Unit 5: Transport Layer

Part A: Introduction
• The transport layer is an end-to-end layer – this means that nodes within the subnet do not
participate in transport layer protocols – only the end hosts.
• As with other layers, transport layer protocols send data as a sequence of packets (segments).
• The transport layer is responsible for process-to process delivery—the delivery of a packet, part
of a message, from one process to another.
Introduction
Introduction
• The network layer provides communication between two hosts.
• The transport layer provides communication between two processes running on different
hosts.
• A process is an instance of a program that is running on a host.
• Example: There may be multiple processes communicating between two hosts – for example,
there could be a FTP session and a Telnet session between the same two hosts.
Transport Layer Services
• Process to Process delivery
• Multiplexing/Demultiplexing
• Connectionless/Connection-oriented service
• Reliability
Process to Process delivery: Port Addresses

Client/Server Paradigm: Addressing

• A process on the local host, called a client, needs services from a process usually on the remote
host, called a server.
• At the transport layer, we need a transport layer address, called a port number, to choose among
multiple processes running on the destination host. The destination port number is needed for
delivery; the source port number is needed for the reply.
• In the Internet model, the port numbers are 16-bit integers between 0 and 65,535. The client
program defines itself with a port number, chosen randomly by the transport layer software
running on the client host. This is the ephemeral port number.
• The Internet has decided to use universal port numbers for servers; these are called well-known
port numbers.
Port Addresses
IANA Ranges: Port Addresses
IANA Ranges :The IANA (Internet Assigned Number Authority) has divided the port numbers
into three ranges:
• Well-known ports. The ports ranging from 0 to 1023 are assigned and controlled by lANA.
These are the well-known ports.
• Registered ports. The ports ranging from 1024 to 49,151 are not assigned or controlled by
IANA. They can only be registered with IANA to prevent duplication.
• Dynamic ports. The ports ranging from 49,152 to 65,535 are neither controlled nor registered.
They can be used by any process. These are the ephemeral ports.
IANA Ranges: Port Addresses
Process to Process delivery: Socket Addresses
• Process-to-process delivery needs two identifiers, IP address and the port number, at each end
to make a connection. The combination of an IP address and a port number is called a socket
address.
Multiplexing and Demultiplexing
Multiplexing:
• At the sender site, there may be several processes that need to send packets. However, there is
only one transport layer protocol at any time. This is a many-to-one relationship and requires
multiplexing.
• The protocol accepts messages from different processes, differentiated by their assigned port
numbers. After adding the header, the transport layer passes the packet to the network layer.
Demultiplexing:
• At the receiver site, the relationship is one-to-many and requires demultiplexing.
• The transport layer receives datagrams from the network layer. After error checking and
dropping of the header, the transport layer delivers each message to the appropriate process
based on the port number.
Multiplexing and Demultiplexing
Connectionless Versus Connection-Oriented Service
Connectionless Service:
• In a connectionless service, the packets are sent from one party to another with no need for
connection establishment or connection release.
• The packets are not numbered; they may be delayed or lost or may arrive out of sequence.
There is no acknowledgment either.
• Example: UDP.
Connection-Oriented Service:
• In a connection-oriented service, a connection is first established between the sender and the
receiver. Data are transferred. At the end, the connection is released.
• Example: TCP and SCTP
Reliable Versus Unreliable
• If the application layer program needs reliability, we use a reliable transport layer protocol by
implementing flow and error control at the transport layer.
• UDP is connectionless and unreliable; TCP and SCTP are connection-oriented and reliable.
• If the data link layer is reliable and has flow and error control, do we need this at the transport
layer, too? The answer is yes. Reliability at the data link layer is between two nodes; we need
reliability between two ends.
Reliable Versus Unreliable
NETWORK LAYER PROTOCOLS:

User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

• The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is called a connectionless, unreliable transport protocol.
• It does not add anything to the services of IP except to provide process-to process
communication instead of host-to-host communication.
• UDP is a very simple protocol using a minimum overhead.
• If a process wants to send a small message and does not care much about reliability, it can use
UDP.
User Datagram Format/UDP Packet
User Datagram Format /UDP Packet
UDP packets, called user datagrams, have a fixed-size header of 8 bytes. The various fields are as
follows:
• Source port number. This is the port number used by the process running on the source host. It
is 16 bits long, which means that the port number can range from 0 to 65,535.
• Destination port number. This is the port number used by the process running on the destination
host. It is also 16 bits long.
• Length. This is a 16-bit field that defines the total length of the user datagram, header plus data.
• Checksum. This field is used to detect errors over the entire user datagram (header plus data).
UDP Operation
• Connectionless Services: UDP provides a connectionless service. This means that each user
datagram sent by UDP is an independent datagram.
• Flow and Error Control:
➢ There is no flow control and hence no window mechanism. The receiver may overflow with incoming
messages.
➢ There is no error control mechanism in UDP except for the checksum. This means that the sender does
not know if a message has been lost or duplicated. When the receiver detects an error through the
checksum, the user datagram is silently discarded.

• Encapsulation and Decapsulation: To send a message from one process to another, the UDP
protocol encapsulates and decapsulates messages in an IP datagram
• Queuing: In UDP, queues are associated with ports
Queuing in UDP
Use of UDP
UDP is suitable for
• a process that requires simple request-response communication with little concern for flow and
error control.
• a process with internal flow and error control mechanisms. For example, the Trivial File
Transfer Protocol (TFTP) process includes flow and error control.
• multicasting.
• management processes such as SNMP.
• route updating protocols such as Routing Information Protocol (RIP).

Example: Online Gaming, Video Streaming, Voice-over-IP (VoIP), etc

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)

• TCP is called a connection-oriented, reliable transport protocol. It adds connection-oriented and

reliability features to the services of IP.
TCP Services

• Process-to-Process Communication: TCP provides process-to-process communication using

port numbers. Some well-known port numbers used by TCP are
TCP Services
• Stream Delivery Service: TCP allows the sending process to deliver data as a stream of bytes
and allows the receiving process to obtain data as a stream of bytes, like an imaginary tube.
TCP Services
• Sending and Receiving Buffers:

➢ Because the sending and the receiving processes may not write or read data at the same speed,
TCP needs buffers for storage.
➢ There are two buffers, the sending buffer and the receiving buffer, one for each direction.
➢ One way to implement a buffer is to use a circular array of 1-byte locations as shown in Fig.
TCP Services
TCP Services
• Segments: TCP groups a number of bytes together into a packet called a segment. TCP adds a
header to each segment (for control purposes) and delivers the segment to the IP layer for
transmission.
• Full-Duplex Communication: TCP offers full-duplex service, in which data can flow in both
directions at the same time.
• Connection-Oriented Service: TCP establishes a virtual connection between the two devices
that need to communicate with each other.
• Reliable Service: TCP is a reliable transport protocol. It uses an acknowledgment mechanism
to check the safe and sound arrival of data.
TCP Features
To provide the services discussed, TCP has several feature:
• Numbering System:
➢ Byte Number:
◦ TCP numbers all data bytes that are transmitted in a connection. Numbering is independent in
each direction.
◦ TCP generates a random number between 0 and 232 − 1 for the number of the first byte.
◦ For example, if the random number happens to be 1057 and the total data to be sent are 6000
bytes, the bytes are numbered from 1057 to 7056.
➢ Sequence Number:
◦ TCP assigns a sequence number to each segment that is being sent.
◦ The sequence number for each segment is the number of the first byte carried in that segment
TCP Features
Example: Suppose a TCP connection is transferring a file of 5000 bytes. The first byte is
numbered 1000l. What are the sequence numbers for each segment if data are sent in five
segments, each carrying 1000 bytes?
Sol:
TCP Features
➢ Acknowledgement Number:
◦ The value of the acknowledgment field in a segment defines the number of the next byte a party
expects to receive.
◦ The acknowledgment number is cumulative, which means that the party takes the number of the last
byte that it has received, safe and sound, adds 1 to it, and announces this sum as the acknowledgment
number.
◦ Example: A party announces 5643 as an acknowledgment number, it has received all bytes from the
beginning up to 5642

