NETWORKING &

INTERNETWORKING
Introduction
The networks used in distributed systems are built
from a variety of;
• transmission media, including; wire, cable, fiber
and
• wireless channels; hardware devices, including
routers, switches, bridges, hubs, repeaters and
• network interfaces; and software components,
including protocol stacks, communication
handlers and drivers.
• The resulting functionality and performance available
to distributed system and application programs

• is affected by all of these.

• These refer to the collection of hardware and software

components that provide the communication facilities

• for a distributed system as a communication

subsystem.
• The computers and other devices that use the network
for communication purposes are referred to as hosts.

• The term node is used to refer to any computer or

switching device attached to a network.

• The Internet is a single communication subsystem

providing communication between all of the hosts

• that are connected to it.

• The Internet is constructed from many subnets.

• A subnet is a unit of routing (delivering data from one

part of the Internet to another);

• it is a collection of nodes that can all be reached on

the same physical network.
• The Internet’s infrastructure includes an architecture;
hardware and software components that

• effectively integrate diverse subnets into a single data

communication service.

• The design of a communication subsystem is strongly

influenced by the characteristics of the operating
systems used in

• the computers of which the distributed system is

composed as well as the networks that interconnect
them.
• Networking issues for distributed systems
• Performance
• Scalability
• Reliability
• Security
• Mobility
• Quality of service
Types of network
• Here, the main types of network that are used to
support distributed systems are introduced:
 personal area networks,

 local area networks,

 wide area networks,

 metropolitan area networks

• Internetworks such as the Internet are constructed

from networks of all these types.
• Internetworks
• An internetwork is a communication subsystem in
which several networks are linked together to provide

• common data communication facilities that overlay

the technologies and protocols of the individual

• component networks and the methods used for their

interconnection.

• Internetworks are needed for the development of

extensible, open distributed systems.
• In internetworks, a variety of local and wide area
network technologies can be integrated to provide the

• networking capacity needed by each group of users.

• Thus internetworks bring many of the benefits of

open systems to the provision of communication in
distributed systems.
• Internetworks are constructed from a variety of
component networks. They are interconnected by;
• dedicated switching computers called routers and
• general-purpose computers called gateways,

• and an integrated communication subsystem is

produced by
• a software layer that supports the addressing and
• transmission of data to computers throughout the
internetwork.
• Network principles
• The basis for all computer networks is the packet-
switching technique first developed in the 1960s.

• This enables data packets addressed to different

destinations to share a single communications link,

• unlike the circuit-switching technology that underlies

conventional telephony.
• Packets are queued in a buffer and transmitted
when the link is available.

• Communication is asynchronous – messages arrive at

their destination after a delay that varies depending

• upon the time that packets take to travel through the

network.
• Packet transmission
• In most applications of computer networks the
requirement is for the transmission of logical units of

• information, or messages– sequences of data items of

arbitrary length.

• But before a message is transmitted it is subdivided

into packets.
• The simplest form of packet is a sequence of binary
data (an array of bits or bytes) of restricted length,

• together with addressing information sufficient to

identify the source and destination computers.
• Data streaming
• The transmission and display of audio and video in
real time is referred to as streaming.

• It requires much higher bandwidths than most other

forms of communication in distributed systems.

• A video stream requires a bandwidth of about 1.5

Mbps if the data is compressed, or 120 Mbps if
uncompressed.
• Switching schemes
• A network consists of a set of nodes connected
together by circuits.

• To transmit information between two arbitrary nodes,

a switching system is required.
• There are four types of switching that are used in
computer networking;
• Broadcast
• Circuit switching
• Packet switching
• Frame relay
• Protocols
• The term protocol is used to refer to a well-known set
of rules and formats to be used for communication

• between processes in order to perform a given task.

• The definition of a protocol has two important parts

to it:
• a specification of the sequence of messages that
must be exchanged;

• a specification of the format of the data in the

messages.
• A protocol is implemented by a pair of software
modules located in

• the sending and receiving computers.

• For example, a transport protocol transmits

messages of any length from a sending process to a
receiving process.

• A process wishing to transmit a message to another

process issues a call to a transport protocol module,

• passing it a message in the specified format.

• The transport software then concerns itself with the
transmission of the message to its destination,

• subdividing it into packets of some specified size

and

• format that can be transmitted to the destination

via

• the network protocol– another, lower-level

protocol.
• The corresponding transport protocol module in the
receiving computer

• receives the packet via the network-level protocol

module and

• performs inverse transformations to regenerate the

message before passing it to a receiving process.
• Protocol layers
• Network software is arranged in a hierarchy of layers.

• Each layer presents an interface to the layers above

it that extends the properties of

• the underlying communication system.

• A layer is represented by a module in every computer

connected to the network.
• Ports
• The transport layer’s task is to provide a network-
independent message transport service between pairs
of network ports.

