CAP256: Computer Network

Data Link Layer – Flow Control

Flow and Error Control
Data-link layer is responsible for implementation of point-to-
point flow and error control mechanism.
When a data frame (Layer-2 data) is sent from one host to
another over a single medium, it is required that the sender
and receiver should work at the same speed.
 That is, sender sends at a speed on which the receiver can process and
accept the data.
What if the speed (hardware/software) of the sender or
receiver differs?
 If sender is sending too fast the receiver may be overloaded, (swamped)
and data may be lost.
Flow Control
Flow control refers to a set of procedures used to restrict
the amount of data that the sender can send before
waiting for acknowledgment.
Two types of mechanisms can be deployed to control the
flow:
Stop and Wait: This flow control mechanism forces the sender
after transmitting a data frame to stop and wait until the
acknowledgement of the data-frame sent is received.
Sliding Window: In this flow control mechanism, both sender
and receiver agree on the number of data-frames after which the
acknowledgement should be sent. As we learnt, stop and wait
flow control mechanism wastes resources, this protocol tries to
make use of underlying resources as much as possible.
Error Control
 When data-frame is transmitted, there is a probability that data-frame may be
lost in the transit or it is received corrupted.
 In both cases, the receiver does not receive the correct data-frame and sender
does not know anything about any loss. In such case, both sender and receiver
are equipped with some protocols which helps them to detect transit errors such
as loss of data-frame.
 Hence, either the sender retransmits the data-frame or the receiver may request
to resend the previous data-frame.
 Requirements for error control mechanism:
 Error detection: The sender and receiver, either both or any, must ascertain that there
is some error in the transit.
 Positive ACK : When the receiver receives a correct frame, it should acknowledge it.
 Negative ACK: When the receiver receives a damaged frame or a duplicate frame, it
sends a NACK back to the sender and the sender must retransmit the correct frame.
 Retransmission: The sender maintains a clock and sets a timeout period. If an
acknowledgement of a data-frame previously transmitted does not arrive before the
timeout the sender retransmits the frame, thinking that the frame or it’s
acknowledgement is lost in transit.
Protocols used for Flow Control
Now let us see how the data link layer can combine
framing, flow control, and error control to achieve the
delivery of data from one node to another.
The protocols are normally implemented in software by
using one of the common programming languages.
Noiseless Channels
Noiseless channel is an ideal channel in which no frames
are lost, duplicated, or corrupted.
Two protocols are available for this type of channel.
Simplest Protocol: This type of protocol has no flow
or error control
Stop-and-Wait Protocol: In this type of protocol
sender sends one frame, stops until it receives agree
from receiver and then sends the next frame
Simplest Protocol

