. Telnet cannot rely on the conventional data stream alone to carry such control
sequences between client and server.

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Application Layer
3.5 FILE TRANSFER PROTOCAL (FTP)
FTP allows a user to copy files to and from a remote machine. The client program
also sends commands to the server program to coordinate the copying of files between
the two machines on behalf of the user.

3.5.1 The FTP Application

The FTP client connects to the remote machine which prompts the user to enter a
login identifier and a password. However, some users may not have their own
accounts on the remote machine. To grant access to a broad set of users, many FTP
servers have a special account (e.g. anonymous) that does not require password
information. Instead, the user logs in using guest or his email address as password.
The FTP server coordinates access to a collection of files in various directories. In
case of anonymous FTP, the server typically has a special directory, with one or more
subdirectories, that can be accessed by the client. The user logged into the FTP server
can traverse through the directories of files on the remote machine, and send or
receive files. This is typically done via the command-line interface. The interface may
also allow the client to send or receive multiple files with a single command. Recent
FTP client applications provide a menu-based graphical user interface. For instance, a
Web browser allows users to specify the desired file as an URL
(e.g.,ftp://ftp.optlab.cas.mcmaster.ca/midterm.pdf). In this case, the web browser
connects to the FTP server as an anonymous user and sends a sequence of FTP
commands to fetch the requested file.

3.5.2 The FTP protocol

FTP differs from other applications such as Telnet since it uses separate TCP
connections for control and data. Recall that in Telnet both control information and
data are sent over the same TCP connection using in-band signaling. The two TCP
connections in FTP are:

1. The control connection is established in the normal client-server fashion. In

this case, the server does a passive open (is listening) on port 21 for FTP, and
waits for the client connection. The client does an active open (the2nd
handshake in a TCP connection) to establish the control connection. The client
uses an ephemeral port number (above 1023) for the control connection. This
control connection stays up for the entire time that the client communicates with
this server. This connection is used for commands from the client to the server
and for the server's replies. The IP type of service for the control connection
should be to minimize delay in passing these commands over the TCP
connection.

2. A data connection is created each time a file is transferred between the client
and the server. The IP type of service for the data connection should be to
maximize throughput since this connection is file transfer, and we want to send
this entire file over a high bandwidth line. The specification of FTP includes
more than 30 different commands, which are transmitted over the control
connection in NVT ASCII format. The commands are not case-sensitive and
may have arguments; each command ends with a two character sequence of a
carriage return (CR) followed by a line feed (LF). It must be emphasized here
that these commands are different from the commands typed by the user at the
interface provided by the client. Transferring a single file for instance requires
only a single user-level command (e.g., put or get), but this single command
triggers the client to send a set of FTP commands to the server. The FTP server
responds to each command with a three-digit reply code (for the FTP client) and
an optional text message (for the user).

55
Network, Transport
and Application The control connection persists over a sequence of FTP commands, as the client
Layer
and the server continue their dialogue. The typical interaction starts with a
command that identifies the user on the server machine followed by another
command to send the user password. The arguments for these commands are
gleaned from the user's input (his account name and password). The server uses
this information to verify whether the user has an authorized account on the
remote machine, and in the case of anonymous FTP decides on the set of19-21-
3directories to which the anonymous guest has access. The next set of
commands depends on the user request to send, receive, or view the files in a
present directory.

The actual file (data) transfer uses a separate TCP connection established by the
host sending the data. For instance, if the user wants to retrieve the file
midterm.pdf from the remote server, the server initiates the creation of the TCP
data connection. In case, the user wants to put a file into the remote machine, it
is the client who initiates the creation of the TCP connection. The data
connection is usually established on port 20 on the server machine. In the
former case (when the file is to be retrieved from the server), the server does not
know the destination port for the FTP client. So before sending the command to
retrieve the file, the client instructs its operating system to allocate a port
number (above 1023) for such a transaction. This information is given to the
server via the control connection. The data connection is created (using the
usual TCP 3 way handshake), and the server writes the contents of the file, and
closes the connection. The client reads the bytes from its socket upto the end of
file (EOF) character. Also, unlike Telnet, FTP does not require the data transfer
to 7 bit ASCII characters (NVT format); it actually permits a wide range of data
types including binary files. The client requests the form of data transfer using
the control connection. In practice, each data transfer requires a separate TCP
connection. In contrast, the control connection can persist across multiple data
transfers.

3.6 NETWORK MANAGEMENT

We can define network management as monitoring, testing, configuring, and
troubleshooting network components to meet a set of requirements defined by an
organization. These requirements include the smooth, efficient operation of the
network that provides the predefined quality of service for users. To accomplish this
task, a network management system uses hardware, software, and humans. In this
chapter, first we briefly discuss the functions of a network management system. Then
we concentrate on the most common management system, the Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP).

We can say that the functions performed by a network management system can be
divided into five broad categories: configuration management, fault management,
performance management, security management, and accounting management.

3.6.1 Configuration Management

A large network is usually made up of hundreds of entities that are physically or
logically connected to one another. These entities have an initial configuration when
the network is set up, but can change with time. Desktop computers may be replaced
by others; application software may be updated to a newer version; and users may
move from one group to another. The configuration management system must
know, at any time, the status of each entity and its relation to other entities.
Configuration management can be divided into two subsystems: reconfiguration and
documentation.

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3.6.2 Reconfiguration Application Layer

Reconfiguration, which means adjusting the network components and features, can be
a daily occurrence in a large network. There are three types of reconfiguration:
hardware reconfiguration, software reconfiguration, and user-account reconfiguration.
Hardware reconfiguration covers all changes to the hardware. For example, a desktop
computer may need to be replaced. A router may need to be moved to another part of
the network. A sub network may be added or removed from the network. All these
need the time and attention of network management. In a large network, there must be
specialized personnel trained for quick and efficient hardware reconfiguration.
Unfortunately, this type of reconfiguration cannot be automated and must be manually
handled case by case.

Software reconfiguration covers all changes to the software. For example, new
software may need to be installed on servers or clients. An operating system may need
updating. Fortunately, most software reconfiguration can be automated. For example,
updating an application on some or all clients can be electronically downloaded from
the server.

User-account reconfiguration is not simply adding or deleting users on a system. You

must also consider the user privileges, both as an individual and as a member of a
group. For example, a user may have read and write permission with regard to some
files, but only read permission with regard to other files. User-account reconfiguration
can be, to some extent, automated. For example, in a college or university, at the
beginning of each quarter or semester, new students are added to the system. The
students are normally grouped according to the courses they take or the majors they
pursue.

3.6.3 Documentation
The original network configuration and each subsequent change must be recorded
meticulously. This means that there must be documentation for hardware, software,
and user accounts. Hardware documentation normally involves two sets of
documents: maps and specifications. Maps track each piece of hardware and its
connection to the network. There can be one general map that shows the logical
relationship between each sub-network. There can also be a second general map that
shows the physical location of each sub-network. For each sub network, then, there
are one or more maps that show all pieces of equipment. The maps use some kind of
standardization to be easily read and understood by current and future personnel. Each
piece of hardware also needs to be documented. There must be a set of specifications
for each piece of hardware connected to the network. These specifications must
include information such as hardware type, serial number, vendor (address and phone
number), time of purchase, and warranty information. All software must also be
documented. Software documentation includes information such as the software type,
the version, the time installed, and the license agreement. Most operating systems
have a utility that allows the documentation of user accounts and their privileges. The
management must make sure that the files with this information are updated and
secured. Some operating systems record access privileges in two documents one
shows all files and access types for each user; the other shows the list of users that
have a particular access to a file.

3.6.4 Fault Management

Complex networks today are made up of hundreds and sometimes thousands of
components. Proper operation of the network depends on the proper operation of each
component individually and in relation to each other. Fault management is the area
of network management that handles this issue. An effective fault management system
has two subsystems: reactive fault management and proactive fault management.

57
Network, Transport 3.6.5 Reactive Fault Management
and Application
Layer A reactive fault management system is responsible for detecting, isolating, correcting,
and recording faults. It handles short-term solutions to faults. The first step taken by a
reactive fault management system is to detect the exact location of the fault. A fault is
defined as an abnormal condition in the system. When a fault occurs, either the
system stops working properly or the system creates excessive errors. A good example
of a fault is a damaged communication medium. This fault may interrupt
communication or produce excessive errors.

The next step taken by a reactive fault management system is to isolate the fault. A
fault, if isolated, usually affects only a few users. After isolation, the affected users
are immediately notified and given an estimated time of correction. The third step is
to correct the fault. This may involve replacing or repairing the faulty
component(s).After the fault is corrected, it must be documented. The record should
show the exact location of the fault, the possible cause, the action or actions taken to
correct the fault, the cost, and time it took for each step. Documentation is extremely
important for several reasons:
• The problem may recur. Documentation can help the present or future
administrator or technician solve a similar problem.
• The frequency of the same kind of failure is an indication of a major problem in
the system. If a fault happens frequently in one component, it should be
replaced with a similar one, or the whole system should be changed to avoid the
use of that type of component.
• The statistic is helpful to another part of network management, performance
management.

3.6.6 Proactive Fault Management

Proactive fault management tries to prevent faults from occurring. Although this is not
always possible, some types of failures can be predicted and prevented. For example,
if a manufacturer specifies a lifetime for a component or a part of a component, it is a
good strategy to replace it before that time. As another example, if a fault happens
frequently at one particular point of a network, it is wise to carefully reconfigure the
network to prevent the fault from happening again.

3.6.7 Performance Management

Performance management, which is closely related to fault management, tries to
monitor and control the network to ensure that it is running as efficiently as possible.
Performance management tries to quantify performance by using some measurable
quantity such as capacity, traffic, throughput, or response time.

Capacity
One factor that must be monitored by a performance management system is the
capacity of the network. Every network has a limited capacity, and the performance
management system must ensure that it is not used above this capacity. For example,
if a LAN is designed for 100 stations at an average data rate of2 Mbps, it will not
operate properly if 200 stations are connected to the network. The data rate will
decrease and blocking may occur.

Traffic

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Traffic can be measured in two ways: internally and externally. Internal traffic is Application Layer
measured by the number of packets (or bytes) traveling inside the network for a given
period. External traffic is measured by the exchange of packets (or bytes) outside the
network. During peak hours, when the system is heavily used, blocking may occur if
there is excessive traffic.

Throughput
We can measure the throughput of an individual device (such as a router) or a part of
the network. Performance management monitors the throughput to make sure that it is
not reduced to unacceptable levels.

Response Time
Response time is normally measured from the time a user requests a service to the
time the service is granted. Other factors such as capacity and traffic can affect the
response time. Performance management monitors the average response time and the
peak-hour response time. Any increase in response time is a very serious condition as
it is an indication that the network is working above its capacity.

3.6.8 Security Management

Security management is responsible for controlling access to the network based on
the predefined policy.

3.6.9 Accounting Management

Accounting management is the control of users' access to network resources through
charges. Under accounting management, individual users, departments, divisions, or
even projects are charged for the services they receive from the network. Charging
does not necessarily mean cash transfer; it may mean debiting the departments or
divisions for budgeting purposes. Today, organizations use an accounting
management system for the following reasons:
• It prevents users from monopolizing limited network resources.
• It prevents users from using the system inefficiently.
• Network managers can do short- and long-term planning based on the demand
for
• Network use.

3.6.10 SNMP Protocol

Since it was developed in 1988, the Simple Network Management Protocol has
become the de facto standard for internetwork management. Since it is a simple
solution, requiring little code to implement, vendors can easily build SNMP agents to
their products. SNMP is extensible, allowing vendors to easily add network
management functions to their existing products. SNMP also separates the
management architecture from the architecture of the hardware devices, which
broadens the base of multivendor support. Perhaps most important, unlike other so-
called standards, SNMP is not a mere paper specification, but an implementation that
is widely available today. To know more about SNMP you may refer to fifth semester
course BCS-052 Network programming and Administration.