• Ports are software-defined destination points at a

host computer.

• They are attached to processes, enabling data

transmission to be addressed to a specific process at
a destination node.
• Congestion control
• The capacity of a network is limited by the
performance of its communication links and
switching nodes.

• When the load at any particular link or node

approaches its capacity, queues will build up at hosts
trying

• to send packets and at intermediate nodes holding

packets whose onward transmission is blocked by
other traffic.
• If the load continues at the same high level, the
queues will continue to grow until they reach the limit

• of available buffer space.

• Once this state is reached at a node, the node has no

option but to drop further incoming packets.
• Routing
• Routing is a function that is required in all networks
except those LANs,

• such as Ethernets, that provide direct connections

between all pairs of attached hosts.

• In large networks, adaptive routing is employed.

• The best route for communication between two points

in the network is re-evaluated periodically,
• taking into account the current traffic in the
network and any faults

• such as broken connections or routers.

• The determination of routes for the transmission of

packets to their destinations is

• the responsibility of a routing algorithm.

• A routing algorithm has two parts:

– It must make decisions that determine the route

taken by each packet as it travels through the
network.
– It must dynamically update its knowledge of the
network based on traffic monitoring and

– the detection of configuration changes or failures.

• Internet protocols
• The Internet emerged from two decades of research
and development work on wide area networking in

• the USA, commencing in the early 1970s with the

ARPANET –

• the first large-scale computer network development

[Leiner et al. 1997].

• An important part of that research was the

development of the TCP/IP protocol suite.
• TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol, IP for
Internet Protocol.

• The widespread adoption of the TCP/IP and Internet

application protocols in national research networks,
and

• more recently in commercial networks in many

countries, has enabled the national networks to be
integrated into a

• single internetwork that has grown extremely

rapidly to its present size, with more than 60 million
hosts.
• The Internet protocols were originally developed
primarily to support simple wide area applications

• such as file transfer and electronic mail, involving

communication with relatively high latencies between
geographically dispersed computers,

• but they turned out to be efficient enough to support

the requirements of many distributed applications on
both

• wide area and local networks and they are now

almost universally used in distributed systems.
• The IP protocol
• The IP protocol transmits datagram from one host to
another, if necessary via intermediate routers.

• IP provides a delivery service that is described as

offering unreliable or best-effort delivery semantics,
because there is no guarantee of delivery.

• Packets can be lost, duplicated, delayed or delivered

out of order, but these errors arise only when the

• underlying networks fail or buffers at the destination

are full.
• IP version 6
• A more permanent solution to the addressing
limitations of IPv4 was also pursued,

• and this led to the development and adoption of a new

version of the IP protocol with

• substantially larger addresses.

• The IETF noticed the potential problems arising from
the 32-bit addresses of IPv4 as early as 1990 and

• initiated a project to develop a new version of the IP

protocol.

• IPv6 was adopted by the IETF in 1994 and a strategy

for migration to it was recommended.
• Mobile IP
• Mobile computers such as laptops and tablets are
connected to the Internet at different locations as they
migrate.

• In its owner’s office a laptop maybe connected to a

local Ethernet connected to the Internet through

• a router,
• it may be connected via a mobile phone while it is in
transit by car or train,

• then it may be attached to an Ethernet at another site.

• The user will wish to access services such as email

and the Web at any of these locations.
• TCP and UDP
• TCP and UDP provide the communication
capabilities of the Internet in a form that is useful for
application programs.

• Application developers might wish for other types of

transport service,

• for example to provide real-time guarantees or

security,

• but such services would generally require more

support in the network layer than IPv4 provides.
• TCP and UDP can be viewed as a faithful reflection
at the application programming level of the

• communication facilities that IPv4 has to offer.

• Firewalls
• Almost all organizations need Internet connectivity in
order to provide services to their customers and other

• external users and to enable their internal users to

access information and services.

• The computers in most organizations are quite

diverse,

• running a variety of operating systems and

application software.
• The purpose of a firewall is to monitor and control all
communication into and out of an intranet.

• A firewall is implemented by a set of processes that

act as a gateway to an intranet,

• applying a security policy determined by the

organization.
• The aims of a firewall security policy may include
any or all of the following:
– Service control: To determine which services on
internal hosts are accessible for external access and

– to reject all other incoming service requests.

– User control: The organization may wish to

discriminate between its users, allowing some to

– access external services but inhibiting others from

doing so.
– TCP gateway: A TCP gateway process checks all
TCP connection requests and segment
transmissions.

– Application-level gateway: An application-level

gateway process acts as a proxy for an application
process.

– For example, a policy may be desired that allows

certain internal users to make Telnet connections
to certain external hosts.
 Group Assignment
• Based on the content discussed in this lecture (2),
read the case (Bluetooth) and prepare a report &

• presentation concerning your understanding of the

case with relation to the discussed content.