The Medium

Access Control
Sublayer

114

Ethernet XP

❑ Physical layer
❑ MAC sublayer protocol
❑ Ethernet performance
❑ Switched Ethernet
❑ Fast Ethernet
❑ Gigabit Ethernet
❑ 10 Gigabit Ethernet
❑ IEEE 802.2: Logical Link Control
❑ Retrospective on Ethernet

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 Ethernet XP

❑ We have now finished our discussion of channel

allocation protocols in the abstract, so it is time to see
how these principles apply to real systems.
❑ Many of the designs for personal, local, and metropolitan
area networks have been standardized under the name
of IEEE 802.
❑ The most important of the survivors are 802.3 (Ethernet)
and 802.11 (wireless LAN).
❑ Bluetooth (wireless PAN) is widely deployed but has now
been standardized outside of 802.15.
❑ With 802.16 (wireless MAN), it is too early to tell.

116

Ethernet XP

❑ Classical Ethernet
❑ which solves the multiple access problem using the techniques we have
studied till now
❑ Data rate is 3 to 10 Mbps
❑ Switched Ethernet: in which devices called switches are used to connect
different computers.
❑ Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps)
❑ Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps)
❑ 10 gigabit Ethernet (10,000 Mbps)
❑ In practice, only switched Ethernet is used nowadays.
❑ Since Ethernet and IEEE 802.3 are identical except for a minor
difference many people use the terms ‘‘Ethernet’’ and ‘‘IEEE 802.3’’
interchangeably.

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 Classical Ethernet XP

❑ Bob Metcalfe with David Boggs designed and

implemented the first local area network in 1976 in
Xerox Palo Alto Lab.
❑ It used a single long thick coaxial cable.
❑ Speed 3 Mbps.
❑ Ethernet – luminiferous ether, through which
electromagnetic radiation was once thought to
propagate.
❑ Successful designed that was later drafted as
standard in 1978 by Xerox, DEC, Intel with a 10 Mbps.
❑ In 1983 it became the IEEE 802.3 standard

119

Classic Ethernet Physical Layer XP

Architecture of classic Ethernet

120

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 Classical Ethernet XP

❑ Thick Ethernet – a thick cable. Segment could

be as long as 500 m. Could be used to connect
up to 100 computers.
❑ Thin Ethernet – BNC connectors. Segment
could be no longer than 185 m. Could be used
to connect up to 30 computers.
❑ For a large length connectivity the cables could
be connected by repeaters.
❑ Repeater is a physical layer device that
receives, amplifies, and retransmits signals in
both directions.

121

Classical Ethernet XP

❑ Over each of those cables the signal was

coded using Manchester encoding.
❑ Other restriction was that no two
transceivers could be more than 2.5 km
apart and no path between any two
transceivers could traverse more than four
repeaters.
❑ This limitation was impose due to the MAC
protocol used.

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 MAC Sublayer Protocol (1) XP

The format used to send frames is shown in

the figure

(a) Ethernet (DIX). (b) IEEE 802.3.

124

Classic Ethernet MAC Sublayer Protocol XP

❑ Format to send frames is shown in the figure of the
previous slide.

1. Preamble – 8 bytes
❑ 7 bytes contains 10101010 and 10101011 <- Start
of Frame Delimiter (802.3).
❑ The Manchester encoding of this pattern produces
10-MHz wave for 6.4 msec – used for
synchronization.
❑ The last two bits indicate the start of the frame.

125

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 Classic Ethernet MAC Sublayer Protocol XP
2. Two addresses each 6 bytes – destination +
source
❑ First bit of the destination address is 0 for ordinary
addresses and 1 for group addresses.
❑ Group address allow multiple destinations to listen to a
single address – Multicasting.
❑ Special address consisting of all 1 is reserved for
broadcasting.
❑ Uniqueness of the addresses:
➢ First 3 bytes are used for (Organizationally Unique Identifier)
➢ Blocks of 224 addresses are assigned to a manufacturer.
➢ Manufacturer assigns the last 3 bytes of the address and
programs the complete address into the NIC.

126

MAC Sublayer Protocol XP

3. Type or Length field.

❑ Depending whether the frame is Ethernet or IEEE
802.3
❑ Ethernet uses a Type field to tell the receiver
what to do with the frame.
❑ Multiple network-layer protocols may be in use at
the same time on the same machine. So when
Ethernet frame arrives, the operating system has
to know which one to hand the frame to. The
Type field specifies which process to give the
frame to. E.g. 0x0800 indicates the frame
contains IPv4 packet.