SNMP is based on the manager/agent model consisting of a manager, an agent, a

database of management information, managed objects and the network protocol. The
manager provides the interface between the human network manager and the
management system. The agent provides the interface between the manager and the
physical device(s) being managed (see the illustration above).

59
Network, Transport A typical agent usually
and Application
Layer • Implements full SNMP protocol.
• Stores and retrieves management data as defined by the Management Information
Base.
• Can asynchronously signal an event to the manager
• Can be a proxy for some non-SNMP manageable network node.

A typical manager usually

• Implemented as a Network Management Station (the NMS)
• Implements full SNMP Protocol Able to
• Query agents
• Get responses from agents
• Set’s variables in agents
• Acknowledge’s asynchronous events from agents.

Check Your Progress 2

1. Select the right choice.
a) FTP does not use
(A) Two transfer mode.
(B) Control connection to remote computer before file can be transferred.
(C) User Datagram Protocol.
(D) Authorization of a user through login and password verification.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

b) Protocol used to monitor and control network devices operates at:

(A) Application layer (B) Transport layer
(C) Network layer (D) Data Link layer

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2. Discuss TCP connections in FTP.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

3. What is configuration management in computer network management?

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

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Application Layer
3.7 WORD WIDE WEB AND CLIENT SERVER
APPLICATIONS
The World Wide Web is an architectural framework for accessing linked documents
spread out over millions of machines all over the Internet. In the last decade on so it
went from being a way to distribute high-energy physics data to the application that
millions of people think of as being ''The Internet.'' Its enormous popularity stems
from the fact that it has a colorful graphical interface that is easy for beginners to use,
and it provides an enormous wealth of information on almost every conceivable
subject.

The Web (also known as WWW) began in 1989 at CERN, the European center for
nuclear research. CERN has several accelerators at which large teams of scientists
from the participating European countries carry out research in particle physics. These
teams often have members from half a dozen or more countries. Most experiments are
highly complex and require years of advance planning and equipment construction.
The Web grew out of the need to have these large teams of internationally dispersed
researchers collaborate using a constantly changing collection of reports, blueprints,
drawings, photos, and other documents.

The initial proposal for a web of linked documents came from CERN physicist Tim
Berners-Lee in March 1989. The first (text-based) prototype was operational 18
months later. In December 1991, a public demonstration was given at the Hypertext
'91 conference in San Antonio, Texas.

This demonstration and its attendant publicity caught the attention of other
researchers, which led Marc Andreessen at the University of Illinois to start
developing the first graphical browser, Mosaic. It was released in February 1993.
Mosaic was so popular that a year later, Andreessen left to form a company, Netscape
Communications Corp., whose goal was to develop clients, servers, and other Web
software. When Netscape went public in 1995, investors, apparently thinking this was
the next Microsoft, paid $1.5 billion for the stock. This record was all the more
surprising because the company had only one product, was operating deeply in the
red, and had announced in its prospectus that it did not expect to make a profit for the
foreseeable future. For the next three years, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's
Internet Explorer engaged in a ''browser war,'' each one trying frantically to add more
features (and thus more bugs) than the other one. In 1998, America Online bought
Netscape Communications Corp. for $4.2 billion, thus ending Netscape's brief life as
an independent company.

In 1994, CERN and M.I.T. signed an agreement setting up the World Wide Web
Consortium (sometimes abbreviated as W3C), an organization devoted to further
developing the Web, standardizing protocols, and encouraging interoperability
between sites. Berners-Lee became the director. Since then, several hundred
universities and companies have joined the consortium. Although there are now more
books about the Web than you can shake a stick at, the best place to get up-to-date
information about the Web is (naturally) on the Web itself.

3.7.1 Architectural Overview ( WWW)

From the users' point of view, the Web consists of a vast, worldwide collection of
documents or Web pages, often just called pages for short. Each page may contain
links to other pages anywhere in the world. Users can follow a link by clicking on it,
which then takes them to the page pointed to. This process can be repeated
indefinitely. The idea of having one page point to another, now called hypertext, was

61
Network, Transport invented by a visionary M.I.T. professor of electrical engineering, Vannevar Bush, in
and Application 1945, long before the Internet was invented.
Layer
Pages are viewed with a program called a browser, of which Internet Explorer and
Netscape Navigator are two popular ones. The browser fetches the page requested,
interprets the text and formatting commands on it, and displays the page, properly
formatted, on the screen. Web pages, starts with a title, contain some information, and
ends with the e-mail address of the page's maintainer. Strings of text that are links to
other pages, called hyperlinks, are often highlighted, by underlining, displaying them
in a special color, or both. To follow a link, the user places the mouse cursor on the
highlighted area, which causes the cursor to change, and clicks on it. Although non
graphical browsers, such as Lynx, exist, they are not as popular as graphical browsers.
Voice-based browsers are also being developed.

The basic model of how the Web works is shown in Figure 4, Here the browser is
displaying a Web page on the client machine. When the user clicks on a line of text
that is linked to a page on the abcd.com server, the browser follows the hyperlink by
sending a message to the abcd.com server asking it for the page. When the page
arrives, it is displayed. If this page contains a hyperlink to a page on the xyz.com
server that is clicked on, the browser then sends a request to that machine for the
page, and so on indefinitely.

Figure 4: The parts of the Web model.

The Client Side

In essence, a browser is a program that can display a Web page and catch mouse
clicks to items on the displayed page. When an item is selected, the browser follows
the hyperlink and fetches the page selected. Therefore, the embedded hyperlink needs
a way to name any other page on the Web. Pages are named using URLs (Uniform
Resource Locators). A typical URL is http://www.abcd.com/products.html

It is sufficient to know that a URL has three parts: the name of the protocol (http), the
DNS name of the machine where the page is located (www.abcd.com), and (usually)
the name of the file containing the page (products.html).

When a user clicks on a hyperlink, the browser carries out a series of steps in order to
fetch the page pointed to. Suppose that a user is browsing the Web and finds a link on
Internet telephony that point to ITU's home page, which is
http://www.itu.org/home/index.html. Let us trace the steps that occur when this link is
selected.

1. The browser determines the URL (by seeing what was selected).

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2. The browser asks DNS for the IP address of www.itu.org. Application Layer

3. DNS replies with 156.106.192.32.

4. The browser makes a TCP connection to port 80 on 156.106.192.32.

5. It then sends over a request asking for file /home/index.html.

6. The www.itu.org server sends the file /home/index.html.

7. The browser displays all the text in /home/index.html.

8. The browser fetches and displays all images in this file.

Many browsers display which step they are currently executing in a status line at the
bottom of the screen. In this way, when the performance is poor, the user can see if it
is due to DNS not responding, the server not responding, or simply network
congestion during page transmission.

Although a browser is basically an HTML interpreter, most browsers have numerous

buttons and features to make it easier to navigate the Web. Most have a button for
going back to the previous page, a button for going forward to the next page (only
operative after the user has gone back from it), and a button for going straight to the
user's own start page. Most browsers have a button or menu item to set a bookmark on
a given page and another one to display the list of bookmarks, making it possible to
revisit any of them with only a few mouse clicks. Pages can also be saved to disk or
printed. Numerous options are generally available for controlling the screen layout
and setting various user preferences.

In addition to having ordinary text (not underlined) and hypertext (underlined), Web
pages can also contain icons, line drawings, maps, and photographs. Each of these can
(optionally) be linked to another page. Clicking on one of these elements causes the
browser to fetch the linked page and display it on the screen, the same as clicking on
text. With images such as photos and maps, which page is fetched next may depend
on what part of the image was clicked on.

Not all pages contain HTML. A page may consist of a formatted document in PDF
format, an icon in GIF format, a photograph in JPEG format, a song in MP3 format, a
video in MPEG format, or any one of hundreds of other file types. Since standard
HTML pages may link to any of these, the browser has a problem when it encounters
a page it cannot interpret.

Rather than making the browsers larger and larger by building in interpreters for a
rapidly growing collection of file types, most browsers have chosen a more general
solution. When a server returns a page, it also returns some additional information
about the page. This information includes the MIME type of the page. Pages of type
text/html are just displayed directly, as are pages in a few other built-in types. If the
MIME type is not one of the built-in ones, the browser consults its table of MIME
types to tell it how to display the page.

There are two possibilities: plug-ins and helper applications. A plug-in is a code
module that the browser fetches from a special directory on the disk and installs as an
extension to itself, as illustrated in Figure 5(a) Because plug-ins run inside the
browser, they have access to the current page and can modify its appearance. After the
plug-in has done its job (usually after the user has moved to a different Web page), the
plug-in is removed from the browser's memory.

63
Network, Transport
and Application
Layer

Figure 5: (a) A browser plug-in. (b) A helper application.

Each browser has a set of procedures that all plug-ins must implement so the browser
can call the plug-in. For example, there is typically a procedure the browser's base
code calls to supply the plug-in with data to display. This set of procedures is the
plug-in's interface and is browser specific.

In addition, the browser makes a set of its own procedures available to the plug-in, to
provide services to plug-ins. Typical procedures in the browser interface are for
allocating and freeing memory, displaying a message on the browser's status line, and
querying the browser about parameters.

Before a plug-in can be used, it must be installed. The usual installation procedure is
for the user to go to the plug-in's Web site and download an installation file. On
Windows, this is typically a self-extracting zip file with extension .exe. When the zip
file is double clicked, a little program attached to the front of the zip file is executed.
This program unzips the plug-in and copies it to the browser's plug-in directory. Then
it makes the appropriate calls to register the plug-in's MIME type and to associate the
plug-in with it. On UNIX, the installer is often a shell script that handles the copying
and registration.

The other way to extend a browser is to use a helper application. This is a complete
program, running as a separate process. It is illustrated in Figure 5(b). Since the helper
is a separate program, it offers no interface to the browser and makes no use of
browser services. Instead, it usually just accepts the name of a scratch file where the
content file has been stored, opens the file, and displays the contents. Typically,
helpers are large programs that exist independently of the browser, such as Adobe's
Acrobat Reader for displaying PDF files or Microsoft Word. Some programs (such as
Acrobat) have a plug-in that invokes the helper itself.

Many helper applications use the MIME type application. A considerable number of
subtypes have been defined, for example, application/pdf for PDF files and
application/msword for Word files. In this way, a URL can point directly to a PDF or
Word file, and when the user clicks on it, Acrobat or Word is automatically started
and handed the name of a scratch file containing the content to be displayed.
Consequently, browsers can be configured to handle a virtually unlimited number of
document types with no changes to the browser. Modern Web servers are often

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configured with hundreds of type/subtype combinations and new ones are often added Application Layer
every time a new program is installed.

Helper applications are not restricted to using the application MIME type. Adobe
Photoshop uses image/x-photoshop and Real One Player is capable of handling
audio/mp3, for example.

On Windows, when a program is installed on the computer, it registers the MIME

types it wants to handle. This mechanism leads to conflict when multiple viewers are
available for some subtype, such as video/mpg. What happens is that the last program
to register overwrites existing (MIME type, helper application) associations, capturing
the type for itself. As a consequence, installing a new program may change the way a
browser handles existing types.

On UNIX, this registration process is generally not automatic. The user must
manually update certain configuration files. This approach leads to more work but
fewer surprises.

Browsers can also open local files, rather than fetching them from remote Web
servers. Since local files do not have MIME types, the browser needs some way to
determine which plug-in or helper to use for types other than its built-in types such as
text/html and image/jpeg. To handle local files, helpers can be associated with a file
extension as well as with a MIME type. With the standard configuration, opening
foo.pdf will open it in Acrobat and opening bar.doc will open it in Word. Some
browsers use the MIME type, the file extension, and even information taken from the
file itself to guess the MIME type. In particular, Internet Explorer relies more heavily
on the file extension than on the MIME type when it can.

Here, too, conflicts can arise since many programs are willing, in fact, eager, to
handle, say, .mpg. During installation, programs intended for professionals often
display checkboxes for the MIME types and extensions they are prepared to handle to
allow the user to select the appropriate ones and thus not overwrite existing
associations by accident. Programs aimed at the consumer market assume that the user
does not have a clue what a MIME type is and simply grab everything they can
without regard to what previously installed programs have done.

