DATA COMMUNICATION

Data Communications concerns the

transmission of digital messages to devices
external to the message source
 "External" devices are generally thought of
as being independently powered circuitry that
exists beyond the chassis of a computer or
other digital message source.
As a rule, the maximum permissible
transmission rate of a message is directly
proportional to signal power, and inversely
proportional to channel noise.
 DATA COMMUNICATION

 It is the aim of any communications system to

provide the highest possible transmission rate
at the lowest possible power and with the
least possible noise
 Communications Channels
• A communications channel is a pathway over which
information can be conveyed
• It may be defined by a physical wire that connects
communicating devices, or by a radio, laser, or other
radiated energy source that has no obvious physical
presence
• Information sent through a communications channel has a
source from which the information originates, and a
destination to which the information is delivered
• Although information originates from a single source, there
may be more than one destination, depending upon how
many receive stations are linked to the channel and how
much energy the transmitted signal possesses
 Communications Channels

 In a digital communications channel, the information is

represented by individual data bits, which may be encapsulated
into multi-bit message units.
 A byte, which consists of eight bits, is an example of a message
unit that may be conveyed through a digital communications
channel
 A collection of bytes may itself be grouped into a frame or other
higher-level message unit
 Such multiple levels of encapsulation facilitate the handling of
messages in a complex data communications network
Any communications channel has a direction associated with it
 Communications Channels conti’

• The message source is the transmitter, and the

destination is the receiver.
• A channel whose direction of transmission is
unchanging is referred to as a simplex
channel.
• For example, a radio station is a simplex
channel because it always transmits the signal
to its listeners and never allows them to
transmit back
 A half-duplex channel is a single physical
channel in which the direction may be
reversed
 Messages may flow in two directions, but
never at the same time, in a half-duplex
system
 In a telephone call, one party speaks while
the other listens. After a pause, the other
party speaks and the first party listens.
 Speaking simultaneously results in garbled
sound that cannot be understood.
 A full-duplex channel allows simultaneous
message exchange in both directions
 It really consists of two simplex channels, a
forward channel and a reverse channel, linking
the same points
 The transmission rate of the reverse channel
may be slower if it is used only for flow control
of the forward channel
 Serial Communications
 Most digital messages are vastly longer than
just a few bits
 Because it is neither practical nor economic to
transfer all bits of a long message
simultaneously, the message is broken into
smaller parts and transmitted sequentially
 Bit-serial transmission conveys a message one
bit at a time through a channel
Byte-serial transmission conveys eight bits at a
time through eight parallel channels.
 Serial Communications conti’

• Although the raw transfer rate is eight times

faster than in bit-serial transmission, eight
channels are needed, and the cost may be as
much as eight times higher to transmit the
message.
• When distances are short, it may nonetheless
be both feasible and economic to use parallel
channels in return for high data rates
• The popular Centronics printer interface is a
case where byte-serial transmission is used.
 Serial Communications conti’
• As another example, it is common practice to use a
16-bit-wide data bus to transfer data between a
microprocessor and memory chips
• this provides the equivalent of 16 parallel channels.
On the other hand, when communicating with a
timesharing system over a modem, only a single
channel is available, and bit-serial transmission is
required.

•
 Serial Communications conti’
• As another example, it is common practice to use a 16-
bit-wide data bus to transfer data between a
microprocessor and memory chips
• This provides the equivalent of 16 parallel channels. On
the other hand, when communicating with a
timesharing system over a modem, only a single
channel is available, and bit-serial transmission is
required
• This figure illustrates these ideas:
• Each bit represents a part of the message.
• The individual bits are then reassembled at the
destination to compose the message
 Serial Communications conti’
• In general, one channel will pass only one bit
at a time.
• Thus, bit-serial transmission is necessary in
data communications if only a single channel
is available.
• Bit-serial transmission is normally just called
serial transmission and is the chosen
communications method in many computer
peripherals
 TRANSMISSION MEDIA