Our first protocol, which we call the Simplest Protocol, is

one that has no flow or error control. Like other protocols, it
is a unidirectional protocol in which data frames are traveling
in only one direction-from the sender to receiver.
The receiver can immediately handle any frame it receives
with a processing time that is small enough to be negligible.
The data link layer of the receiver immediately removes the
header from the frame and hands the data packet to network
layer, which can also accept the packet immediately.
In other words, the receiver can never be fill out with
incoming frames.
Assumptions for Simplest Protocol
The channel is a perfect noiseless channel.
Hence an ideal channel in which no frames are lost,
duplicated, or corrupted.
No flow control and error control used.
It is a unidirectional protocol in which data frames are
traveling in only one direction- from the sender to receiver.
Both transmitting and receiving network layer are always
ready.
Processing time that is small enough to be negligible.
Infinite buffer space is available.
Sender-site algorithm for the simplest protocol
Receiver-site algorithm for the simplest protocol
Following figure shows an example of communication using
this protocol. It is very simple. The sender sends a sequence of
frames without even thinking about the receiver. To send three
frames, three events occur at the sender site and three events
at the receiver site. Note that the data frames are shown by
tilted boxes; the height of the box defines the transmission time
difference between the first bit and the last bit in the frame.
Stop and Wait Protocol
This flow control mechanism forces the sender after transmitting a
data frame to stop and wait until the acknowledgement of the data-
frame sent is received.
The following assumption has been made for developing the Stop-
and-Wait Protocol
 The channel is a perfect noiseless channel.
 Flow control used
 It is a bidirectional protocol in which frames are traveling in both direction
 Both transmitting and receiving network layer are always not ready.
 Processing time considerable
 Finite buffer space is available
 The receiver may not be always ready to receive the next frame (finite buffer
storage).
 Receiver sends a positive acknowledgment frame to sender to transmit the next
data frame which showed in the below figure(3.4).
 Error-free communication channel assumed. No retransmissions used.
Sender-site algorithm for Stop-and-Wait Protocol
Receiver-site algorithm for Stop-and-Wait Protocol
Following figure shows an example of communication using
this protocol. It is still very simple. The sender sends one
frame and waits for feedback from the receiver. When the
ACK arrives, the sender sends the next frame. Note that
sending two frames in the protocol involves the sender in four
events and the receiver in two events.
Noisy Channels
Although the Stop-and-Wait Protocol gives us an idea of
how to add flow control to its predecessor, noiseless
channels are non-existent.
Three protocols are discussed to use error control while
transmission using noisy channels:
Stop-and-Wait Automatic Repeat Request
Go-Back-N Automatic Repeat Request
Selective Repeat Automatic Repeat Request
Stop-and-Wait ARQ
Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ), an error control method,
is incorporated with stop and wait flow control protocol.
Error correction in Stop-and-Wait is done by keeping a copy
of the sent frame and retransmitting of the frame when the
timer expires
In Stop-and-Wait ARQ, we use sequence numbers to number
the frames. The sequence numbers are based on modulo-2
arithmetic.
In Stop-and-Wait ARQ the ARQ, acknowledgment number
always announces in modulo-2 arithmetic the sequence
number of the next frame expected.
Sender-site algorithm for Stop-and-Wait ARQ
Receiver-site algorithm for Stop-and-Wait ARQ Protocol
Following figure shows an example of Stop-and-Wait ARQ. Frame 0 is sent and
acknowledged. Frame 1 is lost and resent after the time-out. The resent frame 1 is
acknowledged and the timer stops. Frame 0 is sent and acknowledged, but the
acknowledgment is lost. The sender has no idea if the frame or the acknowledgment
is lost, so after the time-out, it resends frame 0, which is acknowledged.
Stop-and-Wait ARQ, lost frame
Stop-and-Wait ARQ, lost ACK frame
Sliding Window Protocols
Sliding window protocol is a flow control protocol.
It allows the sender to send multiple frames before needing
the acknowledgements.
Sender slides its window on receiving the acknowledgements
for the sent frames.
This allows the sender to send more frames.
It is called so because it involves sliding of sender’s window.
Working Principle
In these protocols, the sender has a buffer called the sending
window and the receiver has buffer called the receiving window.
The size of the sending window determines the sequence number
of the outbound frames. 
If the field is m bits long, the sequence numbers start from 0 to
2m-1, and then are repeated.
Therefore the window size is 2m-1.
Go Back-N ARQ