The ability to extend the browser with a large number of new types is convenient but
can also lead to trouble. When Internet Explorer fetches a file with extension exe, it
realizes that this file is an executable program and therefore has no helper. The
obvious action is to run the program. However, this could be an enormous security
hole. All a malicious Web site has to do is produce a Web page with pictures of, say,
movie stars or sports heroes, all of which are linked to a virus. A single click on a
picture then causes an unknown and potentially hostile executable program to be
fetched and run on the user's machine. To prevent unwanted guests like this, Internet
Explorer can be configured to be selective about running unknown programs
automatically, but not all users understand how to manage the configuration.

The Server Side

Now let us take a look at the server side. As we saw above, when the user types in a
URL or clicks on a line of hypertext, the browser parses the URL and interprets the
part between http:// and the next slash as a DNS name to look up. Armed with the IP
address of the server, the browser establishes a TCP connection to port 80 on that
server. Then it sends over a command containing the rest of the URL, which is the
name of a file on that server. The server then returns the file for the browser to
display.

65
Network, Transport The steps that the server performs in its main loop are as follows:
and Application
Layer 1. Accept a TCP connection from a client (a browser).

2. Get the name of the file requested.

3. Get the file (from disk).

4. Return the file to the client.

5. Release the TCP connection.

Modern Web servers have more features, but in essence, this is what a Web server
does.

A problem with this design is that every request requires making a disk access to get
the file. The result is that the Web server cannot serve more requests per second than
it can make disk accesses.

One obvious improvement (used by all Web servers) is to maintain a cache in memory
of the n most recently used files. Before going to disk to get a file, the server checks
the cache. If the file is there, it can be served directly from memory, thus eliminating
the disk access. Although effective caching requires a large amount of main memory
and some extra processing time to check the cache and manage its contents, the
savings in time are nearly always worth the overhead and expense.

The next step for building a faster server is to make the server multithreaded. In one
design, the server consists of a front-end module that accepts all incoming requests
and k processing modules, as shown in Figure 6. The k + 1 threads all belong to the
same process so the processing modules all have access to the cache within the
process' address space. When a request comes in, the front end accepts it and builds a
short record describing it. It then hands the record to one of the processing modules.
In another possible design, the front end is eliminated and each processing module
tries to acquire its own requests, but a locking protocol is then required to prevent
conflicts.

Figure 6: A multithreaded Web server with a front end and processing modules.
The processing module first checks the cache to see if the file needed is there. If so, it
updates the record to include a pointer to the file in the record. If it is not there, the
processing module starts a disk operation to read it into the cache (possibly discarding
some other cached files to make room for it). When the file comes in from the disk, it
is put in the cache and also sent back to the client.

The advantage of this scheme is that while one or more processing modules are
blocked waiting for a disk operation to complete (and thus consuming no CPU time),
other modules can be actively working on other requests. Of course, to get any real

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improvement over the single-threaded model, it is necessary to have multiple disks, so Application Layer
more than one disk can be busy at the same time. With k processing modules and k
disks, the throughput can be as much as k times higher than with a single-threaded
server and one disk.

In theory, a single-threaded server and k disks could also gain a factor of k, but the
code and administration are far more complicated since normal blocking READ
system calls cannot be used to access the disk. With a multithreaded server, they can
be used since then a READ blocks only the thread that made the call, not the entire
process.

Modern Web servers do more than just accept file names and return files. In fact, the
actual processing of each request can get quite complicated. For this reason, in many
servers each processing module performs a series of steps. The front end passes each
incoming request to the first available module, which then carries it out using some
subset of the following steps, depending on which ones are needed for that particular
request.

1. Resolve the name of the Web page requested.

2. Authenticate the client.

3. Perform access control on the client.

4. Perform access control on the Web page.

5. Check the cache.

6. Fetch the requested page from disk.

7. Determine the MIME type to include in the response.

8. Take care of miscellaneous odds and ends.

9. Return the reply to the client.

10. Make an entry in the server log.

Step 1 is needed because the incoming request may not contain the actual name of the
file as a literal string. For example, consider the URL http://www.cs.vu.nl, which has
an empty file name. It has to be expanded to some default file name. Also, modern
browsers can specify the user's default language (e.g., Italian or English), which
makes it possible for the server to select a Web page in that language, if available. In
general, name expansion is not quite so trivial as it might at first appear, due to a
variety of conventions about file naming.

Step 2 consists of verifying the client's identity. This step is needed for pages that are
not available to the general public. We will discuss one way of doing this later in this
chapter.

Step 3 checks to see if there are restrictions on whether the request may be satisfied
given the client's identity and location. Step 4 checks to see if there are any access
restrictions associated with the page itself. If a certain file (e.g., .htaccess) is present
in the directory where the desired page is located, it may restrict access to the file to
particular domains, for example, only users from inside the company.
Steps 5 and 6 involve getting the page. Step 6 needs to be able to handle multiple
disk reads at the same time.

67
Network, Transport Step 7 is about determining the MIME type from the file extension, first few words of
and Application the file, a configuration file, and possibly other sources.
Layer
Step 8 is for a variety of miscellaneous tasks, such as building a user profile or
gathering certain statistics.

Step 9 is where the result is sent back and step 10 makes an entry in the system log
for administrative purposes. Such logs can later be mined for valuable information
about user behavior, for example, the order in which people access the pages.

If too many requests come in each second, the CPU will not be able to handle the
processing load, no matter how many disks are used in parallel. The solution is to add
more nodes (computers), possibly with replicated disks to avoid having the disks
become the next bottleneck. This leads to the server farm model of Figure 7. A front
end still accepts incoming requests but sprays them over multiple CPUs rather than
multiple threads to reduce the load on each computer. The individual machines may
themselves be multithreaded and pipelined as before.

Figure 7: A server farm.

One problem with server farms is that there is no longer a shared cache because each
processing node has its own memory unless an expensive shared-memory
multiprocessor is used. One way to counter this performance loss is to have a front
end keep track of where it sends each request and send subsequent requests for the
same page to the same node. Doing this makes each node a specialist in certain pages
so that cache space is not wasted by having every file in every cache. Another
problem with server farms is that the client's TCP connection terminates at the front
end, so the reply must go through the front end. This situation is depicted in Figure
8(a), where the incoming request (1) and outgoing reply (4) both pass through the
front end.

Sometimes a trick, called TCP handoff, is used to get around this problem. With this
trick, the TCP end point is passed to the processing node so it can reply directly to the
client, shown in Figure 8(b). This handoff is done in a way that is transparent to the
client.

Figure 8: (a) Normal request-reply message sequence. (b) Sequence when TCP handoff is
used.

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HTTP Application Layer

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used mainly to transfer data on World Wide
Web. The commands from the client are embedded in a request message .The contents
of the request message are embedded in a response message. HTTP uses the services
of TCP at port 80.

HTTP is a stateless protocol since each transaction is independent of the previous

transaction. The TCP connection between the client and the server is established for
every page. It does not remember anything about the previous request. Keeping HTTP
stateless was aimed at making the Web simple.

Sample HTTP request and response transaction is shown below:

Figure 9: HTTP request and response

As shown in figure 9 above, the GET command requests the web server at
www.myserver.com for an image file image1 .The HTTP/1.0 indicates that the
browser uses the 1.0 version of the HTTP protocol.

The first line of response indicates that the server is also using HTTP version 1.0 .the
return code of 200 indicates that the server processed the request successfully.
Request message can be of following types:

Method Action
GET Requests a document from the server
HEAD Request information about the document but not the
document itself; i.e. head of the HTML page
POST Sends some information from client to server. It appends
the data to the existing document.
PUT Sends a document from to server. It replaces the existing
document.
TRACE Echoes the incoming request
CONNECT Reserved
OPTION Enquire about available options

69
Network, Transport
and Application 3.8 ELECTRONIC MAIL
Layer
Electronic mail, or e-mail, as it is known to its many fans, has been around for over
two decades. Before 1990, it was mostly used in academia. During the 1990s, it
became known to the public at large and grew exponentially to the point where the
number of e-mails sent per day now is vastly more than the number of snail mail (i.e.,
paper) letters.

E-mail, like most other forms of communication, has its own conventions and styles.
In particular, it is very informal and has a low threshold of use. People who would
never dream of calling up or even writing a letter to a Very Important Person do not
hesitate for a second to send a sloppily-written e-mail.

E-mail is full of jargon such as BTW (By The Way), ROTFL (Rolling On The Floor
Laughing), and IMHO (In My Humble Opinion). Many people also use little ASCII
symbols called smileys or emoticons in their e-mail.

The first e-mail systems simply consisted of file transfer protocols, with the
convention that the first line of each message (i.e., file) contained the recipient's
address. As time went on, the limitations of this approach became more obvious.
Some of the complaints were as follows:

1. Sending a message to a group of people was inconvenient. Managers often need

this facility to send memos to all their subordinates.

2. Messages had no internal structure, making computer processing difficult. For

example, if a forwarded message was included in the body of another message,
extracting the forwarded part from the received message was difficult.

3. The originator (sender) never knew if a message arrived or not.

4. If someone was planning to be away on business for several weeks and wanted
all incoming e-mail to be handled by his secretary, this was not easy to arrange.

5. The user interface was poorly integrated with the transmission system requiring
users first to edit a file, then leave the editor and invoke the file transfer
program.

6. It was not possible to create and send messages containing a mixture of text,
drawings, facsimile, and voice.

3.8.1 Architecture and Services

In this section we will provide an overview of what e-mail systems can do and how
they are organized. They normally consist of two subsystems: the user agents, which
allow people to read and send e-mail, and the message transfer agents, which move
the messages from the source to the destination. The user agents are local programs
that provide a command-based, menu-based, or graphical method for interacting with
the e-mail system. The message transfer agents are typically system daemons, that is,
processes that run in the background. Their job is to move e-mail through the system.
Typically, e-mail systems support five basic functions.

Composition refers to the process of creating messages and answers. Although any
text editor can be used for the body of the message, the system itself can provide
assistance with addressing and the numerous header fields attached to each message.
For example, when answering a message, the e-mail system can extract the

70
`

originator's address from the incoming e-mail and automatically insert it into the Application Layer
proper place in the reply.

Transfer refers to moving messages from the originator to the recipient. In large part,
this requires establishing a connection to the destination or some intermediate
machine, outputting the message, and releasing the connection. The e-mail system
should do this automatically, without bothering the user.

Reporting has to do with telling the originator what happened to the message. Was it
delivered? Was it rejected? Was it lost? Numerous applications exist in which
confirmation of delivery is important and may even have legal significance (''Well,
Your Honor, my e-mail system is not very reliable, so I guess the electronic subpoena
just got lost somewhere'').

Displaying incoming messages is needed so people can read their e-mail. Sometimes
conversion is required or a special viewer must be invoked, for example, if the
message is a PostScript file or digitized voice. Simple conversions and formatting are
sometimes attempted as well.

Disposition is the final step and concerns what the recipient does with the message
after receiving it. Possibilities include throwing it away before reading, throwing it
away after reading, saving it, and so on. It should also be possible to retrieve and
reread saved messages, forward them, or process them in other ways.

In addition to these basic services, some e-mail systems, especially internal corporate
ones, provide a variety of advanced features. Let us just briefly mention a few of
these. When people move or when they are away for some period of time, they may
want their e-mail forwarded, so the system should be able to do this automatically.
Most systems allow users to create mailboxes to store incoming e-mail. Commands
are needed to create and destroy mailboxes, inspect the contents of mailboxes, insert
and delete messages from mailboxes, and so on.

Corporate managers often need to send a message to each of their subordinates,

customers, or suppliers. This gives rise to the idea of a mailing list, which is a list of
e-mail addresses. When a message is sent to the mailing list, identical copies are
delivered to everyone on the list.