• Flow Control: In TCP, the receiver of the data controls the amount of data that are to be sent by
the sender. This is done to prevent the receiver from being overwhelmed with data.
• Error Control: To provide reliable service, TCP implements an error control mechanism.
• Congestion Control
TCP Segment Format
TCP Segment Format
The segment consists of a 20- to 60-byte header, followed by data from the application program.
The header is 20 bytes if there are no options and up to 60 bytes if it contains options.
• Source port address: This is a 16-bit field that defines the port number of the application
program in the host that is sending the segment.
• Destination port address: This is a 16-bit field that defines the port number of the application
program in the host that is receiving the segment.
• Sequence number: This 32-bit field defines the number assigned to the first byte of data
contained in this segment.
• Acknowledgment number: This 32-bit field defines the byte number that the receiver of the
segment is expecting to receive from the other party
TCP Segment Format
• Header length: This 4-bit field indicates the number of 4-byte words in the TCP header.
➢ The length of the header can be between 20 and 60 bytes.
➢ Therefore, the value of this field can be between 5 (5 x 4 =20) and 15 (15 x 4 =60).

• Reserved: This is a 6-bit field reserved for future use.

• Control bits: This field defines 6 different control bits or flags as shown in Figure. One or more
of these bits can be set at a time.
TCP Segment Format
• Control Bits: These bits enable flow control, connection establishment and termination,
connection abortion, and the mode of data transfer in TCP.
TCP Segment Format
• Window size: This field defines the size of the window, in bytes, that the other party must
maintain. Note that the length of this field is 16 bits, which means that the maximum size of the
window is 65,535 bytes.
• Checksum: This 16-bit field contains the checksum.
• Urgent pointer: This l6-bit field, which is valid only if the urgent flag is set, is used when the
segment contains urgent data.
• Options: There can be up to 40 bytes of optional information in the TCP header.
TCP Connection
• Using a single virtual pathway for the entire message facilitates the acknowledgment process as
well as retransmission of damaged or lost frames.
• TCP uses the services of IP to deliver individual segments to the receiver, but it controls the
connection itself. If a segment is lost or corrupted, it is retransmitted.
• If a segment arrives out of order, TCP holds it until the missing segments arrive; IP is unaware
of this reordering and retransmission.
• In TCP, connection-oriented transmission requires three phases:
➢ connection establishment,
➢ data transfer, and
➢ connection termination.
Connection Establishment: Three-Way Handshaking
• The connection establishment in TCP is called three-way handshaking.
• In our example, an application program, called the client, wants to make a connection with
another application program, called the server, using TCP as the transport layer protocol.
• The server program tells its TCP that it is ready to accept a connection. This is called a request
for a passive open.
• The client program issues a request for an active open. A client that wishes to connect to an
open server tells its TCP that it needs to be connected to that particular server.
• TCP can now start the three-way handshaking process as shown in Figure.
Connection Establishment: Three-Way Handshaking
Connection Establishment: Three-Way Handshaking
The three steps in this phase are as follows:
• The client sends the first segment, a SYN segment, in which only the SYN flag is set. This
segment is for synchronization of sequence numbers.