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 MAC Sublayer Protocol XP

❑ Length of the field could be carried as well.

❑ Ethernet length was determined by looking
inside the data – a layer violation.
❑ Added another header for the Logical Link
Control (LLC) protocol within the data. It
uses 8 bytes to convey the 2 bytes of
protocol type information.
❑ Rule: Any number greater than 0x600 can be
interpreted a Type otherwise is considered to
be Length.

129

MAC Sublayer Protocol XP

4. Data Field
❑ Up to 1500 bytes.

❑ Minimum frame length – valid frames must be at

least 64 bytes long – from destination address
to checksum.
❑ If data portion is less than 46 bytes the Pad field
is used to fill out the frame to the minimum size.
❑ Minimum frame length also serves one very
important role – prevents the sender to
complete transmission before the first bit arrives
at the destination.

130

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 MAC Sublayer Protocol (2) XP

Collision detection can take as long as 2.

131

MAC Sublayer Protocol XP

❑ 10 Mbps LAN with a maximum length of 2500

m and four repeaters the round-trip time has
been determined to be nearly 50 msec in the
worst case.
❑ Shortest allowed frame must take at least this
long to transmit.
❑ At 10 Mbps a bit takes 100 nsec

❑ 500 bits (numbit = 10 Mbps X 100 nsec)

rounded up to 512 bits = 64 bytes.

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 MAC Sublayer Protocol XP

4. Checksum
❑ It is a 32-bit CRC of the kind that we have
covered earlier.
❑ Defined as a generator polynomial
described in the textbook.

133

Ethernet Performance XP

❑ Examine the performance of classic Ethernet

under conditions of heavy and constant load,
that is, with k stations always ready to transmit.
❑ If each station transmits during a contention
slot with probability p.
❑ The probability that some station acquires the
channel in that slot A is:
𝐴 = 𝑘𝑝 1 − 𝑝 𝑘−1
❑ A is maximized for p=1/k with A→1/𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝑘→∞.

134

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 Ethernet Performance XP

❑ The probability that contention interval has

exactly j slots in it is A(1-A)j-1.
❑ Mean number of slots per contention is:

∞
𝑗−1
1
෍ 𝑗𝐴 1 − 𝐴 =
𝐴
𝑗=0
❑ Duration of each slot is 2t, the mean
contention interval w is = 2t/A

135

Ethernet Performance XP

❑ Assuming optimal p, the mean number of

contention slots is never more than e, thus
w is at most 2e≈ 5.4.

❑ If the mean frame takes P sec to transmit,

when many stations have frames to send
channel efficiency E
𝑃
𝐸=
𝑃 + 2𝜏/𝐴

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 Ethernet Performance XP

❑ Here we see where the maximum cable

distanced between any two stations enters into
the performance figures.
❑ The longer the cable the longer the contention
interval; This is why the Ethernet standard
specifies the maximum cable length.
❑ It would be instructive to reformulate the
equation in the previous slide in term of the
frame length F, network bandwidth B and the
cable length L, speed of signal propagation c, for
the optimal case e contention slots per frame.

137

Ethernet Performance XP

❑ P = F/B the equation becomes:

1
𝐸=
1 + 2𝐵𝐿𝑒/𝑐𝐹
❑ When the term 2𝐵𝐿𝑒/𝑐𝐹 >> 0 the network
efficiency becomes very low.
❑ Increasing BL; Bandwidth and/or Length of the
cable reduces the efficiency.
❑ This is contrary to the design criteria to have
largest possible bandwidth and longest
connections.
❑ Classical Ethernet will not be able to provide this.

138

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 Ethernet Performance XP

Efficiency of Ethernet at 10 Mbps with 512-bit slot times.

139

Ethernet Performance XP

❑ The theoretical result that Ethernet can

not work that efficiently is flowed due to
several reasons:
❑ Poison distribution of the traffic is not
realistic.
❑ Research focuses on only several
“interesting” cases.
❑ Practical results show otherwise that the
Ethernet works.

