Module 1: Intro to

Networking Protocols
Part 1: The Big Picture
Terminology
• Millions of connected computing devices
• hosts = end systems PC wireless
laptop

smartphone
• running network apps server

• Communication links
• fiber, copper, radio, satellite wireless
links
wired
• transmission rate: bandwidth links

• Packet switches: forward packets (chunks of data)

• routers and switches
router

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“Nuts and Bolts”
• Internet is “network of networks”
• Interconnected mobile, global, home, mobile network
regional ISP, global ISPs, and
institutional and company networks global ISP

• Protocols control sending, receiving

home
of messages network
regional ISP
• TCP, IP, HTTP, DASH, 802.3, 802.11
• Internet standards
• RFC: Request for comments
• IETF: Internet Engineering Task Force
• IEEE Standards
• W3C institutional
network
• and others
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Importance of Protocols
• Protocols define and standardize how to
communicate
• There is a wide range of protocols at various levels
of networking
• as you will see later, there are many application-level,
transport-level, link-layer and very few network-level
protocols
• Protocols we will talk are ”networking protocols”,
but protocols in general exist everywhere
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What is a Protocol?
• Protocols is a specification (formal or informal) that
• defines the format of messages
• order of messages sent and received
• actions taken on message transmission, receipt

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Human Protocol Examples
• Greetings protocol
• format: verbal in English
• order: greeter saying “how’re you doing?” greatee responds “I’m fine”
• actions:
• start greet protocol when meet a person
• respond to greeting

• Time checking protocol

• format: verbal in English
• order: ask “what’s the time”, respond by saying the current time
• actions:
• when need to know time, find a person and execute time checking protocol
• respond to question if know the time, run away if not

• Question asking protocol

• Going to party protocol
• …
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Network Protocol
• Quite similar to human protocols, but need to be formally defined
• define formats, messages, language, channel, etc.
• set up order of messages and responses
• define actions when to start, how to respond, etc.
• All communication activity in Internet governed by protocols formally
defined by multiple entities
• IETF
• TCP, UDP, etc.
• IEEE
• 802.3 (Ethernet), 802.11 (WiFi), and may more
• 3GPP
• GSM, LTE, 5G
• and many other organizations
• protocol doesn’t have to be standardized to be protocol or be used on the Internet
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Comparison of a Human (time) and Computer (TCP) Protocols

• Human Protocol • Computer (TCP) Protocol

Hi TCP connection
request

Hi TCP connection
response

Got the
time? Get http://foobar.com

2:00 <file>
time

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Different Views on Networking

• Application view
Transpo
• Transport view r t View

iew
• Network-level view

on V
icati
• Link-level view

Appl
Ne
tw o
rk-
Lev
el Vie
w
Link-Level View

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Application View

My Laptop -
Running web Web Server
browser www.cnn.com
Internet

client server
(Chrome, Safari, Firefox, ...) (Apache, etc)
• The application programs talk to each other using application protocols (for web, protocol = HTTP)
• Network is not directly considered by application application: apps just realize whatever data retrieval logic they
need
• Application protocol view
• They assume network provides a way to send data to any hosts on the Internet
• They don’t know or care how the data is sent; do care whether it is delivered reliably
• They run on top of transport protocols that take care of how data gets sent
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Application Protocol Roles
• They are the Infrastructure that provides services
to applications:
• Web, VoIP, email, games, e-commerce, social nets, …
• They provide programming interface to applications
• hooks that allow sending and receiving app programs to
“connect” to Internet
• provides service options, analogous to postal service

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Application Layer Protocols
• Covered in Module 3
• Basic objective: understand common application
protocols:
• Web: Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Secure Hyper-Text
Transfer Protocol (HTTPS)
• Email: Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP)
• Domain Name System (DNS)
• More important objective: design issues
• What kinds of services required from the network?
• How does the choice of services impact application design?
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Transport View
My Laptop -
Running web Web Server
browser www.cnn.com
Internet

• Assuming application protocols take care of data content

• Transport protocol's job: delivering data between communicating ends (sockets of
the app)
• Transport protocols
• Don’t know or care about which paths data may traverse through the network
• Do care about
• (1) delivering data to the right application process,
• (2) delivery reliability,
• (3) congestion control 13
Transport Layer Protocols
• Covered in Module 4
• Objectives
• Identify roles of the transport layer protocols in general
• Learn principles of implementing reliable data delivery over unreliable
channels
• Learn principles of the congestion control
• Learn common transport protocol operations
• Unreliable data delivery: UDP (User Datagram Protocol)
• Reliable data delivery: TCP (Transport Control Protocol)
• Reliable delivery over potentially unreliable network
• Understanding and managing network delays
• Coping with congestion

But transport protocols don’t really do the delivery!