 The simplest transmission media consists of a pair

of conductors
 In the case of inter-equipment communication it
often takes the form of a flat ribbon cable
containing several lines and a common return wire
 This cable is extremely susceptible to inductive or
capacitive – induced noise signals from neighboring
lines
 Much better noise immunity is obtained by the use
of pairs of wires which are twisted together
 When carrying an analogue signal, it is necessary to
insert an amplifiers to boost signal every 5 or 6 km.
 Baud Rate
• The baud rate refers to the signaling rate at
which data is sent through a channel and is
measured in electrical transitions per second
• In the EIA232 serial interface standard, one
signal transition, at most, occurs per bit, and the
baud rate and bit rate are identical.
• In this case, a rate of 9600 baud corresponds to
a transfer of 9,600 data bits per second with a
bit period of 104 microseconds (1/9600 sec.)
 Channel efficiency
• If two electrical transitions were required for each bit,
as is the case in non-return-to-zero coding, then at a
rate of 9600 baud, only 4800 bits per second could be
conveyed
• The channel efficiency is the number of bits of useful
information passed through the channel per second
• It does not include framing, formatting, and error
detecting bits that may be added to the information
bits before a message is transmitted, and will always
be less than one.
 Data Rate
• The data rate of a channel is often specified by its bit rate (often thought
erroneously to be the same as baud rate)
• However, an equivalent measure channel capacity is bandwidth
• In general, the maximum data rate a channel can support is directly
proportional to the channel's bandwidth and inversely proportional to the
channel's noise level

A communications protocol is an agreed-upon convention that defines the

order and meaning of bits in a serial transmission
• It may also specify a procedure for exchanging messages
• A protocol will define how many data bits compose a message unit, the
framing and formatting bits, any error-detecting bits that may be added, and
other information that governs control of the communications hardware.
• Channel efficiency is determined by the
protocol design rather than by digital
hardware considerations.
• Note that there is a tradeoff between channel
efficiency and reliability - protocols that
provide greater immunity to noise by adding
error-detecting and -correcting codes must
necessarily become less efficient
 Data Rate
• Channel efficiency is determined by the
protocol design rather than by digital hardware
considerations. Note that there is a tradeoff
between channel efficiency and reliability -
protocols that provide greater immunity to
noise by adding error-detecting and -correcting
codes must necessarily become less efficient.
 Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Transmission
• Serialized data is not generally sent at a
uniform rate through a channel
• Instead, there is usually a burst of regularly
spaced binary data bits followed by a pause,
after which the data flow resumes
• Packets of binary data are sent in this manner,
possibly with variable-length pauses between
packets, until the message has been fully
transmitted
 In order for the receiving end to know the proper
moment to read individual binary bits from the
channel, it must know exactly when a packet begins
and how much time elapses between bits
 When this timing information is known, the receiver
is said to be synchronized with the transmitter, and
accurate data transfer becomes possible
 Failure to remain synchronized throughout a
transmission will cause data to be corrupted or lost.
Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Transmission
conti’
• Two basic techniques are employed to ensure
correct synchronization
• In synchronous systems, separate channels are
used to transmit data and timing information
• The timing channel transmits clock pulses to the
receiver
• Upon receipt of a clock pulse, the receiver reads
the data channel and latches the bit value found
on the channel at that moment
Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Transmission
conti’
 The data channel is not read again until the
next clock pulse arrives.
 Because the transmitter originates both the
data and the timing pulses, the receiver will
read the data channel only when told to do so
by the transmitter (via the clock pulse), and
synchronization is guaranteed
 Manchester coding
• Two methods in which a data signal is self-
timed are non-return-to-zero and biphase
Manchester coding.
• both of these refer to methods for encoding a
data stream into an electrical waveform for
transmission.
• In asynchronous systems, a separate timing channel is not
used
• The transmitter and receiver must be preset in advance to
an agreed-upon baud rate
• A very accurate local oscillator within the receiver will then
generate an internal clock signal that is equal to the
transmitter's within a fraction of a percent
• For the most common serial protocol, data is sent in small
packets of 10 or 11 bits, eight of which constitute message
information. When the channel is idle, the signal voltage
corresponds to a continuous logic '1'
 Data packet