140

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 Switched Ethernet XP

❑ Wiring was changed from a long cable architecture to a

more complex architecture:
❑ Each station has a dedicated cable running to a
central hub. (Fig (a) in the next slide).
❑ Adding and removing a station become much easier.

❑ Cable length was reduced to 100 m for telephone

twisted pair wires and to 200 hundred if Category 5
cable was used.
❑ Hubs do not increase capacity – they are equivalent
to the single long cable of classic Ethernet.
➢ As more stations were added the performance of each
station degraded.

141

Switched Ethernet (1) XP

(a) Hub. (b) Switch.

142

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 Switched Ethernet XP

❑ One could solve this problem by increasing

the speech of the basic Ethernet from 1 Mbps
to 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps or even 1 Gbps.
❑ However, multimedia applications requires
even higher bandwidths.
❑ Switch is the solution.
❑ Switch must be able to determine which
frame goes to what station.
❑ Security benefits

❑ No collision can occur.

143

Switched Ethernet (2) XP

Switch

Hub

Switch ports
Twisted pair

An Ethernet switch.

144

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 Fast Ethernet XP

The original fast Ethernet cabling.

145

GigaBit Ethernet XP

❑ After the standard for Fast Ethernet was adopted the

work for yet even faster standard started: GigaBit
Ethernet
❑ Goals:
❑ Increase performance ten fold over Fast Ethernet.

❑ Maintain compatibility with both Classical and Fast

Ethernet.
❑ Unacknowledged datagram service with both unicast
and broadcast.
❑ Use the same 48-bit addressing scheme already in
use,
❑ Maintain the same frame format including minimum
and maximum sizes.

146

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 Gigabit Ethernet (1) XP

A two-station Ethernet

147

Gigabit Ethernet (2) XP

A two-station Ethernet

148

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 Gigabit Ethernet (3) XP

Gigabit Ethernet cabling.

149

10 Gigabit Ethernet XP

Gigabit Ethernet cabling

150

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 Wireless Lans XP

• 802.11 architecture and protocol stack

• 802.11 physical layer
• 802.11 MAC sublayer protocol
• 802.11 frame structure
• Services

151

802.11 Architecture and Protocol Stack (1)

XP

To Network
Access
Point

Client

802.11 architecture – infrastructure mode

152

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 802.11 Architecture and Protocol Stack (2)
XP

802.11 architecture – ad-hoc mode

153

802.11 Architecture and Protocol Stack (3)

XP

Part of the 802.11 protocol stack.

154

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 The 802.11 MAC Sublayer Protocol (1) XP

Sending a frame with CSMA/CA.

155

The 802.11 MAC Sublayer Protocol (2) XP

The hidden terminal problem.

156

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 The 802.11 MAC Sublayer Protocol (3) XP

The exposed terminal problem.

157

The 802.11 MAC Sublayer Protocol (4) XP

The use of virtual channel sensing using CSMA/CA.

158

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 The 802.11 MAC Sublayer Protocol (5) XP

Interframe spacing in 802.11

159

802.11 Frame Structure XP

Format of the 802.11 data frame

160

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 XP
Broadband Wireless

• Comparison of 802.16 with 802.11, 3G

• 802.16 architecture and protocol stack
• 802.16 physical layer
• 802.16 frame structure

161

Comparison of 802.16 with 802.11 and 3G

XP

The 802.16 architecture

162

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 802.16 Architecture and Protocol Stack XP

The 802.16 protocol stack

163

802.16 Physical Layer XP

Frames structure for OFDMA with time division duplexing.

164

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 XP
802.16 MAC Sublayer Protocol
Classes of service

1. Constant bit rate service.

2. Real-time variable bit rate service.

3. Non-real-time variable bit rate service.

4. Best-effort service.

165

802.16 Frame Structure XP

(a) A generic frame. (b) A bandwidth request frame.

166

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 Data Link Layer Switching XP

• Uses of bridges
• Learning bridges
• Spanning tree bridges
• Repeaters, hubs, bridges, switches,
routers, and gateways
• Virtual LANs

167

Uses of bridges XP

❑ An Organization may have different departments having

their own LAN, and later, there is a need for interaction.
❑ Multiple LANs come into existence due to the autonomy of their
owners.
❑ The organization may be geographically spread over
several buildings separated by considerable distances.
❑ It may be cheaper to have separate LANs in each building and
connect them with bridges and a few long-distance fiber optic links
than to run all the cables to a single central switch.
❑ It may be necessary to split what is logically a single LAN
into separate LANs (connected by bridges) to
accommodate the load.
❑ There are more computers than ports on any Ethernet hub and
more stations than allowed on a single classic Ethernet.