• Pass data to network protocols to do the job
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Network Layer View

ISP B

ISP A Internet
ISP E ISP C

ISP D

• Assuming higher layer protocols handle data content, reliability,

congestion
• Network's job: forward data from source to destination
• Do care about: which way to forward data at each step?
• Why is this hard?
• Because the Internet is huge!
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Internet connectivity

ISP B

ISP A Internet
ISP E ISP C

ISP D

• Consider the connection from laptop to CNN.com:

• WiFi  campus backbone  ISP  other ISP  CNN website
• Access Networks
• Connect end system to local network
• Some local network router connects to ISP router
• ISP interconnect with each other to form the Internet
• Each ISP consists of many links and routers 16
Tools to Check Internet Connectivity
✔ 13:48 ~ $ ping google.com

• ping PING google.com (172.217.1.110): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 172.217.1.110: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=1.569 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.1.110: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=1.653 ms
^C
• check reachability to --- google.com ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.569/1.611/1.653/0.042 ms
a host on the ✔ 13:50 ~ $ ping 2.2.2.2
PING 2.2.2.2 (2.2.2.2): 56 data bytes
internet Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
^C
--- 2.2.2.2 ping statistics ---

• traceroute 3 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss

✔ 13:48 ~ $ traceroute google.com

• estimate path traceroute to google.com (172.217.1.110), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 cr1 (131.94.145.4) 0.464 ms 0.213 ms 0.198 ms
2 fw1 (131.94.131.92) 0.139 ms 0.136 ms 0.132 ms
packets take when 3 br1 (131.94.134.134) 0.288 ms 0.261 ms 0.254 ms
4 wr2.fiu.edu (131.94.192.26) 1.092 ms 0.971 ms 1.015 ms
5 198.32.155.77 (198.32.155.77) 1.525 ms 1.854 ms 1.676 ms
forwarded through 6 74.125.48.234 (74.125.48.234) 1.217 ms 1.140 ms 1.163 ms
7 108.170.253.1 (108.170.253.1) 2.692 ms
108.170.253.17 (108.170.253.17) 1.676 ms
the Internet 108.170.253.1 (108.170.253.1) 2.546 ms
8 216.239.57.131 (216.239.57.131) 1.621 ms
216.239.57.169 (216.239.57.169) 1.647 ms
216.239.57.131 (216.239.57.131) 1.760 ms
9 yyz08s09-in-f110.1e100.net (172.217.1.110) 1.605 ms 1.631 ms 1.613 ms

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Network Layer Protocols

• Covered in Module 5
• There are different types of networks
• Circuit-switched versus packet-switched
• Internet: packet-switched networks
• Network layer provides best effort delivery of packets
• Don’t care exactly how a packet is delivered from
one node to next
• That's the job for link layer protocols

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Link Layer View

• Link can be twisted pair, coaxial cable, fiber optic, or wireless

(multiple types)
• Link layer job: Get a packet sent across some medium
• Different medium  different link layer protocol
• Covered in Module 6
• Borders on Electrical Engineering: running on top of physical layer
• Our objective is to understand technology
• How the network is built
• How do link layer features impact higher layers designs?
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TCP/IP Protocol Stack
• Application
• Support data exchange between app. processes
• Examples: HTTP, SMTP, DASH, VoIP
• Transport application
• handling delivery reliability, multiplex within a host
transport
• Examples: TCP, UDP
• Internet internet
• forward packets from source to destination
• IPv4, IPv6, routing protocols link
• Link layer: physical
• transfer data between directly connected network elements
• Ethernet protocol
• Physical: bits “on the wire”
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OSI Protocol Stack

• OSI stack was proposed, but not actually fully realized

• Similar to TCP/IP, but has more layers
• Layers
• 7. Application
• 6. Presentation
• 5. Session
• 4. Transport
• 3. Network
• 2. Data link
• 1. Physical
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What “layer” means to a packet

Link
Network Transport Application Application
layer
protocol protocol protocol data
protocol

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Summary
• Internet: made of a huge number of hosts and routers,
interconnected by physical and wireless links
• Hosts: run bunch of protocols to exchange data with each other
• Routers: run bunch of protocols in order to move data to their
destinations
• Protocols are organized in layers:
• Application protocols
• Transport protocols
• Network protocols
• Link layer protocols
• How to calculate packet delays as they move across a network
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Extra Reading

• Internet: "The Big Picture"

"What are the major pieces of the Internet,
and who are the major players in each segment?”
• TCP/IP (Internet) Protocol Layers
• OSI Layering Model

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