 A data packet always begins with a logic '0' (the start

bit) to signal the receiver that a transmission is
starting
 The start bit triggers an internal timer in the receiver
that generates the needed clock pulses
 Following the start bit, eight bits of message data are
sent bit by bit at the agreed upon baud rate The
packet is concluded with a parity bit and stop bit
 One complete packet is illustrated below:
 The packet length is short in asynchronous
systems to minimize the risk that the local
oscillators in the receiver and transmitter will
drift apart
 When high-quality crystal oscillators are used,
synchronization can be guaranteed over an
11-bit period. Every time a new packet is sent,
the start bit resets the synchronization, so the
pause between packets can be arbitrarily long
• Note that the EIA232 standard defines
electrical, timing, and mechanical
characteristics of a serial interface
• However, it does not include the
asynchronous serial protocol shown in the
previous figure
 Parity and Checksums
• Noise and momentary electrical disturbances may cause data to be changed as
it passes through a communications channel
• A parity bit is a single bit added to a binary data transmission used to indicate
if whether the 0's and 1's within that data transmission is an even or odd
number. The parity bit is used in parity error checking to find errors that may
occur during data transmission. In the picture to the right, is an example of a 8-
bit binary number with the ninth digit being the parity bit.

• If the receiver fails to detect this, the received message will be incorrect,
resulting in possibly serious consequences
• As a first line of defense against data errors, they must be detected
• The parity bit, unlike the start and stop bits, is an optional parameter, used in serial communications to
determine if the data character being transmitted is correctly received by the remote device
• Figure 1. Parity
• The parity bit can have one of the following five specifications:
• none Specifies that the local system must not create a parity bit for data characters being transmitted.
It also indicates that the local system does not check for a parity bit in data received from a remote host
• even Specifies that the total number of binary 1s, in a single character, adds up to an even number. If
they do not, the parity bit must be a 1 to ensure that the total number of binary 1s is even. For
example, if the letter a (binary 1100001) is transmitted under even parity, the sending system adds the
number of binary 1s, which in this case is three, and makes the parity bit a 1 to maintain an even
number of binary 1s
• If the letter A (binary 1000001) is transmitted under the same circumstances, the parity bit would be a
0, thus keeping the total number of binary 1s an even number
• odd Operates under the same guidelines as even parity except that the total number of binary 1s must
be an odd number. space Specifies that the parity bit will always be a binary zero. Another term used
for space parity is bit filling, which is derived from its use as a filler for seven-bit data being transmitted
to a device which can only accept eight bit data

• Such devices see the space parity bit as an additional data bit for the transmitted character
• mark Operates under the same guidelines as space parity except that the parity bit is always a binary
1. The mark parity bit acts only as a filler.
• The parity bit for each data packet is computed before the data is transmitted. Below are examples of how a
parity bit would be computed using both odd and even parity settings.
• Odd parity: Initial value: 1010101 (four 1s)
• Parity bit added: 1
• Transmitted value: 10101011
• Result: Odd parity (five 1s)
• Even parity: Initial value: 1010101 (four 1s)
• Parity bit added: 0
• Transmitted value: 10101010
• Result: Even parity (four 1s)
• The value of the parity bit depends on the initial parity of the data. For example, the binary value 10000000 has
an odd parity

• Therefore, a 0 would be added to keep the parity odd and a 1 would be added to give the value an even parity
• While parity checking is a useful way validating data, it is not a foolproof method. For instance, the values 1010
and 1001 have the same parity
• Therefore, if the value 1010 is transmitted and 1001 is received, no error will be detected. This means parity
checks are not 100% reliable when validating data

• Still, it is unlikely that more than one bit will be incorrect in a small packet of data
• As long as only one bit is changed, an error will result. Therefore, parity checks are most reliable when using
small packet sizes
• If an error can be flagged, it might be possible
to request that the faulty packet be resent, or
to at least prevent the flawed data from being
taken as correct
• If sufficient redundant information is sent,
one- or two-bit errors may be corrected by
hardware within the receiver before the
corrupted data ever reaches its destination
• A parity bit is added to a data packet for the purpose of
error detection
• In the even-parity convention, the value of the parity
bit is chosen so that the total number of '1' digits in the
combined data plus parity packet is an even number
• Upon receipt of the packet, the parity needed for the
data is recomputed by local hardware and compared to
the parity bit received with the data
• If any bit has changed state, the parity will not match,
and an error will have been detected. In fact, if an odd
number of bits (not just one) have been altered, the
parity will not match
• If an even number of bits have been reversed, the
parity will match even though an error has
occurred
• However, a statistical analysis of data
communication errors has shown that a single-bit
error is much more probable than a multi-bit error
in the presence of random noise.
• Thus, parity is a reliable method of error detection
• Another approach to error detection involves
the computation of a checksum
• In this case, the packets that constitute a
message are added arithmetically
• A checksum number is appended to the
packet sequence so that the sum of data plus
checksum is zero
• When received, the packet sequence may be
added, along with the checksum, by a local
microprocessor
• If the sum is nonzero, an error has occurred
As long as the sum is zero, it is highly unlikely
(but not impossible) that any data has been
corrupted during transmission
• Errors may not only be detected, but also corrected
if additional code is added to a packet sequence
• If the error probability is high or if it is not possible
to request retransmission, this may be worth doing
• However, including error-correcting code in a
transmission lowers channel efficiency, and results
in a noticeable drop in channel throughput
 Data Compression