3.8.2 The User Agent

E-mail systems have two basic parts, as we have seen: the user agents and the
message transfer agents. In this section, we will look at the user agents. A user agent
is normally a program (sometimes called a mail reader) that accepts a variety of
commands for composing, receiving, and replying to messages, as well as for
manipulating mailboxes. Some user agents have a fancy menu- or icon-driven
interface that requires a mouse, whereas others expect 1-character commands from the
keyboard. Functionally, these are the same. Some systems are menu-or icon-driven
but also have keyboard shortcuts.

Sending E-mail
To send an e-mail message, a user must provide the message, the destination address,
and possibly some other parameters.

Reading E-mail
Typically, when a user agent is started up, it looks at the user's mailbox for incoming
e-mail before displaying anything on the screen. Then it may announce the number of

71
Network, Transport messages in the mailbox or display a one-line summary of each one and wait for a
and Application command.
Layer
SMTP server (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
For email messaging, every domain maintains an email server. The server runs
protocols software that enable email communication. There are two main emails
protocols: POP and SMTP. Because both the email protocol software programs run on
server computers, the server computers are themselves called POP server and SMTP
server. A single server can host both the POP and SMTP server programs.
SMTP is the Internet protocol used to transfer electronic mail between computers.
The second generation of SMTP is called ESMTP (for Extended SMTP), but the
differences are not important for this introduction.

It actually transfers the email message from the SMTP server of the sender to the
SMTP server of the recipient. Its main job is to carry the message between the sender
and the receiver. It uses TCP/IP underneath. That is, it runs on top of TCP/IP.
At the sender’s site, an SMTP server takes the message sent by a user’s computer.
The SMTP server at the sender’s end then transfers the message to the SMTP server of
the recipient.

The SMTP server at the recipient’s end takes the message and stores it in the
appropriate user’s mailbox.

Check Your Progress 3

1. Select the right choice
a) Internet’s initial development was supported by:
(A) ARPANET
(B) Bill Rogers
(C) Bill Gates
(D) Microsoft

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
b) What are the uses of the Internet?
(A) Communication
(B) Information Retrieval
(C) Presentation of Information
(D) All of the above

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
c) net domain is used for
(A) Educational institution
(B) Internet infrastructure and service providers
(C) International organizations
(D) None of the above

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2. Differentiate between http and ftp.

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…………………………………………………………………………………… Application Layer

……………………………………………………………………………………

3.9 SUMMARY
This completes our discussion on the application layer. Include identifying
communication partners, determining resource availability, and synchronizing
communication. When identifying communication partners, the application layer
determines the identity and availability of communication partners for an application
with data to transmit. When determining resource availability, the application layer
must decide whether sufficient network or the requested communication exists. The
unit very well defines the concept of DNS and various internet and communication
related issues like www, emailing system, FTP, Telnet etc. To know further about
different application layer protocol students may refer to the course material of BCS-
052: Network Programming and Administration

3.10 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING

1. Introduction to Data Communication & Networking, 3rd Edition, Behrouz
Forouzan, Tata McGraw Hill.
2. Computer Networks, A. S. Tanenbaum 4th Edition, Practice Hall of India, New
Delhi. 2003.
3. Douglas E. Comer, Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols, and
Architecture (4th Edition).

4. James F. Kurose, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the

Internet (3rd Edition).

5. Larry L. Peterson, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, 3rd Edition (The

Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking).

6. www. wikipedia.org

7. W. Richard Stevens, The Protocols (TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1).

8. William Stallings, Data and Computer Communications, Seventh Edition.

3.11 SOLUTIONS / ANSWERS

Check Your Progress 1

1. a) D
b) B
c) C
2. Managing a large and constantly changing set of names is a nontrivial problem.
In the postal system, name management is done by requiring letters to specify
(implicitly or explicitly) the country, state or province, city, and street address
of the addressee. Conceptually, the Internet is divided into over 200 top-level
domains, where each domain covers many hosts. Each domain is partitioned
into sub domains, and these are further partitioned, and so on. All these
domains can be represented by a tree. The top-level domains come in two
flavors: generic and countries.

73
Network, Transport 3. A single name server could contain the entire DNS database and respond to all
and Application queries about it. In practice, this server would be so overloaded as to be useless.
Layer
Furthermore, if it ever went down, the entire Internet would be crippled. To
avoid the problems associated with having only a single source of information,
the DNS name space is divided into non-overlapping zones. A zone will have
one primary name server, which gets its information from a file on its disk, and
one or more secondary name servers, which get their information from the
primary name server. To improve reliability, some servers for a zone can be
located outside the zone.

Check Your Progress 2

1. a) (C)
b) (A)
2. Two TCP connections in FTP are:
i) The control connection is established in the normal client-server
fashion. In this case, the server does a passive open (is listening) on port
21 for FTP, and waits for the client connection. The client does an active
open (the2nd handshake in a TCP connection) to establish the control
connection. The client uses an ephemeral port number (above 1023) for
the control connection. This control connection stays up for the entire
time that the client communicates with this server. This connection is
used for commands from the client to the server and for the server's
replies. The IP type of service for the control connection should be to
minimize delay in passing these commands over the TCP connection.
ii) A data connection is created each time a file is transferred between the
client and the server. The IP type of service for the data connection
should be to maximize throughput since this connection is file transfer,
and we want to send this entire file over a high bandwidth line. The
specification of FTP includes more than 30 different commands, which
are transmitted over the control connection in NVT ASCII format. The
commands are not case-sensitive and may have arguments; each
command ends with a two character sequence of a carriage return (CR)
followed by a line feed (LF). It must be emphasized here that these
commands are different from the commands typed by the user at the
interface provided by the client. Transferring a single file for instance
requires only a single user-level command (e.g., put or get), but this single
command triggers the client to send a set of FTP commands to the server.
The FTP server responds to each command with a three-digit reply code
(for the FTP client) and an optional text message (for the user).

3. Configuration management system must know, at any time, the status of each
entity and its relation to other entities. Configuration management can be
divided into two subsystems: reconfiguration and documentation.

Reconfiguration, which means adjusting the network components and features,

can be a daily occurrence in a large network. There are three types of
reconfiguration: hardware reconfiguration, software reconfiguration, and user-
account reconfiguration. Hardware reconfiguration covers all changes to the
hardware. For example, a desktop computer may need to be replaced. A router
may need to be moved to another part of the network. A sub network may be
added or removed from the network.

The original network configuration and each subsequent change must be

recorded meticulously. This means that there must be documentation for
hardware, software, and user accounts. Hardware documentation normally

74
`

involves two sets of documents: maps and specifications. Maps track each piece Application Layer
of hardware and its connection to the network. There can be one general map
that shows the logical relationship between each sub-network. There can also be
a second general map that shows the physical location of each sub-network. For
each sub network, then, there are one or more maps that show all pieces of
equipment. The maps use some kind of standardization to be easily read and
understood by current and future personnel. Each piece of hardware also needs
to be documented. There must be a set of specifications for each piece of
hardware connected to the network

Check Your Progress 3

1. a) (A)
b) (D)
c) (C)

2. FTP and HTTP were developed to make Internet transmission better. FTP is
used to exchange files between computer accounts, to transfer files between an
account and a desktop computer (upload), or to access software archives on the
Internet. It's also commonly used to download programs and other files to your
computer from other servers. It transfers files in two different formats ASCII
for text files and Binary format for binary files. This allows a user to perform
basic file and directory management operations such as deleting, copying, or
renaming. HTTP is used primarily in today’s society as a set of rules for
exchanging files (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files)
on the World Wide Web. It also provides access to other protocols like FTP,
SMTP, NNTP, WAIS, Gopher, Telnet, and TN3270. Essential concepts that are
part of HTTP include (as its name implies) the idea that files can contain
references to other files whose selection will elicit additional transfer requests.
Any web server machine contains, in addition to the HTML and other files it
can serve, an HTTP daemon, a program that is designed to wait for HTTP
requests and handle them when they arrive.

75
Network, Transport
and Application UNIT 4 NETWORK APPLICATIONS
Layer

Structure Page Nos.

4.0 Introduction 76
4.1 Objectives 76
4.2 Internet Applications 76
4.2.1 Email
4.2.2 Chatting
4.3 Social Networking 79
4.3.1 Blogs
4.3.2 Online multiplayer gaming
4.3.3 Facebook
4.3.4 Emerging Trends
4.3.5 Characteristics of social Networking
4.4 Railway Reservation System 85
4.5 Information Sharing 91
4.6 Electronic Governance 92
4.7 Online Processing and Collaborations 95
4.8 Mobile Applications 98
4.9 Summary 100
4.10 References/Further Readings 100
4.11 Solutions/Answers 101

4.0 INTRODUCTION
In this unit we are concentrating on the kind of applications that are used on
the Internet. It is the part of network protocol (in the sense that they exchange
messages with their peers on other machines) and part of traditional application
program (in the sense that they interact with the windowing system, the file system,
and ultimately, the user). It includes some of the most popular network applications
available today Like: The World Wide Web and Email etc. We have also discussed
some of the real-time applications like social networking, chatting, Railway
Reservation system, Mobile Applications etc.

4.1 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit you will be able to:
• define the logical structure of the Internet Applications;
• define the structure and working of network applications;
• define the concept of information sharing;
• discuss the basic features of E-Governance; and
• define the various components of mobile Applications;

4.2 INTERNET APPLICATIONS

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the
standard Internet protocol suite (often called TCP/IP, although not all applications use
TCP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that IS MODE
of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local
to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical
networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information

76
resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Network Applications
Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email.

Most traditional communications media including telephone, music, film, and

television are reshaped or redefined by the Internet, giving birth to new services such
as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV).
Newspaper, book and other print publishing are adapting to Web site technology, or
are reshaped into blogging and web feeds. The Internet has enabled and accelerated
new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums,
and social networking. Online shopping has boomed both for major retail outlets and
small artisans and traders. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet
affect supply chains across entire industries.

The origins of the Internet reach back to research of the 1960s, commissioned by
the United States government in collaboration with private commercial interests to
build robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks. The funding of a new
U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, as well as private
funding for other commercial backbones, led to worldwide participation in the
development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks.
The commercialization of what was by the 1990s an international network resulted in
its popularization and incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life.
As of 2011, more than 2.2 billion people – nearly a third of Earth's population — use
the services of the Internet.

The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or

policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own standards. Only
the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet,
the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System, are directed by a
maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core
protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants
that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.

Internet is a short form of the technical term internetwork, the result of

interconnecting computer networks with special gateways or routers. The Internet is
also often referred to as the Net.

The term the Internet, when referring to the entire global system of IP networks, has
been treated as a proper noun and written with an initial capital letter. In the media
and popular culture, a trend has also developed to regard it as a generic term or
common noun and thus write it as "the internet", without capitalization. Some guides
specify that the word should be capitalized as a noun but not capitalized as an
adjective.

The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without
much distinction. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the
same. The Internet establishes a global data communications system between
computers. In contrast, the Web is one of the services communicated via the Internet.
It is a collection of interconnected documents (web pages) and other resources, linked
by hyperlinks and URLs. In addition to the Web, the Internet also powers a multitude
of other services, including (among others) email, file transfer, newsgroups, and
online games. Web services can exist apart from the internet, such as on a private
intranet.

77
Network, Transport The Internet allows greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with
and Application the spread of unmetered high-speed connections. The Internet can be accessed almost
Layer anywhere by numerous means, including through mobile Internet devices. Mobile
phones, data cards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to
connect to the Internet wirelessly. Within the limitations imposed by small screens
and other limited facilities of such pocket-sized devices, the services of the Internet,
including email and the web, may be available. Service providers may restrict the
services offered and mobile data charges may be significantly higher than other access
methods.

Educational material at all levels from pre-school to post-doctoral is available from

websites. Examples range from CBeebies, through school and high-school revision
guides, virtual universities, to access to top-end scholarly literature through the likes
of Google Scholar. For distance education, help with homework and other
assignments, self-guided learning, whiling away spare time, or just looking up more
detail on an interesting fact, it has never been easier for people to access educational
information at any level from anywhere. The Internet in general and the World Wide
Web in particular are important enablers of both formal and informal education.