• The server sends the second segment, a SYN + ACK segment, with 2 flag bits set: SYN and
ACK. This segment has a dual purpose. It is a SYN segment for communication in the other
direction and serves as the acknowledgment for the SYN segment.
Connection Establishment: Three-Way Handshaking
• The client sends the third segment. This is just an ACK segment. It acknowledges the receipt of
the second segment with the ACK flag and acknowledgment number field.
Data Transfer
• After connection is established, bidirectional data transfer can take place.
• The client and server can both send data and acknowledgments.
• Data traveling in the same direction as an acknowledgment are carried on the same segment.
The acknowledgment is piggybacked with the data.
Data Transfer
Data Transfer
• In this example, after connection is established, the client sends 2000 bytes of data in two
segments.
• The server then sends 2000 bytes in one segment.
• The client sends one more segment.
• The first three segments carry both data and acknowledgment, but the last segment carries only
an acknowledgment because there are no more data to be sent.
• The data segments sent by the client have the PSH (push) flag set so that the server TCP knows
to deliver data to the server process as soon as they are received.
Data Transfer
• Pushing Data:
➢ The application program at the sending site can request a push operation. This means that the sending
TCP must not wait for the window to be filled. It must create a segment and send it immediately.
➢ The sending TCP must set the push bit (PSH) to let the receiving TCP know that the segment includes
data that must be delivered to the receiving application program as soon as possible and not to wait for
more data to come.

• Urgent Data:
➢ TCP is a stream-oriented protocol. Each byte of data has a position in the stream. However, on occasion
an application program needs to send urgent bytes.
➢ The solution is to send a segment with the URG bit set. The sending application program tells the
sending TCP that the piece of data is urgent.
➢ The urgent pointer field in the header defines the end of the urgent data and the start of normal data.
Connection Termination
• Any of the two parties involved in exchanging data (client or server) can close the connection,
although it is usually initiated by the client.
• Most implementations today allow two options for connection termination:
➢ three-way handshaking and
➢ four-way handshaking with a half-close option.
Connection Termination: Three-Way Handshaking:

• In a normal situation, the client TCP, after receiving a close command from the client process,
sends the first segment, a FIN segment in which the FIN flag is set.
➢ The FIN segment consumes one sequence number if it does not carry data.

• The server TCP, after receiving the FIN segment, informs its process of the situation and sends
the second segment, a FIN + ACK segment, to confirm the receipt of the FIN segment from the
client and at the same time to announce the closing of the connection in the other direction.
➢ The FIN +ACK segment consumes one sequence number if it does not carry data.

• The client TCP sends the last segment, an ACK segment, to confirm the receipt of the FIN
segment from the TCP server.
➢ This segment cannot carry data and consumes no sequence numbers.
Connection Termination: Three-Way Handshaking
Connection Termination: Half-Close
• In TCP, one end can stop sending data while still receiving data. This is called a half-close.
Although either end can issue a half-close, it is normally initiated by the client.
• Figure shows an example of a half-close. The client half-closes the connection by sending a
FIN segment.
• The server accepts the half-close by sending the ACK segment.
• The data transfer from the client to the server stops. The server, however, can still send data.
• When the server has sent all the processed data, it sends a FIN segment, which is
acknowledged by an ACK from the client.
Connection Termination: Half-Close
TCP Sliding Window: Flow Control
• TCP uses a sliding window to handle flow control.
• The sliding window protocol used by TCP is something between the Go-Back-N and Selective
Repeat sliding window:
➢ The sliding window protocol in TCP looks like the Go-Back-N protocol because it does not use NACKs
➢ It looks like Selective Repeat because the receiver holds the out-of-order segments until the missing
ones arrive.
TCP Sliding Window: Flow Control
• Figure shows the sliding window in TCP.
• The window spans a portion of the buffer containing bytes received from the process.
• The bytes inside the window are the bytes that can be in transit; they can be sent without
worrying about acknowledgment.
• The imaginary window has two walls: one left and one right.
TCP Sliding Window: Flow Control
TCP Sliding Window: Flow Control
• The window is opened, closed, or shrunk. These three activities are in the control of the
receiver.
• Opening a window means moving the right wall to the right. This allows more new bytes in the
buffer that are eligible for sending.
• Closing the window means moving the left wall to the right. This means that some bytes have
been acknowledged, and the sender need not worry about them anymore.
• Shrinking the window means moving the right wall to the left.
TCP Sliding Window: Flow Control
• The size of the window at one end is determined by the lesser of two values: receiver window
(rwnd) or congestion window (cwnd).
• The receiver window is the number of bytes the other end can accept before its buffer
overflows and data are discarded.
• The congestion window is a value determined by the network to avoid congestion.
TCP Sliding Window: Flow Control
TCP Sliding Window: Flow Control
TCP Sliding Window: Flow Control
TCP Sliding Window: Flow Control
TCP: Error Control
• Error control includes mechanisms for detecting corrupted segments, lost segments, out-of-
order segments, and duplicated segments.
• Error control also includes a mechanism for correcting errors after they are detected.
• Error detection and correction in TCP is achieved through the use of three simple tools:
checksum, acknowledgment, and time-out
TCP: Error Control
• Checksum: Each segment includes a checksum field which is used to check for a corrupted
segment. If the segment is corrupted, it is discarded by the destination TCP and is considered as
lost.