• If a typical message were statistically analyzed, it

would be found that certain characters are used
much more frequently than others
• By analyzing a message before it is transmitted, short
binary codes may be assigned to frequently used
characters and longer codes to rarely used characters
• In doing so, it is possible to reduce the total number
of characters sent without altering the information in
the message
• Appropriate decoding at the receiver will restore the
message to its original form
• This procedure, known as data compression,
may result in a 50 percent or greater savings in
the amount of data transmitted
• Even though time is necessary to analyze the
message before it is transmitted, the savings
may be great enough so that the total time for
compression, transmission, and
decompression will still be lower than it would
be when sending an uncompressed message
• Some kinds of data will compress much more
than others
• Data that represents images, for example, will
usually compress significantly, perhaps by as
much as 80 percent over its original size
• Data representing a computer program, on the
other hand, may be reduced only by 15 or 20
percent.
• A compression method called Huffman coding is frequently
used in data communications, and particularly in fax
transmission.
• Clearly, most of the image data for a typical business letter
represents white paper, and only about 5 percent of the
surface represents black ink
• It is possible to send a single code that, for example,
represents a consecutive string of 1000 white pixels rather
than a separate code for each white pixel
• Consequently, data compression will significantly reduce the
total message length for a faxed business letter
• Where the letter made up of randomly distributed black ink
covering 50 percent of the white paper surface, data
compression would hold no advantages
 Data Encryption

• Privacy is a great concern in data communications

• Faxed business letters can be intercepted at will through tapped

phone lines or intercepted microwave transmissions without the
knowledge of the sender or receiver

• To increase the security of this and other data communications,

including digitized telephone conversations, the binary codes
representing data may be scrambled in such a way that unauthorized
interception will produce an indecipherable sequence of characters
• Authorized receive stations will be equipped
with a decoder that enables the message to
be restored. The process of scrambling,
transmitting, and descrambling is known as
encryption.
• Custom integrated circuits have been designed
to perform this task and are available at low cost
• In some cases, they will be incorporated into
the main circuitry of a data communications
device and function without operator
knowledge
• In other cases, an external circuit is used so that
the device, and its encrypting/decrypting
technique, may be transported easily
 Data Storage Technology

• Normally, we think of communications science

as dealing with the contemporaneous
exchange of information between distant
parties
• However, many of the same techniques
employed in data communications are also
applied to data storage to ensure that the
retrieval of information from a storage
medium is accurate
• We find, for example, that similar kinds of
error-correcting codes used to protect digital
telephone transmissions from noise are also
used to guarantee correct readback of digital
data from compact audio disks, CD-ROMs, and
tape backup systems.
 Data Transfer in Digital Circuits
• Data is typically grouped into packets that are either
8, 16, or 32 bits long, and passed between
temporary holding units called registers
• Data within a register is available in parallel because
each bit exits the register on a separate conductor
• To transfer data from one register to another the
output conductors of one register are switched
onto a channel of parallel wires referred to as a bus
• The input conductors of another register, which is
also connected to the bus, capture the information
•
• Following a data transaction, the content of
the source register is reproduced in the
destination register