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has
made collaborative work dramatically easier, with the help of collaborative software.
Not only can a group cheaply communicate and share ideas but the wide reach of the
Internet allows such groups more easily to form. An example of this is the free
software movement, which has produced, among other things, Linux, Mozilla Firefox,
and OpenOffice.org. Internet chat, whether in the form of an IRC chat room or
channel, via an instant messaging system, or a social networking website, allows
colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way when working at their computers
during the day. Messages can be exchanged even more quickly and conveniently than
via email. These systems may allow files to be exchanged, drawings and images to be
shared, or voice and video contact between team members.

4.2.1 Email
Electronic mail is one of the most popular tools made available through the Internet. It
is an efficient and effective means of network communication. You can call it as an
electronic postal system. One of the most valuable features of communicating via
email is that it is asynchronous, meaning the recipient need not be at a computer to
receive the message you send. The message will be stored and available to be read
when the recipient is ready to read it. In order to send and receive email, you must
have access to an Email account.

4.2.2 Chatting
Chatting may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real
time direct transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the
delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of
communications in any of the directions. Online chat may address point-to-
point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many
receivers and voice and video chat or may be a feature of a Web conferencing service.

Online chat in a lesser stringent definition may be primarily any direct text-based or
video-based (webcams), one-on-one chat or one-to-many group chat (formally also
known asynchronous conferencing), using tools such as instant messengers, Internet
Relay Chat, talkers and possibly MUDs. The expression online chat comes from the
word chat which means "informal conversation". Online chat includes web-based
applications that allow communication - often directly addressed, but anonymous -
between users in a multi-user environment. Web conferencing is a more specific

78
online service, which is often sold as a service, hosted on a web server controlled by Network Applications
the vendor.

“Real-time communication between two users via computer. Once a chat has been
initiated, either user can enter text by typing on the keyboard and the entered text will
appear on the other user's monitor. Most networks and online services offer a
chat feature.”

Issues with Chatting

There has been much criticism about what online chatting has done in today’s society.
Many people are accusing it of replacing proper English with short hand with an
almost completely new hybrid language.

Writing is changing as it takes on some of the functions and features of speech.

Internet chat-rooms and rapid real-time conferencing allow users to interact with
whoever happens to coexist in cyberspace. These virtual interactions involve us in
`talking' more freely and more widely than ever before (Merchant, 2001). With chat-
rooms replacing many face-to-face conversations it is necessary to be able to have
quick conversation as if the person were present; so many people learn to type as
quickly as they would normally speak. Critics are wary that this casual form of speech
is being used so much that it will slowly take over common grammar; however, such a
change has yet to be seen. With the increasing population of online chat-rooms there
has been a massive growth of new words created or slang words, many of them
documented on the website Urban Dictionary online chatting can be defined as:

“as new electronic modes of communication provoke similar anxieties amongst

critics who express concern that young people are at risk, endangered by a rising
tide of information over which the traditional controls of print media and the
guardians of knowledge have no control on it”.

4.3 SOCIAL NETWORKING

Many people use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to
plan and book vacations and to find out more about their interests. People use chat,
messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in
the same way as some previously had pen pals. The Internet has seen a growing
number of Web desktops, where users can access their files and settings via the
Internet.

Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace have created
new ways to socialize and interact, some of these social networking groups are
depicted in the Figure 1. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of
information to pages, to pursue common interests, and to connect with others. It is
also possible to find existing acquaintances, to allow communication among existing
groups of people. Sites like LinkedIn foster commercial and business connections.
YouTube and Flickr specialize in users' videos and photographs.

79
Network, Transport
and Application
Layer

Figure 1: Some of the Social networking groups

The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception, with
entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on
university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much traffic. Today,
many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short
cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs
or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas. The
pornography and gambling industries have taken advantage of the World Wide Web,
and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other
websites. Although many governments have attempted to restrict both industries' use
of the Internet, in general this has failed to stop their widespread popularity.

4.3.1 Blogs
Blog is a website where entries are written as commentary or news on a particular
subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online
diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and
other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an
interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily
textual, although some focus on art, photographs, videos and music and are part of a
wider network of social media. One of the Blogging service named Blogger is
depicted in the Figure 2.

Figure 2: One of the Blogging service named Blogger

80
Blogging is gaining popularity in education, as it removes the technical barriers of Network Applications
writing and publishing online, which encourages students to keep a record of their
ideas and thinking over time. Blogging also facilitate readers to give critical feedback
on any topic, readers can add comments, where readers can be teachers, other students
or a wider viewers. Teachers should investigate the potential of blogs, media-sharing
services and other social software, which can be used create new learning
opportunities. Students can also use the blogs as blog can provide a personal space
online, to ask questions, comment on other questions, publish work, and link to other
web sources. However a blog needn't be restricted to a single author, it can merge
different kinds of ideas, including fellow students, teachers, and subject specialists.
An example: http://edu.blogs.com/.

Blogging platform alternatives are following:

• WordPress.org is not the only blogging platform out there. There are several
popular alternatives. First of all there is WordPress.com. Learn here about
WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com.
• Google’s Blogspot Blogger is another popular option. See here a bit on the
difference between WordPress or Blogger.
• Tumblr is another popular choice. If you’re wondering which on to pick, check
Tumblr vs WordPress article.
• Google offer Blogger, which is easy way to collaborate, discuss, or share your
thoughts with others. In the following section we will discuss how to create a
blog, and discuss the main features of Blogger.

4.3.2 Online multiplayer gaming

Another area of leisure activity on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of
recreation creates communities, where people of all ages and origins enjoy the fast-
paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person
shooters, from role-playing video games to online gambling. While online gaming has
been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with subscription
services such as GameSpy and MPlayer. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types
of game play or certain games. Many people use the Internet to access and download
music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. Free and fee-based
services exist for all of these activities, using centralized servers and distributed peer-
to-peer technologies. Some of these sources exercise more care with respect to the
original artists' copyrights than others.

Internet usage has been correlated to users' loneliness. Lonely people tend to use the
Internet as an outlet for their feelings and to share their stories with others, such as in
the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread.

Cyber-sectarianism is a new organizational form which involves: "highly dispersed

small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger
social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger
network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common
devotion to a particular leader. Overseas supporters provide funding and support;
domestic practitioners distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share
information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members and
practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith, exchanging
personal testimonies and engaging in collective study via email, on-line chat rooms
and web-based message boards."

A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on

facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people who, for

81
Network, Transport example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. A social
and Application network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her
Layer social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services
are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-
mail and instant messaging. Online community services are sometimes considered as a
social network service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually
means an individual-centered service where as online community services are group-
centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and
interests within their individual networks.

The main types of social networking services are those that contain category places
(such as former school year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually
with self-description pages), and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular
methods now combine many of these, with Facebook, Twitter and Google+ widely
used worldwide.

Some social networks have additional features, such as the ability to

create groups that share common interests or affiliations, upload or stream live videos,
and hold discussions in forums. Geosocial networking co-opts Internet mapping
services to organize user participation around geographic features and their attributes.

There is a trend towards more interoperability between social networks led by

technologies such as OpenID and OpenSocial. In most mobile communities, mobile
phone users can now create their own profiles, make friends, participate in chat
rooms, create chat rooms, hold private conversations, share photos and videos, and
share blogs by using their mobile phone. Some companies provide wireless services
that allow their customers to build their own mobile community and brand it; one of
the most popular wireless services for social networking in North America is
Facebook Mobile.

4.3.3 Facebook
At present, Facebook is one of the popular Social Networking sites used by millions
of people around the world, especially young people including your learners to
connect to each other; Figure 3 shows the Login/Signup page for Facebook. This site
is a free and effective way of communication on-line with your learners. You can, for
example, send the messages, assignments and on-line resources for your subject. They
in turn can communicate with you by posting questions etc.

Figure 3: Login/Signup page for Facebook

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4.3.4 Emerging Trends Network Applications

As the increase in popularity of social networking is on a constant rise, new uses for
the technology are constantly being observed.

At the forefront of emerging trends in social networking sites is the concept of "real-
time web" and "location-based." Real-time allows users to contribute content, which
is then broadcast as it is being uploaded - the concept is analogous to live radio and
television broadcasts. Twitter set the trend for "real-time" services, wherein users can
broadcast to the world what they are doing, or what is on their minds within a 140-
character limit. Facebook followed suit with their "Live Feed" where users' activities
are streamed as soon as it happens. While Twitter focuses on words, Clixtr, another
real-time service, focuses on group photo sharing wherein users can update their
photo streams with photos while at an event. Facebook, however, remains the largest
photo sharing site - Facebook application and photo aggregator Pixable estimates that
Facebook will have more 100 billion photos by mid of 2011. In April, 2012, the
image-based social media network Pinterest had become the third largest social
network in the United States.

Companies have begun to merge business technologies and solutions, such as cloud
computing, with social networking concepts. Instead of connecting individuals based
on social interest, companies are developing interactive communities that connect
individuals based on shared business needs or experiences. Many provide specialized
networking tools and applications that can be accessed via their websites, such
as LinkedIn. Others companies, such as Monster.com, have been steadily developing a
more "socialized" feel to their career center sites to harness some of the power of
social networking sites. These more business related sites have their own
nomenclature for the most part but the most common naming conventions are
"Vocational Networking Sites" or "Vocational Media Networks", with the former
more closely tied to individual networking relationships based on social networking
principles.

Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to "check-in" to places that they
are frequenting at that moment. Gowalla is another such service that functions in
much the same way that Foursquare does, leveraging the GPS in phones to create a
location-based user experience. Clixtr, though in the real-time space, is also a
location-based social networking site, since events created by users are automatically
geotagged, and users can view events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app.
Recently, Yelp announced its entrance into the location-based social networking space
through check-ins with their mobile app; whether or not this becomes detrimental to
Foursquare or Gowalla is yet to be seen, as it is still considered a new space in the
Internet technology industry.

One popular use for this new technology is social networking between businesses.
Companies have found that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are
great ways to build their brand image.

There are five major uses for businesses and social media: to create brand awareness,
as an online reputation management tool, for recruiting, to learn about new
technologies and competitors, and as a lead generation tool to intercept potential
prospects. These companies are able to drive traffic to their own online sites while
encouraging their consumers and clients to have discussions on how to improve or
change products or services.

4.3.5 Characteristics of social Networking

Social networks and science

83
Network, Transport By sharing information and knowledge with one another, people are able to "increase
and Application both their learning and their flexibility in ways that would not be possible within a
Layer self-contained hierarchical organization." Social networking is allowing scientific
groups to expand their knowledge base and share ideas, and without these new means
of communicating their theories might become "isolated and irrelevant".

Social networks and education

Social networks are also being used by teachers and students as a communication tool.
Because many students are already using a wide range of social networking sites,
teachers have begun to familiarize themselves with this trend in order to leverage
student interest in relation to curriculum content. Some of this includes creating chat-
room forums and groups to extend classroom discussion to posting assignments, tests
and quizzes, through to assisting with homework outside of the classroom setting.
Social network services are also being used to foster teacher-parent communication.
These services make it possible and more convenient for parents to ask questions and
voice concerns without having to meet face-to-face with their children's teachers.
The advent of social networking platforms may also be impacting the way(s) in which
learners engage with technology in general. The use of online social networks by
school libraries is also increasingly prevalent and they are being used to communicate
with potential library users, as well as extending the services provided by individual
school libraries.

Social networks and their educational uses are of interest to many researchers. “Social
networking sites, like much else on the internet, represent a moving target for
researchers and policy makers.” Recent trends indicate that 47% of American adults
use a social network. A national survey in 2009 found that 73% of online teenagers
use SNS, which is an increase from 55% three years earlier. Recent studies have
shown that social network services provide opportunities within professional
education, curriculum education, and learning. However, there are constraints in this
area.

