High Speed Networking

High Speed Networking: An

Introduction

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Yet Another Revolution?

• Networking scenarios changing rapidly

» Faster link speeds

» Improved techniques

» Lower equipment cost

» Long communication cost decreased 100

or 1000 times
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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Yet Another Revolution?

Main reason

Use of digital technologies within PSTN

Introduction of fiber optical transmission

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

User Demand
• Requirements expressed by users
– Implement new applications using graphics, image
processing etc.

– To do existing applications in a better way

– Rationalize different networks

» PSTN, TCP/IP, SNA, X.25 etc.

– Integration of voice, video, and data

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

The New Environment

• Bandwidth cost
– Reducing exponentially

• Error Rate
– Analog telephone with a modem: 10-5
– Fiber connection: 10-11

• Error Characteristics
– Digital connection: Burst error
– Analog connection: single or double bit error
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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

The New Environment

• Propagation delay
– At 80% of the speed of light, the propagation speed
has not changed

• Storage effect
– High bandwidth-delay product
– Has critical effect on most current protocols
• Computer technology: Cost reducing, speed increasing
• Past
– Computers faster than links
• Present
– Computers slower than links
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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
 Traditional Packet Data
High Speed Networking

Network

• Uses multiplexing to save cost on expensive,

low speed links

• Provides multiple path to enable recovery in

the event of link or node failure

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Internal Network Operation

• Hop-by-hop error recovery
– Link protocols detect error and retransmits lost
frames

• Implicit rate control

– Links are slower than computer

• Software routing
– Routing decisions, manipulating queues
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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Internal Network Operation

• Connection orientation
– End-to-end connection passes through a network
– X.25: virtual circuits, SNA: sessions
– A record is maintained about each connection at
the intermediate nodes

• Packet size
– Small vs. large packets

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Internal Network Operation

• Congestion control
– Single server queuing theory applies
– Without congestion control, network will not
operate properly
» Reasonable for high cost bandwidth

– No need for congestion control for low cost

bandwidth
» If required, protocols will be very different from
those in today’s network

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Is a network still needed

• Single links need to be shared

• Users need a single device to communicate

with multiple devices simultaneously

• Multiple routes are needed for reliability

reasons

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Traffic Characteristics

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
 High Speed Networking

Conflicting characteristics of voice

and data
• Length of connection (call)
– Voice calls are around 3 minutes, data calls can
last for hours

• Flow Control
– Voice does not need flow control
– Either handled at full speed or stopped
– Data must be controlled
– Computer has infinite capacity for generating data
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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
 High Speed Networking

Conflicting characteristics of voice

and data
• Delivery Rate Control
– Link speeds are very high than switches
– Link speed is no longer a flow limiting mechanism

• Blocking characteristic
– Voice traffic is continuous

– Data exists in discrete blocks

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
 High Speed Networking

Conflicting characteristics of voice

and data
• Acceptable Transit Delay Characteristics
– Data does not have problem with transit delay
– For good voice quality, transit delay must be less
than 50ms
– Variable transit delay makes voice traffic
impossible
• Error Control
– Voice traffic: does not care about errors
– Data traffic: errors must be controlled
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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
 High Speed Networking

Conflicting characteristics of voice

and data
• Balanced Traffic

– Voice calls are two-way conversation

– Voice traffic is usually well balanced

– Data traffic is the form of small input and large

output

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
 High Speed Networking

Characteristics of Digital Video

• Data Rate
– Video is fundamentally variable in the required
rate of information transfer

Digital
Encode Fixed Rate
channel Digital
-- Buffer Buffer
Input Decode Output
Variable
Signal rate Signal

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Characteristics of Digital Video

• Timing Consideration
– Video is isochronous
– Packet network introduces “packet jitter”
– Before displaying insert planned delay factor

• Redundancy
– Video is very redundant
• Loss of few bits is undetectable
– When video is compressed, it is lot less redundant
• Loss of packets will have much larger effect

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Characteristics of Digital Video

• Digital Video in a Packet Network
Packet network must have the following
characteristics to carry video traffic
– Sufficient capacity
– End-to-end delay appropriate to the application
– Minimal packet jitter

Some important questions

– What to do if network becomes congested????
– How to handle errors????

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Characteristics of Digital Video

• Hierarchical Source Coding
– HSC: a congestion control technique for video
– Do not slow down input rate if congestion occur
– Throw packets until network returns to normal
– Split packets to contain different types of
information (e.g. some information display
frames, some improves quality)
– Throw only non-essential frames

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Characteristics of Digital Video

• Error Control
– Retransmissions introduces high jitter
– Discard erred packets
– What happens if most important information is
lost?
• Use short packet with error correcting code
– High overhead!!!
– Not useful if burst error ocuur
– Best approach:
• Build an approximation of the lost information using
previous packet and whatever received for the
current packet
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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Characteristics of Multimedia
Applications
• Requires large bandwidth

• Communications must be to each users

desktop

• Information presentation must be coordinated

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
High Speed Networking

Characteristics of Multimedia
Applications
• Networking issues:
– Latency
• More than propagation delay due to buffering

– Jitter

– Skew
• Presentation of related things (someone speaking and
related sound)

– Overrun and Underrun

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B. Sardar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India