• It is important to note that after any digital

data transfer, the source and destination
registers are equal; the source register is not
erased when the data is sent
• The transmit and receive switches shown above are
electronic and operate in response to commands from a
central control unit.
• It is possible that two or more destination registers will be
switched on to receive data from a single source.
• However, only one source may transmit data onto the bus
at any time.
• If multiple sources were to attempt transmission
simultaneously, an electrical conflict would occur when bits
of opposite value are driven onto a single bus conductor.
• Such a condition is referred to as a bus contention
• Not only will a bus contention result in the loss of
information, but it also may damage the electronic
circuitry
• As long as all registers in a system are linked to
one central control unit, bus contentions should
never occur if the circuit has been designed
properly
• Note that the data buses within a typical
microprocessor are funda-mentally half-duplex
channels
 Transmission over Short Distances

• When the source and destination registers are part of an

integrated circuit (within a microprocessor chip, for
example), they are extremely close (thousandths of an inch)
• Consequently, the bus signals are at very low power levels,
may traverse a distance in very little time, and are not very
susceptible to external noise and distortion.
• This is the ideal environment for digital communications.
• However, it is not yet possible to integrate all the necessary
circuitry for a computer (i.e., CPU, memory, disk control,
video and display drivers, etc.) on a single chip.
• When data is sent off-chip to another
integrated circuit, the bus signals must be
amplified and conductors extended out of the
chip through external pins. Amplifiers may be
added to the source register
• Bus signals that exit microprocessor chips and other
VLSI circuitry are electrically capable of traversing
about one foot of conductor on a printed circuit
board, or less if many devices are connected to it

• Special buffer circuits may be added to boost the bus

signals sufficiently for transmission over several
additional feet of conductor length, or for distribution
to many other chips (such as memory chips).
 Noise and Electrical Distortion
• Because of the very high switching rate and
relatively low signal strength found on data,
address, and other buses within a computer,
direct extension of the buses beyond the
confines of the main circuit board or plug-in
boards would pose serious problems
• First, long runs of electrical conductors, either on
printed circuit boards or through cables, act like
receiving antennas for electrical noise radiated
by motors, switches, and electronic circuits
• Such noise becomes progressively worse as
the length increases, and may eventually
impose an unacceptable error rate on the bus
signals
• Just a single bit error in transferring an
instruction code from memory to a
microprocessor chip may cause an invalid
instruction to be introduced into the
instruction stream, in turn causing the
computer to totally cease operation
A second problem involves the distortion of
electrical signals as they pass through metallic
conductors
• Signals that start at the source as clean,
rectangular pulses may be received as
rounded pulses with ringing at the rising and
falling edges:
• These effects are properties of transmission
through metallic conductors, and become
more pronounced as the conductor length
increases
• To compensate for distortion, signal power
must be increased or the transmission rate
decreased
• Special amplifier circuits are designed for
transmitting direct (unmodulated) digital
signals through cables
• For the relatively short distances between components on a
printed circuit board or along a computer backplane, the
amplifiers are in simple IC chips that operate from standard +5v
power.
• The normal o These effects are properties of transmission
through metallic conductors, and become more pronounced as
the conductor length increases. To compensate for distortion,
signal power must be increased or the transmission rate
decreased.

Special amplifier circuits are designed for transmitting direct

(unmodulated) digital signals through cables. For the relatively
short distances between components on a printed circuit board
or along a computer backplane, the amplifiers are in simple IC
chips that operate from standard +5v power.
• The normal output voltage from the amplifier for logic
'1' is slightly higher than the minimum needed to pass
the logic '1' threshold.
• Correspondingly for logic '0', it is slightly lower
• The difference between the actual output voltage and
the threshold value is referred to as the noise margin,
and represents the amount of noise voltage that can
be added to the signal without creating an error:
• tput voltage from the amplifier for logic '1' is slightly
higher than the minimum needed to pass the logic '1'
threshold
• Correspondingly for logic '0', it is slightly lower
• The difference between the actual output
voltage and the threshold value is referred to
as the noise margin, and represents the
amount of noise voltage that can be added to
the signal without creating an error:
 Transmission over Medium Distances
• Computer peripherals such as a printer or scanner generally include
mechanisms that cannot be situated within the computer itself
• Our first thought might be just to extend the computer's internal
buses with a cable of sufficient length to reach the peripheral

• Doing so, however, would expose all bus transactions to external

noise and distortion even though only a very small percentage of
these transactions concern the distant peripheral to which the bus is
connected.