• Acknowledgment: TCP uses acknowledgments to confirm the receipt of data segments.

➢ Control segments that carry no data but consume a sequence number are also acknowledged.
➢ ACK segments are never acknowledged.
TCP: Error Control
Retransmission:
• When a segment is corrupted, lost, or delayed, it is retransmitted.
➢ In modern implementations, a retransmission occurs if the retransmission timer expires or three
duplicate ACK segments have arrived.
➢ No retransmission timer is set for an ACK segment.
TCP: Error Control
Retransmission after RTO:
• A recent implementation of TCP maintains one retransmission time-out (RTO) timer for all
outstanding segments.
• The value of RTO is dynamic in TCP and is updated based on the round-trip time (RTT) of
segments.
• If Ack is not received within RTO, the segment is retransmitted.
Retransmission after three duplicate ACK segments:
• Data may arrive out of order and be temporarily stored by the receiving TCP, but TCP
guarantees that no out-of-order segment is delivered to the process.
• To alleviate this situation, most implementations today follow the three-duplicate-ACKs rule
and retransmit the missing segment immediately
Normal Operation
• The first scenario shows bidirectional data transfer between two systems.
• When the client receives the first segment from the server, it does not have any more data to
send, it sends only an ACK segment.
• However, the acknowledgment needs to be delayed for 500 ms to see if any more segments
arrive.
• When the timer matures, it triggers an acknowledgment. This is so because the client has no
knowledge if other segments are coming; it cannot delay the acknowledgment forever.
Normal Operation
Lost Segment
• In this scenario, the sender sends segments 1 and 2, which are acknowledged immediately by
an ACK.
• Segment 3, however, is lost. The receiver receives segment 4, which is out of order.
• The receiver stores the data in the segment in its buffer but leaves a gap to indicate that there is
no continuity in the data.
• The receiver immediately sends an acknowledgment to the sender, displaying the next byte it
expects.
• Note that the receiver stores bytes 801 to 900 but never delivers these bytes to the application
until the gap is filled.
• When the timer matures, the sending TCP resends segment 3, which arrives this time and is
acknowledged properly
Lost Segment
Fast Retransmission
• When the receiver receives the fourth, fifth, and sixth segments, it triggers an acknowledgment.
• The sender receives four acknowledgments with the same value (three duplicates). Although
the timer for segment 3 has not matured yet, the fast transmission requires that segment 3, the
segment that is expected by all these acknowledgments, be resent immediately.
• Note that only one segment is retransmitted although four segments are not acknowledged.
• When the sender receives the retransmitted ACK, it knows that the four segments are safe and
sound because acknowledgment is cumulative
Fast Retransmission
Congestion Control
• Congestion in a network may occur if the load on the network-the number of packets sent to
the network-is greater than the capacity of the network-the number of packets a network can
handle.
• Congestion control refers to the mechanisms and techniques to control the congestion and keep
the load below the capacity.
Data Traffic Descriptors
Three Traffic Profiles
Congestion: Queues in a Router
Congestion Control Strategies
Closed-Loop Congestion Control: Backpressure
• In this, a congested node stops receiving data from the immediate upstream node or nodes. This
may cause the upstream node or nodes to become congested, and they, in turn, reject data from
their upstream nodes or nodes.
• Backpressure is a node-to-node congestion control that starts with a node and propagates, in the
opposite direction of data flow, to the source.
• The backpressure technique can be applied only to virtual circuit networks, in which each node
knows the upstream node from which a flow of data is corning.
• Node III in the figure has more input data than it can handle. It puts a backpressure on Node II
and this back pressure propagates to source via Node I.
