Data Link Layer

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 Multiple access problem
Example:
Business party – many people gather
together in a large room
Broadcast medium – air
Another example: a classroom
Human protocols:

“Give everyone a chance to speak”

“Don’t speak until you are spoken to”
“Don’t monopolize the conversation”
“Raise your hand if you have a question”
“Don’t interrupt when someone is speaking”
“Don’t fall asleep when someone else is talking”

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Figure 1 Data link layer divided into two functionality-oriented sublayers

Responsible for error

and flow control

Link Layer Control (LLC)

Control
MAC

Responsible framing
and MAC address and
Multiple Access Control
Multiple Access

 Broadcast link used in LAN consists of multiple sending and receiving

nodes connected to or use a single shared link

Broadcast links Examples

Multiple Access
 Problem: When two or more nodes transmit at the same time, their
frames will collide and the link bandwidth is wasted during collision
 How to coordinate the access of multiple sending/receiving nodes to
the shared link???
 Solution: We need a protocol to coordinate the transmission of the
active nodes
 These protocols are called Medium or Multiple Access Control
(MAC) Protocols belong to a sublayer of the data link layer called
MAC (Medium Access Control)
 What is expected from Multiple Access Protocols:
 Main task is to minimize collisions in order to utilize the bandwidth by:
 Determining when a station can use the link (medium)
 what a station should do when the link is busy
 what the station should do when it is involved in collision
Figure 2 Taxonomy of multiple-access protocols discussed in this chapter

For wireless not

included with us
 Random Access
 Random Access (or contention) Protocols:
 No station is superior to another station and none is assigned the control over another.
 A station with a frame to be transmitted can use the link directly based on a procedure defined by the
protocol to make a decision on whether or not to send.

 ALOHA Protocols
 Was designed for wireless LAN and can be used for any shared medium
 Pure ALOHA Protocol Description
 All frames from any station are of fixed length (L bits)
 Stations transmit at equal transmission time (all stations produce frames with equal frame lengths).
 A station that has data can transmit at any time
 After transmitting a frame, the sender waits for an acknowledgment for an amount of time (time out) equal
to the maximum round-trip propagation delay = 2* tprop(see next slide)

 If no ACK was received, sender assumes that the frame or ACK has been destroyed and resends that frame
after it waits for a random amount of time

 If station fails to receive an ACK after repeated transmissions, it gives up

 Channel utilization or efficiency or Throughput is the percentage of the transmitted frames that arrive
successfully (without collisions) or the percentage of the channel bandwidth that will be used for
transmitting frames without collisions

 ALOHA Maximum channel utilization is 18% (i.e, if the system produces F frames/s, then 0.18 * F frames
will arrive successfully on average without the need of retransmission).
Maximum Propagation Delay
 Maximum propagation delay(tprop): time it takes for a bit of a frame
to travel between the two most widely separated stations.

The farthest
station

Station B
receives the
first bit of
the frame at
time t= tprop
Figure 4 Procedure for ALOHA protocol
Critical time for pure ALOHA protocol

Tfr= Frame
Transmission time

If the frame transmission time is T sec, then the vulnerable

time is = 2 T sec.
This means no station should send during the T-sec before this
station starts transmission and no station should start sending
during the T-sec period that the current station is sending.
Pure ALOHA

In pure ALOHA, frames are transmitted at completely arbitrary times.

Note

The throughput ( S) for pure ALOHA is

S = G × e −2G .
The maximum throughput
Smax = 0.184 when G= (1/2).
G = Average number of frames generated by the system (all stations) during
one frame transmission time
Random Access – Slotted
ALOHA
 Time is divided into slots equal to a frame transmission
time (Tfr)
 A station can transmit at the beginning of a slot only
 If a station misses the beginning of a slot, it has to wait
until the beginning of the next time slot.
 A central clock or station informs all stations about the
start of a each slot
 Maximum channel utilization is 37%
In danger time for slotted ALOHA protocol
Random Access – Slotted
ALOHA
Note

The throughput for slotted ALOHA is

S = G × e−G .
The maximum throughput
Smax = 0.368 when G = 1.
Efficiency of Aloha
S = throughput =(success

0.4

0.3
Slotted Aloha
0.2

0.1
Pure Aloha
rate)

0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0

G = offered load rate= new frames+ retransmitted
= Total frames presented to the link per
the transmission time of a single frame
 Advantage of ALOHA protocols
 A node that has frames to be transmitted can transmit continuously at the
full rate of channel (R bps) if it is the only node with frames
 Simple to be implemented
 No master station is needed to control the medium

 Disadvantage
 If (M) nodes want to transmit, many collisions can occur and the rate
allocated for each node will not be on average R/M bps
 This causes low channel utilization
Random Access – Carrier Sense Multiple Access
(CSMA)
 To improve performance, avoid transmissions that are certain to cause
collisions
 Based on the fact that in LAN propagation time is very small
  If a frame was sent by a station, All stations knows immediately so they can
wait before start sending
  A station with frames to be sent, should sense the medium for the
presence of another transmission (carrier) before it starts its own
transmission
 This can reduce the possibility of collision but it cannot eliminate it.
 Collision can only happen when more than one station begin transmitting
within a short time (the propagation time period)
Random Access – Carrier Sense Multiple Access
(CSMA)
 Vulnerable time for CSMA is the maximum propagation time
 The longer the propagation delay, the worse the performance of the
protocol because of the above case.
Types of CSMA Protocols
Different CSMA protocols that determine:
 What a station should do when the medium is idle?
 What a station should do when the medium is busy?