Learning uses within education

Educators and advocates of new digital literacy are confident that social networking
encourages the development of transferable, technical, and social skills of value in
formal and informal learning. In a formal learning environment, goals or objectives
are determined by an outside department or agency. Tweeting, instant messaging,
or blogging enhances student involvement. Students who would not normally
participate in class are more apt to partake through social network services.

Networking allows participants the opportunity for just-in-time learning and higher
levels of engagement. The use of SNSs allow educators to enhance the prescribed
curriculum. When learning experiences are infused into a website, students utilize
everyday for fun, students realize that learning can and should be a part of everyday
life. It does not have to be separate and unattached. Informal learning consists of the
learner setting the goals and objectives. It has been claimed that media no longer just
influence our culture. They are our culture. With such a high number of users between
the ages of 13-18, a number of skills are developed. Participants hone technical skills
in choosing to navigate through social networking services. This includes elementary
items such as sending an instant message or updating a status. The developments of
new media skills are paramount in helping youth navigate the digital world with
confidence. Social networking services foster learning through "Participatory
Culture." A participatory culture consists of a space that allows engagement, sharing,
mentoring, and an opportunity for social interaction. Participants of social network
services avail of this opportunity. Informal learning, in the forms of participatory and
social learning online, is an excellent tool for teachers to sneak in material and ideas
that students will identify with and therefore, in a secondary manner, students will

84
learn skills that would normally be taught in a formal setting in the more interesting Network Applications
and engaging environment of social learning.

Sites like Twitter provide students with the opportunity to converse and collaborate
with others in real time. Social networking services provide a virtual “space” for
learners.

Social Interaction
Social networking is a way for one person to meet up with other people on the net.
People use social networking sites for meeting new friends, finding old friends, or
locating people who have the same problems or interests they have, called niche
networking.

More and more relationships and friendships are being formed online and then carried
to an offline setting. The relationships which start online are much more likely to
succeed.

Being able to meet some-one as a "friend" and see what common interests you share
and how you have built up your friend base and "likes" you can truly see a fuller
picture of the person you are talking with. Most sites are free instead of being paid
based which allows younger people with stricter budgets to enjoy some of the same
features as those of adults who are more likely to be able to afford pay based sites.
While not the intended or original use for these social sites, a large area of their
current function has stemmed from people wanting to meet other people in person and
with the extremely busy schedules of most people, it is a fast, reliable and easy way in
which to do so that costs you little time and money (if any). Users do not necessarily
share with others the content which is of most interest to them, but rather that which
projects a good impression of themselves.

4.4 RAILWAY RESERVATION SYSTEM

Journey by rail has its own charm and glitz. And, railway reservation in India is no
more a hassle. You can go by online train reservation services or any outlet for that
matter. Despite the coming up of cheap fairs in domestic airlines market, a substantial
number of passengers and visitors yet journey by train. However, a train travel is both
safe & comfortable and cheap. Indian people like to travel by train. A journey by train
takes you to unearth the otherwise unexplored sites and mysteries of Mother India. As
far as the railway reservation in India is concerned, there are myriad options at ones
disposal. You can go by online train reservation system or any railway reservation
booking outlet scattered everywhere.

However, Indian railway ticket reservation is no more a tedious job. Just lay your
hands on any railway reservation booking outlet around you and make your way to the
differing journey. With the onset of online railway reservation system things got much
simpler for the passengers to book railway tickets online.

Indian railway is working incessantly to endow simply the best services to the
passengers in India. Anyone with a system can have rail reservation instantly with no
hassle. However, there are also systems of making railway reservation enquiry from
virtually any place with your computer. This is how the whole system of
booking railway tickets got easier in terms of accessibility and affordability. You are
no longer required to sweat and fret over train ticket reservation in India. For any
inquiry or for that matter any info you require regarding railway reservations just log
onto the official site of Indian railways and you will have it.

85
Network, Transport
and Application Sitting at your home in front of a computer can give you all the relevant information
Layer on booking tickets in Indian railways. Booking any train on Indian
Railways computerized passenger reservation system (PRS) network from any
originating station or train passing through system station to any destination is that
much easy nowadays. Be it about booking tickets, reservation enquiry, internet tickets
(i-tickets), electronic tickets (e-tickets) or cancellation of tickets, things are just in
place for the convenience of passengers.

Indian Railways-System and Network

Indian Railways is the world's second-largest railway, with 6,853 stations, 63,028
kilometers of track, 37,840 passenger coaches and 222,147 freight cars. Annually it
carries some 4.83 billion passengers and 492 million tons of freight. Of the 11 million
passengers who climb aboard one of 8,520 trains each day, about 550,000 have
reserved accommodations. Their journeys can start in any part of India and end in any
other part, with travel times as long as 48 hours and distances up to several thousand
kilometers. The challenge is to provide a reservation system that can support such a
huge scale of operations — regardless of whether it's measured by kilometers,
passenger numbers, routing complexity, or simply the sheer scale of India.

The main challenges in front of the Indian railways are:

• Provide a reservation system that efficiently serves more than half a million
people each day
• Ensure maximum uptime so reservation/ticketing/inquiry application is
available 24 x 7
• Create a Web site that can accommodate more than one million hits per day
• Traveling on High Technology Indian Railways is one of the most advanced
ministries in India, with an innovative and extensive IT environment — and a
leading-edge reservation system powered by HP AlphaServer systems running
the HP OpenVMS™ operating system and HP Reliable Transaction Router
(RTR) middleware. Consider the scope of the operation.
• Good Technology means good service in 1986, the Ministry of Railways
established the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) as an umbrella
for all computer activities on Indian Railways. CRIS is responsible for
designing, developing and implementing all major computer systems for the
Railways. With its own R&D effort, CRIS has become a frontrunner in its field.
One of CRIS's key technical achievements is a sophisticated reservation and
ticketing application called Country-Wide Network for Enhanced Reservation
and Ticketing (CONCERT), which runs on the OpenVMS AlphaServer
platform. Centre for Railway Information Systems at Indian Railways,
"OpenVMS is an extremely rugged and reliable operating system. Its built-in
auditing feature provides us with excellent security." The primary challenge for
CRIS is to provide an efficient passenger service by ensuring maximum uptime
for its reservation/ticketing and inquiry application. The Railway must prepare
charts that map passengers with their seats, and must post these charts outside
each coach. CONCERT software enables the preparation of skeleton charts in
advance for each train for the next three journey days. Indian Railway's current
CONCERT application represents a steady progression of using the latest
technologies available. In the mid-1980s, Indian Railways first computerized its
reserved ticketing operation on VAX systems running VMS. This was done
from five regional passenger reservation centres, each of which was a stand-
alone site with its own local database. During the mid- to late 1990s, CRIS
introduced CONCERT, which linked the five passenger reservation centres so

86
 that reserved tickets from any station of Indian Railways could be issued to any Network Applications
other station from a single window. "CONCERT from CRIS has been able to
improve the services to the passenger by offering single-window service to the
passengers. RTR gives the user location transparency for the distributed
database system. Thus, the reservation from one station to any other station can
be given from a single window covering the round trip, which means passengers
only have to stand in one queue. Indian railways perform various services to the
passengers by using information technology, these are as follows:
i) Passenger Reservation System Solution
ii) Unreserved Ticketing System for Railways
iii) Mobile Ticketing
iv) Web Ticketing
v) Kiosk-based Ticketing
vi) Centralized (Hybrid) Ticketing System
vii) Time Table and Scheduling System
viii) Traffic Management Systems
ix) Passenger Information Display System
As more and more people turned to the Web to find information about various
services, Indian Railways decided to provide information related to passenger
reservations to the public over the Internet. In 2000, CRIS designed and implemented
Indian Railways' own Web site, which receives a staggering 1.2 million hits per day.
The site is hosted by CRIS and runs on the OpenVMS AlphaServer platform.

In 1985, CMC Software company (a subsidiary company of TATA Consultancy

Services) developed IMPRESS, the railway reservation system based online
transaction processing (OLTP), for the Indian Railways, which has been successfully
operating it since 1987. Since then, however, the system has undergone a major
change for networking all nodes in the railway network. The current software is
CONCERT, implemented by the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS).

The impact of IMPRESS / CONCERT on the system's users as well as on the Indian
Railways has been tremendous. The benefits include substantial savings in
transportation costs and in reservation time, telescopic fare benefits for cluster
journeys, reduced malpractice and, above all, a modern, efficient and convenient
system.

For the Railways, there is substantial reduction in cost per ticket issued, manpower
savings (a 40 per cent increase in transactions handled per day), savings in space
required, less strenuous work, higher productivity and fewer errors in fare
computation, concession calculations, etc.

IMPRESS is being enhanced proactively, using state-of-the-art relational database

management systems on open systems. The enhanced IMPRESS is built around an
RDBMS core and supports full client-server architecture. It can also work on
character-based terminals (used in the reservation and charting modules) in a host-
based environment.

The application has been designed as an open distribution system, so that the data and
transaction volume can be segregated between multiple host sites. Networking is an
inherent feature of the application.

87
Network, Transport • The IMPRESS software can support both graphic user interface (GUI) and
and Application character-based terminals, which act as front-ends installed at the booking
Layer
counters to cater to passenger requests.
• This software conforms to open standards. Hence, it can be interfaced to other
applications like airline reservation systems, hotel reservation systems, etc.,
which are also based on open standards.
• The IMPRESS software is 'parametric' in terms of data and business rules, for
fare computation, refund rules, cancellation, break journey rules, etc. Here,
business rules are also kept as data items in the back-end repository instead of
being part of the application logic. Therefore, the system can absorb changes in
business rules immediately, without having to regenerate the object code.
• The application is secured against intrusion by two-level user authentications as
the topmost guard. Below it, the data is secured from external access through
multiple-level privileges. A data encryption facility is available across the
WAN to prevent hacking.
• Ticketing for Indian Railways
Almost 14 million of the 15 million people whom the Railways transports every day
travel on unreserved tickets. Handling them has been a huge problem. The Indian
Railways plans to cover 943 more stations in 2006-07, and ensure that a total of 6,000
stations have UTS as of March 31, 2009. Unreserved tickets were earlier offered only
two hours before the scheduled departure of trains. This not only caused
inconvenience to passengers (as they wait in long queues to purchase their tickets)
but it also affected the IR adversely in terms of loss in revenues, cumbersome
reporting and in poor demand analysis. While some of the trains ran overcrowded, the
others went partially vacant.

The implementation of UTS eliminated the earlier lapses in ticketing and helped the
IR to substantially control overcrowding. The system comprised a network of
terminals wherefrom the passengers could buy unreserved tickets for any journey 30
days in advance.

The Unreserved Ticketing System allowed advance planning and rational analysis of
passenger demands for unreserved coaches. It also helped the IR to effectively
monitor sale of tickets on various trains and regulate the train capacities to the
fluctuating demands of passengers. With an aggressive use of leading hardware, data
management and network technology, IR could successfully address the needs of the
passengers of unreserved trains.

A network covering 63, 140 route kms (as on March 31, 2002), the Indian
Railways traverse the length and breadth of the country. Even though the railways
have been divided into zones for better management and functionality, the railway
reservations or the process for booking train tickets is centrally computerised.
Operating 14,444 trains daily, the IRCTC or Indian Railway Catering and Tourism
Corporation Limited, ensures that train schedule and train timings remain prompt. In
effect, Indian Railways is the largest railway system in the world to be functioning
under a single management. .

The most cost efficient mode of transport, Indian Railways enjoy preference over
other public transport systems. Used extensively for passenger and freight transfer,
Indian Railways proves itself the forerunner in the transport sector as the most
affordable, convenient and well connected network. With thousands of railway
stations across the country, superior safety standards, lower environmental hazard and
relatively low train fare, Indian Railways is the first choice for transfer goods and
commodities .