A station sends a series of frames sequentially up to a

maximum number
The number of unacknowledged frames outstanding is
determined by window size, using the sliding window flow
control technique.
In case of no error, the destination will acknowledge
incoming frames as usual.
In the Go-Back-N Protocol, the sequence numbers are
modulo 2m, where m is the size of the sequence number field
in bits.
The send window is an abstract concept defining an imaginary
box of size 2m − 1 with three variables: Sf, Sn, and Ssize.
The send window can slide one or more slots when a valid
acknowledgment arrives.
The receive window is an abstract concept defining an imaginary
box of size 1 with one single variable Rn. The window slides when a
correct frame has arrived; sliding occurs one slot at a time.
Design of Go-Back-N ARQ
Window size for Go-Back-N ARQ
Go-Back-N sender algorithm
Go-Back-N receiver algorithm
CASE-1
Figure on next slide shows an example of Go-Back-N ARQ flow
control algorithm.
This is an example of a case where the forward channel is reliable,
but the reverse is not. No data frames are lost, but some ACKs are
delayed and one is lost.
The example also shows how cumulative acknowledgments can
help if acknowledgments are delayed or lost.
After initialization, there are seven sender events. Request events
are triggered by data from the network layer; arrival events are
triggered by acknowledgments from the physical layer.
There is no time-out event here because all outstanding frames are
acknowledged before the timer expires. Note that although ACK 2
is lost, ACK 3 serves as both ACK 2 and ACK 3.
CASE-2
Figure on next slide shows what happens when a frame is lost Frames 0, 1, 2, and 3
are sent. However, frame 1 is lost.
The receiver receives frames 2 and 3, but they are discarded because they are
received out of order.
The sender receives no acknowledgment about frames 1, 2, or 3. Its timer finally
expires.
The sender sends all outstanding frames (1, 2, and 3) because it does not know
what is wrong. Note that the resending of frames 1, 2, and 3 is the response to one
single event.
When the sender is responding to this event, it cannot accept the triggering of other
events. This means that when ACK 2 arrives, the sender is still busy with sending
frame 3.
The physical layer must wait until this event is completed and the data link layer
goes back to its sleeping state.
A vertical line is used to indicate the delay. It is the same story with ACK 3; but
when ACK 3 arrives, the sender is busy responding to ACK 2.
It happens again when ACK 4 arrives. Note that before the second timer expires, all
outstanding frames have been sent and the timer is stopped.
Performance of Go-Back-N ARQ
Go-Back-N ARQ simplifies the process at the receiver site.
The receiver keeps track of only one variable, and there is no
need to buffer out-of-order frames; they are simply
discarded.
However, this protocol is very inefficient for a noisy link. In
a noisy link a frame has a higher probability of damage,
which means the resending of multiple frames.
This resending uses up the bandwidth and slows down the
transmission.
Selective Repeat ARQ
For noisy links, there is another mechanism that does not
resend N frames when just one frame is damaged; only the
damaged frame is resent. This mechanism is called Selective
Repeat ARQ.
It is more efficient for noisy links, but the processing at the
receiver is more complex.
The Selective Repeat Protocol also uses two windows: a send
window and a receive window.
In Selective Repeat ARQ, the size of the sender and
receiver window must be at most one-half of 2m-1.
Sender-site Selective Repeat algorithm
Receiver-site Selective Repeat algorithm
Figure on the next slides shows the situation. One main difference is the number of
timers.
Here, each frame sent or resent needs a timer, which means that the timers need to
be numbered (0, 1, 2, and 3). The timer for frame 0 starts at the first request, but
stops when the ACK for this frame arrives.
The timer for frame 1 starts at the second request, restarts when a NAK arrives, and
finally stops when the last ACK arrives.
The other two timers start when the corresponding frames are sent and stop at the
last arrival event.
At the receiver site we need to distinguish between the acceptance of a frame and its
delivery to the network layer.
At the second arrival, frame 2 arrives and is stored and marked, but it cannot be
delivered because frame 1 is missing.
At the next arrival, frame 3 arrives and is marked and stored, but still none of the
frames can be delivered.
Only at the last arrival, when finally a copy of frame 1 arrives, can frames 1, 2, and
3 be delivered to the network layer.
There are two conditions for the delivery of frames to the network layer:
 First, a set of consecutive frames must have arrived.
 Second, the set starts from the beginning of the window.
Another important point is that a NAK is sent after the second
arrival, but not after the third, although both situations look the
same.
The reason is that the protocol does not want to crowd the
network with unnecessary NAKs and unnecessary resent frames.
The second NAK would still be NAK1 to inform the sender to
resend frame 1 again; this has already been done.
The first NAK sent is remembered (using the nakSent variable)
and is not sent again until the frame slides. A NAK is sent once
for each window position and defines the first slot in the window.
The next point is about the ACKs. Notice that only two ACKs are
sent here. The first one acknowledges only the first frame; the
second one acknowledges three frames.
In Selective Repeat, ACKs are sent when data are delivered to
the network layer. If the data belonging to n frames are delivered
in one shot, only one ACK is sent for all of them.
Piggybacking
In reliable full - duplex data transmission, the technique of
hooking up acknowledgments onto outgoing data frames is called
piggybacking.
Communications are mostly full – duplex in nature, i.e. data
transmission occurs in both directions.
A method to achieve full – duplex communication is to consider
both the communication as a pair of simplex communication.
Each link comprises a forward channel for sending data and a
reverse channel for sending acknowledgments.
However, in the above arrangement, traffic load doubles for each
data unit that is transmitted. Half of all data transmission comprise
of transmission of acknowledgments.
Piggybacking a solution that provides better utilization of
bandwidth.
Working Principle
Suppose that there are two communication stations X and Y. The data
frames transmitted have an acknowledgment field, ack field that is of a few
bits length. Additionally, there are frames for sending acknowledgments,
ACK frames. The purpose is to minimize the ACK frames.
The three principles governing piggybacking when the station X wants to
communicate with station Y are:
 If station X has both data and acknowledgment to send, it sends a data frame
with the ack field containing the sequence number of the frame to be
acknowledged.
 If station X has only an acknowledgment to send, it waits for a finite period of
time to see whether a data frame is available to be sent. If a data frame becomes
available, then it piggybacks the acknowledgment with it. Otherwise, it sends
an ACK frame.
 If station X has only a data frame to send, it adds the last acknowledgment with
it. The station Y discards all duplicate acknowledgments. Alternatively, station
X may send the data frame with the ack field containing a bit combination
denoting no acknowledgment.
Design of piggybacking in Go-Back-N ARQ