1. Non-Persistent CSMA
2. 1-Persistent CSMA
3. p-Persistent CSMA
Nonpersistent CSMA
 A station with frames to be sent, should sense the medium
1. If medium is idle, transmit; otherwise, go to 2
2. If medium is busy, (backoff) wait a random amount of time and repeat 1
 Non-persistent Stations are deferential (respect others)
 Performance:
 Random delays reduces probability of collisions because two stations with
data to be transmitted will wait for different amount of times.
 Bandwidth is wasted if waiting time (backoff) is large because medium will
remain idle following end of transmission even if one or more stations have
frames to send

Random Waiting
times

Wasted time
1-persistent CSMA
 To avoid idle channel time, 1-persistent protocol used
 Station wishing to transmit listens to the medium:
1. If medium idle, transmit immediately;
2. If medium busy, continuously listen until medium becomes idle; then
transmit immediately with probability 1
 Performance
 1-persistent stations are selfish
 If two or more stations becomes ready at the same time, collision guaranteed
P-persistent CSMA
 Time is divided to slots where each Time unit (slot) typically equals
maximum propagation delay
 Station wishing to transmit listens to the medium:
1. If medium idle,
 transmit with probability (p), OR
 wait one time unit (slot) with probability (1 – p), then repeat 1.
2. If medium busy, continuously listen until idle and repeat step 1
3. Performance
 Reduces the possibility of collisions like nonpersistent
 Reduces channel idle time like 1-persistent
Flow diagram for three persistence methods
Persistent and Nonpersistent CSMA

Comparison of the channel utilization versus load for various random access
protocols.
CSMA/CD (Collision Detection)
 CSMA (all previous methods) has an inefficiency:
 If a collision has occurred, the channel is unstable until

colliding packets have been fully transmitted

 CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision

Detection) overcomes this as follows:

 While transmitting, the sender is listening to medium for

collisions.
 Sender stops transmission if collision has occurred

reducing channel wastage .

CSMA/CD is Widely used for bus topology LANs (IEEE 802.3,
Ethernet).
 of its own
signal, it means collision occurred
 Collision Detection
How the station detects a collision?

There are many collision detection methods!

Most of them are analog processes.

Examples:
detecting voltage level on the line
detecting power level
detecting simultaneous transmission & reception

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CSMA/CD Protocol
 Use one of the CSMA persistence algorithm
(non-persistent, 1-persistent, p-persistent) for
transmission
 If a collision is detected by a station during its transmission
then it should do the following:
 Abort transmission and
 Transmit a jam signal (48 bit) to notify other stations of collision
so that they will discard the transmitted frame also to make sure
that the collision signal will stay until detected by the furthest station
 After sending the jam signal, backoff (wait) for a random amount
of time, then
 Transmit the frame again
CSMA/CD
 Question: How long does it take to detect a collision?
 Answer: In the worst case, twice the maximum propagation delay of
the medium
Note: a = maximum propagation delay
CSMA/CD

 Restrictions of CSMA / CD:

 Packet transmission time should be at least as long as the time needed to
detect a collision (2 * maximum propagation delay + jam sequence
transmission time)
 Otherwise, CSMA/CD does not have an advantage over CSMA
Exponential Backoff Algorithm
 Ethernet uses the exponential backoff algorithms to determine the best
duration of the random waiting period after the collision happens
Algorithm:
 Set “slot time” equal to 2*maximum propagation delay + Jam
sequence transmission time (= 51.2 usec for Ethernet 10-Mbps
LAN)
 After Kth collision, select a random number (R) between 0 and
2k –1 and wait for a period equal to (R*slot time) then retransmit
when the medium is idle, for example:
 After first collision (K=1), select a number (R) between 0 and 2 1 –1
{0 ,1} and wait for a period equal to R*slot times (Wait for a period 0
usec or 1x51.2 usec) then retransmit when the medium is idle
 Do not increase random number range, if K=10
  Maximum interval {0 – 1023}
 Give up after 16 unsuccessful attempts and report failure to higher
layers
 Figure 14 Flow diagram for the CSMA/CD

N=0

Wait R*slot time

Choose R between
0 & 2k - 1

K=10 K=N

Yes
No

No
N < 10 N==16
N=N+1

Yes

Abort
Exponential Backoff Algorithm
 Reduces the chance of two waiting stations picking the
same random waiting time
 When network traffic is light, it results in minimum
waiting time before transmission
 As congestion increases ( traffic is high), collisions
increase, stations backoff by larger amounts to reduce the
probability of collision.
 Exponential Back off algorithm gives last-in, first-out
effect
 Stations with no or few collisions will have the chance to transmit
before stations that have waited longer because of their previous
unsuccessful transmission attempts.
Performance of Random Access Protocols
 Simple and easy to implement
 Decentralized (no central device that can fail and bring down the entire
system)
 In low-traffic, packet transfer has low-delay
 However, limited throughput and in heavier traffic, packet delay has no
limit.
 In some cases, a station may never have a chance to transfer its packet.
(unfair protocol)
 A node that has frames to be transmitted can transmit continuously at
the full rate of channel (R) if it is the only node with frames
 If (M) nodes want to transmit, many collisions can occur and the rate
for each node will not be on average R/M