88
 Network Applications
While the Indian Railway booking system has always been well organised, one
immensely crucial step has been the launch of the IRCTC website (IRCTC online rail
ticket reservation system is depicted in the following Figure 4), making all processes
related to Indian Railways a breeze. Besides allowing online booking of rail ticket (s),
it offers everything from railway map to railway ticket fare to timetable of train (s). A
complete railway enquiry system is in place, with a click of the mouse allowing one to
access / check the Indian Railways timetable, railway ticket availability and booking
for any sector besides complete online train ticket reservations. Visitors to the website
can use it not only for railway ticket reservation / booking but also to find out ticket
availability and ticket confirmation or PNR status for any ticket on any train within
the Indian Railways network

Figure 4: IRCTC online rail ticket reservation system

With various seating arrangements like AC 1 tier, AC 2 tier, AC 3 tier, AC Chair Car,
Sleeper and General in most long distance trains and another range of seat availability
in the metro trains within urban areas, the Indian Railways offers a plethora of
choices. Travellers can take their pick and enjoy the convenience and affordability of
this mode of transport.

The list of major Indian Railway Zones is as follows:

Central Indian Railways: This is the oldest of Indian railway zones and one of the
largest of the 16 zones formed by Indian railways.

Eastern Indian Railways: The Eastern Railway (ER) zone is one of the important
Indian Railway zones. With its headquarters in Kolkata, the Eastern Zone is divided
further into four divisions namely Mald, Howrah, Asansol and Sealdah for better
working.

Northern Indian Railways: It is one of the nine older zones of Indian Railways. New
Delhi, the national capital of India serves as headquarters of this Indian Railway Zone

Southern Indian Railways: This is the first zone formed after India got liberated

89
Network, Transport from British Rule. Southern Indian Railway Zone was established on April 14, 1951
and Application by combination of always of three states.
Layer
Western Indian Railways: This Indian railways zone is amongst the most hustling
and lively rail networks of the country. The headquarters of Western Indian Railway
is situated in Mumbai city.

Check Your Progress 1

1. Select the right choice.
a) Which of the following identifies a specific web page and its computer on
the Web?
A) Web site
B) Web site address
C) URL
D) Domain Name

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

b) What type of telecommunications hardware allows you to access the web?

A) Browser
B) Modem
C) FTP protocol
D) IRC

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

c) The mail server as defined in the text uses the __________ protocol.
A) HTTP
B) FTP
C) POP
D) SMTP

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2. Discuss standards of email protocol?

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

3. Write a note on social networking service?

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

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 Network Applications
4.5 INFORMATION SHARING
Information sharing describes “the exchange of data between various organizations,
people and technologies”.

There are several types of information sharing:

• Information shared by individuals (such as a video shared on Facebook or
YouTube).
• Information shared by organizations (such as the RSS feed of an online weather
report).
• Information shared between firmware/software (Such as the IP addresses of
available network nodes or the availability of disk space).
The advent of wide distributed networks, intranets, cross-platform compatibility,
application porting, and standardization of IP protocols have all facilitated the huge
growth in global information sharing.

When it comes to personal information however, no matter how easy it is to port the
actual data, there are laws in most countries prohibiting the sharing of personal data
without explicit permission being granted. In the US and Europe it is a criminal
offense to share any personal data about anyone without such explicit permission.
.

There is plenty of other information sharing that does not fall under the law and
information sharing is increasing as more networks and organizations connect and
information becomes easier to share across the internet.

Data was formerly frequently kept in silos and often not shared among other entities
due to its proprietary, non-portable format or the inability to import/export data. Even
simple items such as dates were stored in a whole range of different formats making
the sharing of such a simple field a potential nightmare. The same applied to a whole
range of data, and even if it was compatible it was often not possible to physically
transfer the data from one platform to another. .

Today these problems have all been coded out and information sharing is common
between computer networks; information sharing has become especially prevalent due
to social networking. These 21st century network models actively encourage the
sharing of information across social networks.

Facebook has 750 million accounts, YouTube has over 400 million and the other
social networking sites and applications have established between them a sharing
network of over a billion people. In terms of information sharing this is a global
proportion with almost 10% of the world's population sharing information across
common networks regularly. .

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, information sharing became one of the
United States government's goals in developing their resources to try to avert such
atrocities. It was mandated among government agencies and departments that
personnel create a methodology for regularly sharing relevant information. The US
needed information sharing improvements to respond to various threats more
effectively. The lesson was learned that when information is hoarded instead of
shared, those needing it may not be able to react in a timely manner Using information
sharing intelligently has been shown to be a more effective way to manage any
organization; a government or a business. .

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Network, Transport Information sharing is crucial to many businesses, helping to promptly meet customer
and Application and client needs through customer relationship systems which share information about
Layer products and services and improve access to their customers. .

Information sharing has also allowed easy availability of credit history details which
helps consumers access more services. Consumers can have access to banking,
financial and credit products from across the nation and even internationally where
appropriate. .

Hospitals sharing medical records (under stringent conditions) about people so that
their medical personnel can make better decisions, is a good example of how
organizations can share information for productive purposes rather than for social
entertainment as with Facebook. .

Overall, when used intelligently, information sharing is a useful way of lowering

costs, improving overall accuracy of public data and allowing organizations and
individuals alike to have access to information that they might need and entertainment
that they want to experience.

4.6 ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE

It is the use of a range of modern Information and Communication Technologies such
as Internet, Local Area Networks, mobiles etc. by Government to improve the
effectiveness, efficiency, service delivery and to promote democracy. E-Government
can transform citizen service, provide access to information to empower citizens,
enable their participation in government and enhance citizen economic and social
opportunities, so that they can make better lives, for themselves and for the next
generation. Governments are specialized institutions that contribute to governance.
Representative governments seek and receive citizen support, but they also need the
active cooperation of their public servants. Governance is the outcome of politics,
policies, and programs.

The primary delivery models of e-Government can be divided into:

• Government-to-Citizen or Government-to-Consumer (G2C)
• Government-to-Business (G2B)
• Government-to-Government (G2G)
• Government-to-Employees (G2E)
Within each of these interaction domains, five kinds of activities take place:
1. Informing the citizen
2. Representing the citizen
3. Encouraging the citizen to vote
4. Consulting the citizen
5. Involving the citizen
The ultimate goal of the E-Government is to be able to offer an increased portfolio of
public services to citizens in an efficient and cost effective manner. E-government
allows for government transparency. Government transparency is important because it
allows the public to be informed about what the government is working on as well as
the policies they are trying to implement. Simple tasks may be easier to perform
through electronic government access. Many changes, such as marital status or
address changes can be a long process and take a lot of paper work for citizens. E-
government allows these tasks to be performed efficiently with more convenience to

92
individuals. E-government is an easy way for the public to be more involved in Network Applications
political campaigns. It could increase voter awareness, which could lead to an
increase in citizen participation in elections. It is convenient and cost-effective for
businesses, and the public benefits by getting easy access to the most current
information available without having to spend time, energy and money to get it.

E-government helps simplify processes and makes access to government information

more easily accessible for public sector agencies and citizens. In addition to its
simplicity, e-democracy services can reduce costs. The anticipated benefits of e-
government include efficiency, improved services, better accessibility of public
services, and more transparency and accountability. One goal of e-government will be
greater citizen participation. Through the internet, people from all over the country
can interact with politicians or public servants and make their voices
heard. Blogging and interactive surveys will allow politicians or public servants to see
the views of the people they represent on any given issue. Chat rooms can place
citizens in real-time contact with elected officials, their offices or provide them with
the means to replace them by interacting directly with public servants, allowing voters
to have a direct impact and influence in their government. These technologies can
create a more transparent government, allowing voters to immediately see how and
why their representation in the capital is voting the way they are. This helps voters
better decide who to vote for in the future or how to help the public servants become
more productive. A government could theoretically move more towards a
true democracy with the proper application of e-government. Government
transparency will give insight to the public on how decisions are made and hold
elected officials or public servants accountable for their actions. The public could
become a direct and prominent influence in government legislature to some degree.

Characteristics of E-Governance
E-government allows citizens to interact with computers to achieve objectives at any
time and any location, and eliminates the necessity for physical travel to government
agents sitting behind desks and windows. Improved accounting and record keeping
can be noted through computerization, and information and forms can be easily
accessed, equaling quicker processing time. A network architecture of E-governance
is shown in the Figure 5 given blow. It shows the different parties and agencies of
governance can be connected using different networks devices and Internet.

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Network, Transport
and Application
Layer

Figure 5: Network Architecture of E-Governance. Source: http://www.mapit.gov.in

On the administrative side, access to help find or retrieve files and linked information
can now be stored in databases versus hardcopies stored in various locations.
Individuals with disabilities or conditions no longer have to be mobile to be active in
government and can be in the comfort of their own homes.

The primary delivery models of e-Government are classified depending on who

benefits. In the development of public sector or private sector portals and platforms, a
system is created that benefits all constituents. Citizens needing to renew their vehicle
registration have a convenient way to accomplish it while already engaged in meeting
the regulatory inspection requirement. On behalf of a government partner, business
provides what has traditionally, and solely, managed by government and can use this
service to generate profit or attract new customers. Government agencies are relieved
of the cost and complexity of having to process the transactions.
To develop these public sector portals or platforms, governments have the choice to
internally develop and manage, outsource, or sign a self-funding contract. The self-
funding model creates portals that pay for themselves through convenience fees for
certain e-government transactions, known as self-funding portals.

Social networking is an emerging area for e-democracy. The social networking entry
point is within the citizens’ environment and the engagement is on the citizens’ terms.
Proponents of e-government perceive government use of social networks as a medium
to help government act more like the public it serves. Examples can be found at
almost every state government portal through Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube widgets. Government and its agents also have the opportunity to follow
citizens to monitor satisfaction with services they receive. Through ListServs, RSS
feeds, mobile messaging, micro-blogging services and blogs, government and its
agencies can share information to citizens who share common interests and concerns.
Government is also beginning to Twitter.

E-Government Forum

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Since electronic government is new to everyone throughout the world, why couldn’t Network Applications
an international matching system be developed so that anyone around the world can
search by government function (e.g., Chief Information Officer); role (e.g., state or
federal Department of Transportation); city, state, or country; type of technology used
in development of the e-government system; sharing of best practices; licensing or
buying existing software or platforms from the agency concerned; collaborating in the
integrated development of a vertical (statewide) or horizontal (national or
international) systems; or exchanging ideas. Theoretically, ALL government
employees in the United States or throughout the world could be included. This could
be easily achieved using modern technology and foster greater peace and
understanding. Almost like an online Peace Corps.

Check Your Progress 2

1. Select the right choice.
a) Why do we store information? To refer to it:
(A) When a decision is to be made or to confirm a fact.
(B) If the original data is lost or corrupted.
(C) Analyze to make some interpretation, explanation or resolution
with it.
(D) Distribute for further use
(E) All of the above.

…………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………

b) Most of the electronic payment systems on internet use ________ to

ensure confidentiality and security of the payment information.
(A) Quantum Computing
(B) Cryptography
(C) Both (A) & (B)
(D) None of the above

…………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………

c) An electronic check book device is a combination of

(A) Hardware and a digital signature
(B) Software and information about user
(C) Secure hardware and software
(D) None of the above

…………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………

2. Discuss the Goal’s of e-government?

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

3. Write a note on social networking service?

……………………………………………………………………………………

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Network, Transport ……………………………………………………………………………………
and Application
Layer ……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

4.7 ONLINE PROCESSING AND COLLABORATIONS

The terms "online" and "offline" (also stylized as "on-line" and "off-line") have
specific meanings in regard to computer technology and telecommunications. In
general, "online" indicates a state of connectivity, while "offline" indicates a
disconnected state. In common usage, "online" often refers to the Internet or
the World Wide Web.

The concepts have however been extended from their computing and
telecommunication meanings into the area of human interaction and conversation,
such that even offline can be used in contrast to the common usage of online. For
example, discussions taking place during a business meeting are "online", while issues
that do not concern all participants of the meeting should be "taken offline" —
continued outside of the meeting.

To be considered online, one of the following must apply to a device:

• Under the direct control of another device
• Under the direct control of the system with which it is associated
• Available for immediate use on demand by the system without human
intervention
• Connected to a system, and is in operation
• Functional and ready for service
In contrast, a device that is offline meets none of these criteria (e.g., its main power
source is disconnected or turned off, or it is off-power).