• The technique cannot be implemented in a datagram where a node (router) does not have the
slightest knowledge of the upstream router.
Closed-Loop Congestion Control: Backpressure
Closed-Loop Congestion Control: Choke Packet
• A choke packet is a packet sent by a node to the source to inform it of congestion.
• Note the difference between the backpressure and choke packet methods. In backpressure, the
warning is from one node to its upstream node, although the warning may eventually reach the
source station.
• In the choke packet method, the warning is from the router, which has encountered congestion,
to the source station directly. The intermediate nodes through which the packet has traveled are
not warned.
Closed-Loop Congestion Control: Choke Packet
Congestion Control in TCP
• We now show how TCP uses congestion control to avoid congestion or alleviate congestion in
the network.
• Congestion Window (cwnd): In TCP, the congestion window is a mechanism that limits the
amount of data a sender can transmit at any given time to avoid network congestion.
• The actual size of the sending window is the minimum of these two.
Actual window size = minimum (rwnd, cwnd)
Congestion Policy
TCP's general policy for handling congestion is based on three phases:
• slow start,
• congestion avoidance, and
• congestion detection
Slow Start: Exponential Increase
• This algorithm is based on the idea that the size of the congestion window (cwnd) starts with
one maximum segment size (MSS). The MSS is determined during connection establishment
by using an option of the same name.
• The size of the window increases one MSS each time an acknowledgment is received.
Slow Start: Exponential Increase
Slow Start: Exponential Increase
• If we look at the size of cwnd in terms of rounds (acknowledgment of the whole window of
segments), we find that the rate is exponential as shown below:
Congestion Avoidance: Additive Increase
• When the size of the congestion window reaches the slow-start threshold (ssthreshold), the
slow-start phase stops, and the additive phase begins.
• In this algorithm, each time the whole window of segments is acknowledged (one round), the
size of the congestion window is increased by 1.
Congestion Avoidance: Additive Increase
Congestion Avoidance: Additive Increase
• If we look at the size of cwnd in terms of rounds, we find that the rate is additive as shown
below
Congestion Detection: Multiplicative Decrease
• If congestion occurs, the congestion window size must be decreased.
• The only way the sender can guess that congestion has occurred is by the need to retransmit a
segment. However, retransmission can occur in one of two cases: when a timer times out or
when three ACKs are received.
• In both cases, the size of the threshold is dropped to one-half, a multiplicative decrease.
Congestion Detection: Multiplicative Decrease
Congestion Detection: Multiplicative Decrease
Congestion Example
 Congestion Example
• In the example, we assume that the maximum window size is 32 segments. The threshold is set
to 16 segments (one-half of the maximum window size).
• In the slow-start phase the window size starts from 1 and grows exponentially until it reaches
the threshold.
• After it reaches the threshold, the congestion avoidance (additive increase) procedure allows
the window size to increase linearly until a timeout occurs or the maximum window size is
reached.
• In this example, the time-out occurs when the window size is 20. At this moment, the
multiplicative decrease procedure takes over and reduces the threshold to one-half of the
previous window size.
Congestion Example
• The previous window size was 20 when the time-out happened so the new threshold is now 10.
• TCP moves to slow start again and starts with a window size of 1, and TCP moves to additive
increase when the new threshold is reached.
• When the window size is 12, a three-ACKs event happens. The multiplicative decrease
procedure takes over again. The threshold is set to 6 and TCP goes to the additive increase
phase this time.
• It remains in this phase until another time-out or another three ACKs happen