Computer Networks

SYLLABUS
• Textbook
– Andrew S. Tanenbaum. Computer Networks
(Fourth Edition), Prentice Hall PTR.
• References
– W. Richard Stevens. TCP/IP Illustrated,
Volume 1: The Protocols, Addison Wesley.
– B. Forozan. Dta Communication and Network.
Highlights of the Course
• Understand the principles of computer
networks
• Understand the construction of modern
networks
• Study the principles of the popular
network protocol suit —— TCP/IP
• Learn how to use the network and the
popular networked applications
• Study the basic knowledge of network
programming
Part I

Introduction
“The kingdom of God is like a net…”
--Matthew 13:47

Our Society is a Network.. Social Network

 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The Historical Perspective
– The 18th century: the great mechanical
systems accompanying the Industrial
Revolution.
– The 19th century: steam engine.
– The 20th century: information gathering,
processing, and distribution.
– The 21th century: Internet, large
distributed systems (e.g., Grid), heavy
reliance on computers.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• What is Computer Network?
– we will use the term ''computer network''
to mean a collection of autonomous
computers interconnected by a single
technology.
– Two computers are said to be
interconnected if they are able to
exchange information.
– copper wire; fiber optics, microwaves,
infrared, and communication satellites, etc.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• A very simple network (Problems)
– Digital-Analog ; Analog-Digital.
– What if error happens?
– Capture of physical lines – short message.
– Routing.
– Channel utilization (flow control).
– Who say first?
– Masking the details.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Network Hardware (transmission technologies)
– Broadcast
• Broadcast networks have a single communication channel
that is shared by all the machines on the network. Short
messages, called packets in certain contexts, sent by any
machine are received by all the others. (Address Checking
required)
– Point-to-point
• In point-to-point networks, there consist of many
connections between individual pairs of machines.
– As a general rule (although there are many exceptions),
smaller, geographically localized networks tend to use
broadcasting, whereas larger networks usually are point-to-
point.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Network Hardware (Scale Perspective)
– personal area networks (1m)
– LAN: local area networks (10m ~ 1km)
– MAN: metropolitan area networks (10km)
– WAN: wide area network (100km ~ 1000km)
– Internet
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• LAN: local area network
– Local area networks, generally called LANs, are
privately-owned networks within a single building
or campus of up to a few kilometers in size.
– LANs may use a transmission technology consisting
of a cable to which all the machines are attached.
– Traditional LANs run at speeds of 10 Mbps to 1000
Mbps, have low delay (microseconds or
nanoseconds), and make very few errors.
– Various topologies are
possible for broadcast
LANs.

(a) Bus (b) Ring

 Introduction (Cont’d)
• MAN: metropolitan area network
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• WAN and Internet
– Hosts, The hosts are owned by the customers (e.g.,
people's personal computers).
– Subnet, typically owned and operated by a
telephone company or Internet service provider
(ISP).
– The hosts are connected by subnets.
– the subnet consists of two distinct components:
transmission lines and switching elements.
Transmission lines move bits between machines.
Switching elements (routers) are specialized
computers that connect three or more
transmission lines.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• WAN and Internet

Simple WAN (Internet) illustrated

Packets routing
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Wireless Networks
– Bluetooth: short range wireless network (<10m).
– Wireless LANs: for moderate range, becomes more
and more common today (<100m).
– network used for cellular telephones: distances
involved are much greater and the bit rates much
lower (above 1km).
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Network Software
– Protocol Hierarchies
– Design Issues for the Layers
– Connection-Oriented and Connectionless
Services
– Service Primitives
– The Relationship of Services to Protocols
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Protocol Hierarchies
– To reduce their design complexity, most networks
are organized as a stack of layers or levels, each
one built upon the one below it.
– The purpose of each layer is to offer certain
services to the higher layers, shielding those
layers from the details of how the offered
services are actually implemented.
– A protocol is an agreement between the
communicating parties on how communication is to
proceed.
 Introduction (Cont’d)

The philosophers analogy The layered computer network

 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The key terms
– Layers; Protocol;
– Interface: Between each pair of adjacent
layers is an interface.
– Network architecture: A set of layers and
protocols is called a network architecture.
– Protocol stack: A list of protocols used by a
certain system, one protocol per layer, is
called a protocol stack.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• An example network protocol stack
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Message is generated by the application of the source machine.
• Message will be sent from the source to the destination.
• Message “M” is transferred from layer 5 to layer 4, with a
header containing control information, such as sequence numbers,
which helps layer 4 maintain the message order.
• Layer 3 break the message from layer 4 into two pieces to fit
the transmission restrictions, while adding another header to
tell layer 2 where the dest. is.
• Layer 2 adds the messages from layer 3 with another header,
telling the actual (physical) address of the dest, and a trailer,
which is the checksum of the message for correction assertion.
• At the receiving machine the message moves upward, from layer
to layer, with headers being stripped off as it progresses.
Message is sent to the dest. machine.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Design Issues for the Layers
– Every layer needs a mechanism for identifying senders and
receivers. (who to talk with)
– The protocol must also determine how many logical channels
the connection corresponds to and what their priorities are.
(simplex or duplex? single or multiple channel?)
– Error control is an important issue because physical
communication circuits are not perfect.
– Message ordering is important ‘cause Not all communication
channels preserve the order of messages sent on them.
– An issue that occurs at every level is how to keep a fast
sender from swamping a slow receiver with data.
– Inability of all processes to accept arbitrarily long messages.
(fragmentation and reassembling the messages)
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Connection-Oriented and Connectionless Services?
– Connection-Oriented Service: the service user first
establishes a connection, uses the connection, and then
releases the connection. (e.g., the telephone, tube)
– Connectionless Service: Each message carries the full
destination address, and each one is routed through the
system independent of all the others. (e.g., the postal system)
Usually, connectionless service can not guarantee the order
of messages.
– In order to enhance the reliability of transmission of
connection-oriented service, acknowledge each received
message is helpful. For example, the file transfer.
– However, some applications prefer fast speed than the
reliability. For example, the digitized voice traffic, video
conference.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Six different types of service

both reliable and unreliable connection-oriented and connectionless

communication coexist
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Service Primitives

