TRANSMISSION MODES

The next consideration in transferring data is choosing the appropriate transmission mode. There
are three modes: one which formats the data and allows for restart procedures; one which also
compresses the data for efficient transfer; and one which passes the data with little or no
processing. In this last case the mode interacts with the structure attribute to determine the type
of processing. In the compressed mode, the representation type determines the filler byte.

All data transfers must be completed with an end-of-file (EOF) which may be explicitly stated or
implied by the closing of the data connection. For files with record structure, all the end-of-
record markers (EOR) are explicit, including the final one. For files transmitted in page structure
a "last-page" page type is used.

NOTE: In the rest of this section, byte means "transfer byte" except where explicitly stated
otherwise.

For the purpose of standardized transfer, the sending host will translate its internal end of line or
end of record denotation into the representation prescribed by the transfer mode and file
structure, and the receiving host will perform the inverse translation to its internal denotation. An
IBM Mainframe record count field may not be recognized at another host, so the end-of-record
information may be transferred as a two byte control code in Stream mode or as a flagged bit in a
Block or Compressed mode descriptor. End-of-line in an ASCII or EBCDIC file with no record
structure should be indicated by <CRLF> or <NL>, respectively. Since these transformations
imply extra work for some systems, identical systems transferring non-record structured text files
might wish to use a binary representation and stream mode for the transfer.

STREAM MODE

The data is transmitted as a stream of bytes. There is no restriction on the representation type
used; record structures are allowed.

In a record structured file EOR and EOF will each be indicated by a two-byte control code. The
first byte of the control code will be all ones, the escape character. The second byte will have the
low order bit on and zeros elsewhere for EOR and the second low order bit on for EOF; that is,
the byte will have value 1 for EOR and value 2 for EOF. EOR and EOF may be indicated
together on the last byte transmitted by turning both low order bits on (i.e., the value 3). If a byte
of all ones was intended to be sent as data, it should be repeated in the second byte of the control
code.

If the structure is a file structure, the EOF is indicated by the sending host closing the data
connection and all bytes are data bytes
BLOCK MODE

The file is transmitted as a series of data blocks preceded by one or more header bytes. The
header bytes contain a count field, and descriptor code. The count field indicates the total length
of the data block in bytes, thus marking the beginning of the next data block (there are no filler
bits). The descriptor code defines: last block in the file (EOF) last block in the record (EOR),
restart marker (see the Section on Error Recovery and Restart) or suspect data (i.e., the data
being transferred is suspected of errors and is not reliable). This last code is NOT intended for
error control within FTP. It is motivated by the desire of sites exchanging certain types of data
(e.g., seismic or weather data) to send and receive all the data despite local errors (such as
"magnetic tape read errors"), but to indicate in the transmission that certain portions are suspect).
Record structures are allowed in this mode, and any representation type may be used.

The header consists of the three bytes. Of the 24 bits of header information, the 16 low order bits
shall represent byte count, and the 8 high order bits shall represent descriptor codes as shown
below.

Block Header

+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| Descriptor | Byte Count |
| 8 bits | 16 bits |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+

The descriptor codes are indicated by bit flags in the descriptor byte. Four codes have been
assigned, where each code number is the decimal value of the corresponding bit in the byte.

Code Meaning

128 End of data block is EOR

64 End of data block is EOF
32 Suspected errors in data block
16 Data block is a restart marker

With this encoding, more than one descriptor coded condition may exist for a particular block.
As many bits as necessary may be flagged.

The restart marker is embedded in the data stream as an integral number of 8-bit bytes
representing printable characters in the language being used over the control connection (e.g.,
default--NVT-ASCII). <SP> (Space, in the appropriate language) must not be used WITHIN a
restart marker.

For example, to transmit a six-character marker, the following would be sent:

+--------+--------+--------+
|Descrptr| Byte count |
|code= 16| = 6 |
+--------+--------+--------+
 +--------+--------+--------+
| Marker | Marker | Marker |
| 8 bits | 8 bits | 8 bits |
+--------+--------+--------+

+--------+--------+--------+
| Marker | Marker | Marker |
| 8 bits | 8 bits | 8 bits |
+--------+--------+--------+

COMPRESSED MODE

There are three kinds of information to be sent: regular data, sent in a byte string; compressed
data, consisting of replications or filler; and control information, sent in a two-byte escape
sequence. If n>0 bytes (up to 127) of regular data are sent, these n bytes are preceded by a byte
with the left-most bit set to 0 and the right-most 7 bits containing the number n.