168

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 Uses of bridges XP

❑ Even if it were possible to wire all the workstations together,

putting more stations on an Ethernet hub or classic Ethernet
would not add capacity.
❑ All of the stations share the same, fixed amount of bandwidth. The more
stations there are, the less average bandwidth per station.
❑ However, two separate LANs have twice the capacity of a single
LAN.
❑ Bridges let the LANs be joined together while keeping this
capacity.
❑ The key is not to send traffic onto ports where it is not needed, so that each
LAN can run at full speed.
❑ This behavior also increases reliability, since on a single LAN a defective
node that keeps outputting a continuous stream of garbage can clog up the
entire LAN.
❑ By deciding what to forward and what not to forward, bridges act like fire
doors in a building.

169

Uses of bridges XP

❑ To make these benefits easily available, ideally bridges should be

completely transparent.
❑ It should be possible to go out and buy bridges, plug the LAN cables into the
bridges, and have everything work perfectly, instantly.
❑ There should be no hardware changes required, no software changes
required, no setting of address switches, no downloading of routing tables or
parameters, nothing at all.
❑ Just plug in the cables and walk away.
❑ Furthermore, the operation of the existing LANs should not be
affected by the bridges at all.
❑ As far as the stations are concerned
❑ There should be no observable difference whether or not they are part of a
bridged LAN.
❑ It should be as easy to move stations around the bridged LAN as it is to
move them around a single LAN.

170

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 Learning Bridges XP

❑ Surprisingly enough, it is actually possible to create

bridges that are transparent.
❑ Two algorithms are used:
❑ a backward learning algorithm to stop traffic being sent
where it is not needed; and
❑ a spanning tree algorithm to break loops that may be
formed when switches are cabled together willy-nilly.

171

Learning Bridges XP

Bridge connecting two multidrop LANs

172

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 Learning Bridges XP

Bridges (and a hub) connecting seven point-to-point

stations.

173

Learning Bridges XP

❑ A big (hash) table is maintained inside the bridge to know

about the port numbers of all the destination.
❑ When the bridges are first plugged in, all the hash tables
are empty.
❑ None of the bridges know where any of the destinations
are, so they use a flooding algorithm:
❑ every incoming frame for an unknown destination is output on all the
ports to which the bridge is connected except the one it arrived on.
❑ As time goes on, the bridges learn where destinations are.
Once a destination is known, frames destined for it are put
only on the proper port; they are not flooded.
❑ The algorithm used by the bridges is backward learning.

174

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 Learning Bridges XP

❑ The topology can change as machines and bridges are powered up and
down and moved around.
❑ To handle dynamic topologies, whenever a hash table entry is made,
the arrival time of the frame is noted in the entry.
❑ Whenever a frame whose source is already in the table arrives, its entry
is updated with the current time.
❑ Thus, the time associated with every entry tells the last time a frame
from that machine was seen.
❑ Periodically, a process in the bridge scans the hash table and purges all
entries more than a few minutes old.
❑ In this way, if a computer is unplugged from its LAN, moved around the
building, and plugged in again somewhere else, within a few minutes it
will be back in normal operation, without any manual intervention.
❑ This algorithm also means that if a machine is quiet for a few minutes,
any traffic sent to it will have to be flooded until it next sends a frame
itself.

175

Learning Bridges XP

❑ The routing procedure for an incoming frame depends on

the port it arrives on (the source port) and the address to
which it is destined (the destination address).
❑ The procedure is as follows.
❑ If the port for the destination address is the same as the source port, discard
the frame.
❑ If the port for the destination address and the source port are different,
forward the frame on to the destination port.
❑ If the destination port is unknown, use flooding and send the frame on all
ports except the source port.
❑ You might wonder whether the first case can occur with point-to-
point links. The answer is that it can occur if hubs are used to
connect a group of computers to a bridge.