An online system is differs from an offline system in that templates are employed
whenever the user inserts content into a web page for publication. These templates
area said to be ‘on demand’ in that they are applied as per the user’s requirements.

Content is stored in a database which is a mandatory requirement, especially if the

user wishes to view, amend or upgrade that content.
Template processing takes place as and when requested compared to offline
systems which pre-process all of their content and apply their templates beforehand.

One advantage of an online processing is its extensibility which means greater

functionality in the form of add-on’s such as image galleries, forum, wikis and blogs.
This scalability is an important feature of these types of CMS.
Other advantages include:
• The user views content in real-time (published)
• The user is only shown relevant content, e.g. content which is out of date is
withdrawn once it has reached it’s ‘sell by date’.
• The content can be accessed by multiple authors/editors in a variety of
locations.
• Content can be maintained from any location which has internet access.

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The downsides to this type of system include a slowing down of performance due to Network Applications
the fact that every time a user views a page, that page is retrieved from the database
which slows down the processing speed exponentially.

This system requires a fast connection and an up to date browser especially in regard
to content creation. Both of these are improving all the time but performance speeds
are quicker on a local computer as used for an offline system.

Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where

two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, (this is
more than the intersection of common goals seen in co-operative ventures, but a deep,
collective, determination to reach an identical objective. Most collaboration
requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within
a decentralized and egalitarian group. In particular, teams that work collaboratively
can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for
finite resources. Collaboration is also present in opposing goals exhibiting the notion
of adversarial collaboration, though this is not a common case for using the word.
Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and
communication. These methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as
they engage in collaborative problem solving. Forms, rubrics, charts and graphs are
useful in these situations to objectively document personal traits with the goal of
improving performance in current and future projects.

Types of Collaborations:

Project management
Project Management developed from different fields of application including
construction, engineering, and defense.

Learning community
A learning community is a group of people who share common emotions, values or
beliefs, are actively engaged in learning together from each other, and by habituation.
Such communities have become the template for a cohort-
based, interdisciplinary approach to higher education. This may be based on an
advanced kind of educational or 'pedagogical' design. the participants of learning
community must feel some sense of loyalty and belonging to the group (membership)
that drive their desire to keep working and helping others, also the things that the
participant do in must affect what happened in the community, that means, an active
and not just a reactive performance (influence). Besides a learning community must
give the chance to the participants to meet particular needs (fulfillment) by expressing
personal opinions, asking for help or specific information and share stories of events
with particular issue included (emotional connections) emotional experiences.

Business
Collaboration in business can be found both inter- and intra-organization and ranges
from the simplicity of a partnership and crowd funding to the complexity of
a multinational corporation. Collaboration between team members allows for better
communication within the organization and throughout the supply chains. It is a way
of coordinating different ideas from numerous people to generate a wide variety of
knowledge. Collaboration with a selected few firms as opposed to collaboration with
a large number of different firms have been shown to positively impact firm
performance and innovation outcomes. The recent improvement in technology has
provided the world with high speed internet, wireless connection, and web-based
collaboration tools like blogs, and wikis, and has as such created a "mass
collaboration." People from all over the world are efficiently able to communicate and

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Network, Transport share ideas through the internet, or even conferences, without any geographical
and Application barriers. The power of social networks it beginning to permeate into business culture
Layer where many collaborative use are being found including file sharing and knowledge
transfer.

Education
Generally defined, an Educational Collaborative Partnership is ongoing involvement
between schools and business/industry, unions, governments and community organiza
tions. Educational Collaborative Partnerships are established by mutual agreement
between two or more parties to work together on projects and activities that will
enhance the quality of education for students while improving skills critical to success
in the workplace.

Collaboration in Education- two or more co-equal individual voluntarily brings their

knowledge and experience together by interacting toward a common goal in the best
interest of students for the betterment of their education success. Students achieve
team building and communication skills meeting many curricular standards. Students
have the ability to practice real-world communication experiences. Students gain
leadership through collaboration and empower peer to peer learning.

Technology
Due to the complexity of today's business environment, collaboration in technology
encompasses a broad range of tools that enable groups of people to work together
including social networking, instant messaging, team spaces, web sharing, audio
conferencing, video, and telephony. Broadly defined, any technology that facilitates
linking of two or more humans to work together can be considered a collaborative
tool. Wikipedia, Blogs, even Twitter are collaborative tools. Many large companies
are developing enterprise collaboration strategies and standardizing on a collaboration
platform to allow their employees, customers and partners to intelligently connect and
interact.

4.8 MOBILE APPLICATIONS

A mobile application (or mobile app) is a software application designed to run
on smart phones, tablet computers and other mobile devices. They are available
through application distribution platforms, which are typically operated by the owner
of the mobile operating system, such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows
Phone Marketplace and BlackBerry App World. Some apps are free, while others
have a price. Usually, they are downloaded from the platform to a target device, such
as an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android phone or Windows Phone 7, but sometimes they
can be downloaded to less mobile computers, such as laptops or desktops. For apps
with a price, generally a percentage, 20-30%, goes to the distribution provider (such
as iTunes), and the rest goes to the producer of the app.

The popularity of mobile applications has continued to rise, as their usage has become
increasingly prevalent across mobile phone users.

For mobile applications, the fixed telephone system is not suitable. Mobile phones are
currently in widespread use for voice and will soon be in widespread use for data. The
first generation was analog, dominated by AMPS. The second generation was digital,
with D-AMPS, GSM, and CDMA the major options. The third generation will be
digital and based on broadband CDMA.

An alternative system for network access is the cable television system, which has
gradually evolved from a community antenna to hybrid fiber coax. Potentially, it

98
offers very high bandwidth, but the actual bandwidth available in practice depends Network Applications
heavily on the number of other users currently active and what they are doing.

Mobile apps were originally offered for general productivity and information
retrieval, including email, calendar, contacts, and stock market and weather
information. However, public demand and the availability of developer tools drove
rapid expansion into other categories, such as mobile games, factory
automation, GPS and location-based services, banking, order-tracking, and ticket
purchases. The explosion in number and variety of apps made discovery a challenge,
which in turn led to the creation of a wide range of review, recommendation, and
curation sources, including blogs, magazines, and dedicated online app-discovery
services.

Mobile Apps are apps or services that can be pushed to a mobile device or
downloaded and installed locally.

Classification of Mobil Apps:

• Browser-based: apps/services developed in a markup language
• Native: compiled applications (device has a runtime environment). Interactive
apps such as downloadable games.
• Hybrid: the best of both worlds (a browser is needed for discovery)
Mobile application development is the process by which application
software is developed for low-power handheld devices, such as personal digital
assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones. These applications can
be pre-installed on phones during manufacture, downloaded by customers from
various mobile software distribution platforms, or delivered as web applications using
server-side or client-side processing (e.g. JavaScript) to provide an "application-like"
experience within a Web browser.

Check Your Progress 3

1. Select the right choice.
a) What do the letters GSM currently mean?
(A) Global Special Mobile
(B) Greater System's Mobile
(C) Global Systems for Mobile Communications
(D) None of the above!

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
b) How is this problem solved in analogue cellular network?
(I) Base Station continuously transmits the Mobile Identification
Number (MIN) and received by the mobile phone.
(II) Mobile phone continuously transmits the Signal Audio Tone
(SAT) and received by the base station.
(III) Overall size of the cluster is increased
(IV) Increasing the bandwidth allocated to each user.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
c) Why does GSM use TDMA, as opposed to CDMA?

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Network, Transport (I) When GSM was planned, CDMA was not approved as a multiple
and Application access system.
Layer (II) TDMA is better than CDMA.
(III) CDMA is not really needed in Europe.
(IV) CDMA is too expensive to implement.
(A) I and III
(B) I only
(C) II and III
(D) I and IV

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

2. What is collaboration? Discuss in detail.

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

3. Discuss the advantages of Mobile applications?

……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………

4.9 SUMMARY
This completes our discussion on the introductory concepts of Network Applications.
The internet architecture discussed in the unit, we have also discussed WWW and
email formats in detail. The information given on various topics such as Information
Sharing, Railway Reservation System, E-Governance, Social Networking, Online
Processing etc. We have also includes the discussions based on latest trends and
technology used for the internet applications (Mobile Applications) which helps the
reads to keep your knowledge up to date. In addition to further readings and test their
skills question answer sessions are included at the end of each sections. In the next
block of this course, you will learn fundamental details for setting up a small local
area network including wired and wireless setup. Next block will also cover the
foundational details of network security protocols and wireless networking.

4.10 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING

1. Introduction to Data Communication & Networking, 3rd Edition, Behrouz
Forouzan, Tata McGraw Hill.
2. Computer Networks, A. S. Tanenbaum 4th Edition, Practice Hall of India, New
Delhi. 2003.

100
3. Douglas E. Comer, Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols, and Network Applications
Architecture (4th Edition).

4. James F. Kurose, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the

Internet (3rd Edition).

5. Larry L. Peterson, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, 3rd Edition (The

Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking).

6. www.wikipedia.org

7. W. Richard Stevens, The Protocols (TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1).

8. William Stallings, Data and Computer Communications, Seventh Edition.

4.11 SOLUTIONS/ANSWERS

Check Your Progress 1

1. a) (D)
b) (B)
c) (C)

2. The main standards that relate to the protocols of email transmission and
reception are:
i) Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) - which is used with the TCP/IP
protocol suite? It has traditionally been limited to the text based
electronic messages.
ii) Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) - Which allows the
transmission and reception of mail that contains various types of data,
such as speech, images, and motion video? It is a newer standard than
STMP and uses much of its basic protocol.
iii) S/MIME (Secure MIME). RSA Data security created S/MIME which
supports encrypted e-mail transfer and digitally signed electronic mail.

3. A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses

on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people
who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life
connections. A social network service consists of a representation of each user
(often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most
social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact
over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Online
community services are sometimes considered as a social network service,
though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-
centered service where as online community services are group-centered. Social
networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests
within their individual networks.

Check Your Progress 2

1. a) (D)
b) (B)
c) (B)

2. Goal’s of e-government

101
Network, Transport One goal of e-government will be greater citizen participation. Through the
and Application internet, people from all over the country can interact with politicians or public
Layer servants and make their voices heard. Blogging and interactive surveys will
allow politicians or public servants to see the views of the people they represent
on any given issue. Chat rooms can place citizens in real-time contact with
elected officials, their offices or provide them with the means to replace them
by interacting directly with public servants, allowing voters to have a direct
impact and influence in their government. These technologies can create a more
transparent government, allowing voters to immediately see how and why their
representation in the capital is voting the way they are. This helps voters better
decide who to vote for in the future or how to help the public servants become
more productive. A government could theoretically move more towards a
true democracy with the proper application of e-government.

3. A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses

on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people
who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life
connections. A social network service consists of a representation of each user
(often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most
social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact
over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Online
community services are sometimes considered as a social network service,
though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-
centered service where as online community services are group-centered. Social
networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests
within their individual networks.

Check Your Progress 3

1. a) (C)
b) (D)
c) (A)

2. Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process

where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared
goals, (this is more than the intersection of common goals seen in co-operative
ventures, but a deep, collective, determination to reach an identical objective.
Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be
social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. In particular, teams that
work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when
facing competition for finite resources. Collaboration is also present in
opposing goals exhibiting the notion of adversarial collaboration, though this is
not a common case for using the word. Structured methods of collaboration
encourage introspection of behavior and communication. These
methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in
collaborative problem solving. Forms, rubrics, charts and graphs are useful in
these situations to objectively document personal traits with the goal of
improving performance in current and future projects.

3. Mobile Apps are internet applications designed to run on smartphones and other
mobile devices. mobile applications help users by connecting them to Internet
services more commonly accessed on desktop or notebook computers. While
opportunities abound, we have identified three advantages of using mobile apps
for your business: speed, volume of information, and advertising.

102