Byte string:

1 7 8 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|0| n | | d(1) | ... | d(n) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
^ ^
|---n bytes---|
of data

String of n data bytes d(1),..., d(n)

Count n must be positive.

To compress a string of n replications of the data byte d, the following 2 bytes are sent:

Replicated Byte:

2 6 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1 0| n | | d |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

A string of n filler bytes can be compressed into a single byte, where the filler byte varies with
the representation type. If the type is ASCII or EBCDIC the filler byte is <SP> (Space, ASCII
code 32, EBCDIC code 64). If the type is Image or Local byte the filler is a zero byte.

Filler String:

2 6
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1 1| n |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
The escape sequence is a double byte, the first of which is the escape byte (all zeros) and the
second of which contains descriptor codes as defined in Block mode. The descriptor codes have
the same meaning as in Block mode and apply to the succeeding string of bytes.

Compressed mode is useful for obtaining increased bandwidth on very large network
transmissions at a little extra CPU cost. It can be most effectively used to reduce the size of
printer files such as those generated by RJE hosts.

A simplex connection is a connection in which the data flows in only one direction, from the transmitter
to the receiver. This type of connection is useful if the data do not need to flow in both directions (for
example, from your computer to the printer or from the mouse to your computer...)

A half-duplex connection (sometimes called an alternating connection or semi-duplex) is a connection in

which the data flows in one direction or the other, but not both at the same time. With this type of
connection, each end of the connection transmits in turn. This type of connection makes it possible to
have bidirectional communications using the full capacity of the line.
Serial and parallel transmission

The transmission mode refers to the number of elementary units of information (bits) that can
be simultaneously translated by the communications channel. In fact, processors (and therefore
computers in general) never process (in the case of recent processors) a single bit at a time;
generally they are able to process several (most of the time it is 8: one byte), and for this reason
the basic connections on a computer are parallel connections.

Parallel connection

Parallel connection means simultaneous transmission of N bits. These bits are sent
simultaneously over N different channels (a channel being, for example, a wire, a cable or any
other physical medium). The parallel connection on PC-type computers generally requires 10
wires.

hese channels may be:

 N physical lines: in which case each bit is sent on a physical line (which is why parallel
cables are made up of several wires in a ribbon cable)
 one physical line divided into several sub-channels by dividing up the bandwidth. In this
case, each bit is sent at a different frequency...

Since the conductive wires are close to each other in the ribbon cable, interference can occur
(particularly at high speeds) and degrade the signal quality...
Serial connection

In a serial connection, the data are sent one bit at a time over the transmission channel. However,
since most processors process data in parallel, the transmitter needs to transform incoming
parallel data into serial data and the receiver needs to do the opposite.

These operations are performed by a communications controller (normally a UART (Universal

Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) chip). The communications controller works in the
following manner:

 The parallel-serial transformation is performed using a shift register. The shift register,
working together with a clock, will shift the register (containing all of the data presented
in parallel) by one position to the left, and then transmit the most significant bit (the
leftmost one) and so on:

 The serial-parallel transformation is done in almost the same way using a shift register. The
shift register shifts the register by one position to the left each time a bit is received, and then
transmits the entire register in parallel when it is full:
Synchronous and asynchronous transmission

Given the problems that arise with a parallel-type connection, serial connections are normally
used. However, since a single wire transports the information, the problem is how to synchronise
the transmitter and receiver, in other words, the receiver can not necessarily distinguish the
characters (or more generally the bit sequences) because the bits are sent one after the other.
There are two types of transmission that address this problem:

 An asynchronous connection, in which each character is sent at irregular intervals in

time (for example a user sending characters entered at the keyboard in real time). So, for
example, imagine that a single bit is transmitted during a long period of silence... the
receiver will not be able to know if this is 00010000, 10000000 or 00000100...
To remedy this problem, each character is preceded by some information indicating the
start of character transmission (the transmission start information is called a START bit)
and ends by sending end-of-transmission information (called STOP bit, there may even
be several STOP bits).
 In a synchronous connection, the transmitter and receiver are paced by the same clock.
The receiver continuously receives (even when no bits are transmitted) the information at
the same rate the transmitter send it. This is why the transmitter and receiver are paced at
the same speed. In addition, supplementary information is inserted to guarantee that there
are no errors during transmission.

During synchronous transmission, the bits are sent successively with no separation between each
character, so it is necessary to insert synchronisation elements; this is called character-level
synchronisation.

The main disadvantage of synchronous transmission is recognising the data at the receiver, as
there may be differences between the transmitter and receiver clocks. That is why each data
transmission must be sustained long enough for the receiver to distinguish it. As a result, the
transmission speed can not be very high in a synchronous link.