176

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 Learning Bridges XP

❑ As each frame arrives, this algorithm must be applied, so it is

usually implemented with special-purpose VLSI chips.
❑ The chips do the lookup and update the table entry, all in a few
microseconds.
❑ Because bridges only look at the MAC addresses to decide how
to forward frames, it is possible to start forwarding as soon as the
destination header field has come in, before the rest of the frame
has arrived (provided the output line is available, of course).
❑ This design reduces the latency of passing through the bridge, as
well as the number of frames that the bridge must be able to
buffer.
❑ It is referred to as cut-through switching or wormhole routing and
is usually handled in hardware.

177

Learning Bridges XP

Protocol processing at a bridge.

❑ Note that a bridge with k ports will have k instances of MAC

and physical layers. The value of k is 2 for our simple
example.

178

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 Spanning Tree Bridges XP

❑ To increase reliability, redundant links can be used between

bridges.
❑ This design ensures that if one link is cut, the network will not be
partitioned into two sets of computers that cannot talk to each
other.

Bridges with two parallel links

179

Spanning Tree Bridges XP

❑ However, this redundancy introduces some additional problems

because it creates loops in the topology.
❑ An example of these problems can be seen by looking at how a
frame sent by A to a previously unobserved destination is handled
in Fig. of previous slide.
❑ The solution to this difficulty is for the bridges to communicate
with each other and overlay the actual topology with a spanning
tree that reaches every bridge.
❑ In effect, some potential connections between bridges are ignored
in the interest of constructing a fictitious loop-free topology that is
a subset of the actual topology.

180

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 Spanning Tree Bridges (2) XP

A spanning tree connecting five bridges. The dotted lines are

links that are not part of the spanning tree.

181

Spanning Tree Bridges XP

❑ This topology can be thought of as a graph in which the bridges

are the nodes and the point-to-point links are the edges.
❑ The graph can be reduced to a spanning tree, which has no
cycles by definition, by dropping the links shown as dashed lines
in the Figure.
❑ Using this spanning tree, there is exactly one path from every
station to every other station.
❑ Once the bridges have agreed on the spanning tree, all
forwarding between stations follows the spanning tree.
❑ Since there is a unique path from each source to each
destination, loops are impossible.
❑ To build the spanning tree, the bridges run a distributed algorithm.

182

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 Spanning Tree Bridges XP

❑ Each bridge periodically broadcasts a configuration message out

all of its ports to its neighbors and processes the messages it
receives from other bridges, as described next.
❑ The bridges must first choose one bridge to be the root of the spanning tree.
❑ Next, a tree of shortest paths from the root to every bridge is constructed.
❑ To find these shortest paths, bridges include the distance from the root in
their configuration messages.
❑ Each bridge remembers the shortest path it finds to the root.
❑ The bridges then turn off ports that are not part of the shortest path.
❑ Even after the spanning tree has been established, the algorithm
continues to run during normal operation to automatically detect
topology changes and update the tree.

183

Spanning Tree Bridges XP

❑ The algorithm for constructing the spanning tree was invented by

Radia Perlman.
❑ Her job was to solve the problem of joining LANs without loops.
❑ She was given a week to do it, but she came up with the idea for
the spanning tree algorithm in a day.
❑ Fortunately, this left her enough time to write it as a poem
(Perlman, 1985):

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 Poem by Radia Perlman (1985)
XP
Algorithm for Spanning Tree (1)

I think that I shall never see

A graph more lovely than a tree.
A tree whose crucial property
Is loop-free connectivity.
A tree which must be sure to span.
So packets can reach every LAN.
...

185

Poem by Radia Perlman (1985)

XP
Algorithm for Spanning Tree (2)
...
First the Root must be selected
By ID it is elected.
Least cost paths from Root are traced
In the tree these paths are placed.
A mesh is made by folks like me
Then bridges find a spanning tree.

186

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 Repeaters, Hubs, Bridges, Switches,
XP
Routers, and Gateways

(a) Which device is in which layer.

(b) Frames, packets, and headers.

187

Virtual LANs (1) XP

A building with centralized wiring using hubs and a switch.

188

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 Virtual LANs (2) XP

Two VLANs, gray and white, on a bridged LAN.

189

The IEEE 802.1Q Standard (1) XP

Bridged LAN that is only partly VLAN-aware. The

shaded symbols are VLAN aware. The empty ones are
not.

190

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 The IEEE 802.1Q Standard (2) XP

The 802.3 (legacy) and 802.1Q Ethernet frame

formats.

191

XP

The End

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