Common Primitives

Packets sent in a simple client-server interaction on a

connection-oriented network
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Reference Models
– OSI reference model
• developed by the International Standards Organization
(ISO)
• OSI means Open Systems Interconnection
• It is rarely used today, while it is actually quite general
and still valid, and the features discussed at each layer
are still very important.
• OSI model itself is not a network architecture because it
does not specify the exact services and protocols to be
used in each layer.
– TCP/IP reference model.
• developed by ARPANET
• Used to construct the Internet today
• However, the model itself is not of much use
Introduction (Cont’d)

OSI model
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The Physical Layer
– The physical layer is concerned with transmitting raw bits
over a communication channel.
– Typical questions here are how many volts should be used to
represent a 1 and how many for a 0, how many nanoseconds a
bit lasts, whether transmission may proceed simultaneously in
both directions, how the initial connection is established and
how it is torn down when both sides are finished, and how
many pins the network connector has and what each pin is
used for.
• The Data Link Layer
– The main task of the data link layer is to transform a raw
transmission facility into a line that appears free of
undetected transmission errors to the network layer.
– having the sender break up the input data into data frames
and transmit the frames sequentially
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The Network Layer
– The network layer controls the operation of the subnet
(routing).
– Congestion control, QOS (quality of service)
• The Transport Layer
– The basic function of the transport layer is to accept data
from above, split it up into smaller units if need be, pass
these to the network layer, and ensure that the pieces all
arrive correctly at the other end.
– The transport layer is a true end-to-end layer, all the way
from the source to the destination.
– layers 1 through 3 are chained, and layers 4 through 7 are
end-to-end,
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The Session Layer
– The session layer allows users on different
machines to establish sessions between them.
Sessions offer various services, including dialog
control, token management, and synchronization.
• The Presentation Layer
– concerned with the syntax and semantics of the
information transmitted, to make it possible for
computers with different data representations to
communicate.
• The Application Layer
– The application layer contains a variety of
protocols that are commonly needed by users.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The TCP/IP Reference Model

The TCP/IP reference model

 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The Internet Layer
– Its job is to permit hosts to inject packets into
any network and have them travel independently to
the destination (potentially on a different
network). They may even arrive in a different
order than they were sent, in which case it is the
job of higher layers to rearrange them, if in-order
delivery is desired.
– The internet layer defines an official packet
format and protocol called IP (Internet Protocol).
The job of the internet layer is to deliver IP
packets where they are supposed to go.
– The underlining Host-to-Network Layer is a great
void. host connected to this layer can send IP
packets.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The Transport Layer
– It is designed to allow peer entities on the source
and destination hosts to carry on a conversation
– Two end-to-end transport protocols have been
defined here. The first one, TCP (Transmission
Control Protocol), is a reliable connection-oriented
protocol that allows a byte stream originating on
one machine to be delivered without error on any
other machine in the internet.
– The second protocol in this layer, UDP (User
Datagram Protocol), is an unreliable, connectionless
protocol for applications that do not want TCP's
sequencing or flow control and wish to provide
their own.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The Application Layer
– The TCP/IP model does not have session or
presentation layers, which are of little use to most
applications.
– It contains all the higher-level protocols. The early
ones included virtual terminal (TELNET), file
transfer (FTP), and electronic mail (SMTP). Many
other protocols have been added to these over the
years: the Domain Name System (DNS) for
mapping host names onto their network addresses,
NNTP, the protocol for moving USENET news
articles around, and HTTP, the protocol for
fetching pages on the World Wide Web, and many
others.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Comparison of the OSI and TCP/IP Reference Models
– Similarities
• Both are based on the concept of a stack of independent
protocols.
• Both of them have transport layer to provide an end-to-end,
network-independent transport service
– Differences
• In OSI, a layer's service definition tells what the layer does,
and a layer's interface tells the processes above it how to
access it, without explaining how the layers works inside.
• The TCP/IP model did not clearly distinguish between service,
interface of the layers.
• As a consequence, the protocols in the OSI model are better
hidden than in the TCP/IP model and can be replaced relatively
easily as the technology changes.
• OSI model strives to describe the general model of network
protocols, while TCP/IP model is specific as it is defined after
the real implementations. So TCP/IP model is not useful to
describe other protocols.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• The hybrid reference model to be used
in this book.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Example Networks —— The Internet 1

(a) Structure of the telephone system.

(b) Baran's proposed distributed switching system.
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Example Networks —— The Internet 2

The original ARPANET design (IMP means Interface

Message Processors)
 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Example Networks —— The Internet 3

The NSFNET backbone in 1988

 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Example Networks —— The Internet 4

Architecture of the Internet today

 Introduction (Cont’d)
• Network Standardization

The IEEE 802 series standards. The important ones are

marked with *. The ones marked with ↓ are hibernating. The
one marked with t gave up and disbanded itself.
 Introduction
• Metric Units

Take care of “B” and “b”, “B” means byte, while “b” stands bit.
E.g., 1 KB/s = 8 Kb/s. B/s = Bps, b/s = bps.
1K = 210 ≠ 103 ≈ 1,000
1K = 210; 1M = 220; 1G = 230 …