If a peripheral can be located within 20 feet of the computer,

however, relatively simple electronics may be added to make data
transfer through a cable efficient and reliable
• To accomplish this, a bus interface circuit is installed in the computer:
• It consists of a holding register for peripheral data, timing and
formatting circuitry for external data transmission, and signal
amplifiers to boost the signal sufficiently for transmission
through a cable
• When communication with the peripheral is necessary, data is
first deposited in the holding register by the microprocessor.
• This data will then be reformatted, sent with error-detecting
codes, and transmitted at a relatively slow rate by digital
hardware in the bus interface circuit
• In addition, the signal power is greatly boosted before
transmission through the cable
• These steps ensure that the data will not be corrupted by
noise or distortion during its passage
• In addition, because only data destined for the
peripheral is sent, the party-line transactions
taking place on the computer's buses are not
unnecessarily exposed to noise.

Data sent in this manner may be transmitted

in byte-serial format if the cable has eight
parallel channels (at least 10 conductors for
half-duplex operation), or in bit-serial format if
only a single channel is available.
Efficient data transmission is highly
dependent on the characteristics of the
transmission medium
correct matching of the selected medium
 The transmission medium is the physical
path between the transmission and receive
 It takes the form of metallic conductors but
it can also be achieved through the
transmission of a light beam along a glass
fiber by means of on electromagnetic beam
It can be don through free space
 These amplifiers are devices that have linear
input/output characteristics to reproduce in
the output an amplified version of the signal
 amplification is very much particular with
analogue signals
 With digital data Repeaters are required for
every 2 or 3 km. For a repeater an incoming
signal is amplified and truncated to a fixed
level to provide a copy of the input pulse.
 CABLING

• The wires in twisted pair cabling are twisted together in pairs

• Each pair consists of a wire used for the +ve data signal and a
wire used for the -ve data signal
• Any noise that appears on 1 wire of the pair will also occur
on the other wire.
• the wires are opposite polarities, they are 180 degrees out of
phase (180 degrees - phasor definition of opposite polarity)
• When the noise appears on both wires, it cancels or nulls
itself out at the receiving end
• Twisted pair cables are most effectively used in systems that
use a balanced line method of transmission
• polar line coding (Manchester Encoding) as opposed to
unipolar line coding (TTL logic
Unshielded Twisted Pair
• The degree of reduction in noise interference
is determined specifically by the number of
turns per foot
• Increasing the number of turns per foot
reduces the noise interference
• To further improve noise rejection, a foil or
wire braid "shield" is woven around the
twisted pairs. This shield can be woven around
individual pairs or around a multi-pair
conductor (several pairs)
Shielded Twisted Pair
 Cables with a shield are called shielded twisted
pair and are commonly abbreviated STP
 Cables without a shield are called unshielded
twisted pair or UTP.
 Twisting the wires together results in characteristic
impedance for the cable.
 Typical impedance for UTP is 100 ohm for Ethernet
10BaseT cable
 UTP or unshielded twisted pair cable is used on
Ethernet 10BaseT and can also be used with Token
Ring.
 It uses the RJ line of connectors (RJ45, RJ11, etc..)
• STP or shielded twisted pair is used with the
traditional Token Ring cabling or ICS - IBM
Cabling System
• It requires a custom connector. IBM STP
(shielded twisted pair) has a characteristic
impedance
 Coaxial Cable
 Coaxial cable consists of two conductors
 The inner conductor is held inside an insulator
with the other conductor woven around it
providing a shield
 An insulating protective coating called a jacket
covers the outer conductor
 Optical fiber
 Optical fiber consists of thin glass fibers that can carry
information at frequencies in the visible light spectrum and
beyond
 The typical optical fiber consists of a very narrow strand of
glass called the core
 Around the core is a concentric layer of glass called the
cladding. A typical core diameter is 62.5 microns (1 micron
= 10-6 meters)
 Typically Cladding has a diameter of 125 microns Coating
the cladding is a protective coating consisting of plastic, it is
called the Jacket
OPTICAL FIBRE
 An important characteristic of fiber optics is
refraction. Refraction is the characteristic of a
material to either pass or reflect light
 When light passes through a medium, it
"bends" as it passes from one medium to the
other
 An example of this is when we look into a
pond of water
• If the angle of incidence is small, the light rays
are reflected and do not pass into the water
• If the angle of incident is great, light passes
through the media but is bent or refracted
TRANSMISSION IN OPTICAL FIBRE
• Optical fibers work on the principle that the
core refracts the light and the cladding reflects
the light
• The core refracts the light and guides the light
along its path
• The cladding reflects any light back into the
core and stops light from escaping through it -
it bounds the medium
 Optical Transmission Modes
 There are three primary types of transmission modes using optical fiber.
They are
 Step Index
 Graded Index
 Single Mode
 Step index has a large core, so the light rays tend to bounce around inside
the core, reflecting off the cladding.
 This causes some rays to take a longer or shorter path through the core.
 Some take the direct path with hardly any reflections while others bounce
back and forth taking a longer path
 The result is that the light rays arrive at the receiver at different times. The
signal becomes longer than the original signal
 LED light sources are used. Typical Core: 62.5 microns
 Step Index Mode
• Graded index has a gradual change in the core's
refractive index
• This causes the light rays to be gradually bent
back into the core path
• This is represented by a curved reflective path in
the attached drawing
• The result is a better receive signal than with
step index. LED light sources are used. Typical
Core: 62.5 microns
 Graded Index Mode
• Both step index and graded index allow more than one
light source to be used (different colors simultaneously),
so multiple channels of data can be run at the same time!
• Single mode has separate distinct refractive indexes for
the cladding and core
• The light ray passes through the core with relatively few
reflections off the cladding
• Single mode is used for a single source of light (one color)
operation. It requires a laser and the core is very small: 9
microns.
Comparison of Optical Fibers
 We don't use frequency to talk about speed any
more, we use wavelengths instead
 The wavelength of light sources is measured in
nanometers or 1 billionth of a meter
 Indoor cable specifications:
 LED (Light Emitting Diode) light source
 3.5 dB/Km Attenuation (loses 3.5 dB of signal per
kilometer)
 850 nM - wavelength of light source
 Typically 62.5/125 (core dia/cladding dia)
 Multimode - can run many light sources.
 Outdoor cable specifications
 Laser Light Source
 1 dB/Km Attenuation (loses 1 dB of signal per kilometer)
 1170 nM - wavelength of light source
 Monomode (single mode)
 Laser Light Source
 1 dB/Km Attenuation (loses 1 dB of signal per kilometer)
 1170 nM - wavelength of light source
 Monomode (single mode)
 Advantages of Optical Fiber:

 Noise immunity: RFI and EMI immune (RFI - Radio

Frequency Interference, EMI -Electromagnetic
Interference)
 Security: cannot tap into cable.
 Large Capacity due to BW (bandwidth)
 No corrosion
 Longer distances than copper wire
 Smaller and lighter than copper wire
 Lower attenuation over long distances
 Negligible crosstalk
 Faster transmission rate
 Disadvantages of optical fiber:

 Physical vibration will show up as signal noise!

 Limited physical arc of cable
 Bend it too much and it will break
 Difficult to splice
 The cost of optical fiber is a trade-off between
capacity and cost
 At higher transmission capacity, it is cheaper than
copper
 At lower transmission capacity, it is more expensive.
 Transmission Media - Unguided

 Unguided transmission media is data signals

that flow through the air
 They are not guided or bound to a channel to
follow
 They are classified by the type of wave
propagation
 RADIO TRANSMISSION
• Data is also propagated using radio in free space
termed software medium for example the use of line
– of – sight microware radio transmission.
• These are applied to over come situations where cable
can not easily be laid, such as to link buildings on
advancement sites separated by a public road
• Such terrestrial links are subjected to electrical and
atmospheric disturbance, a disadvantage which is not
present in satellite transmission where the radio beam
travels most of its path through free space
• Terrestrial microware system for long-haul
telecommunications are used as an alterative to
coaxial cable or fiber optic links
• As with coaxial cable systems, the microware
link can support high data rates over long
distances The important parameters for radio
transmission is the design of the transmitting
system and the carrier frequencies involved
• At UHF frequencies the radiation system consists
of a parabolic dish which is highly directional
• Directivity is related to the ratio of the dish
diameter D, and the wavelength and is
usually eats as gain G; G = ( D / A ) d B
• The range ,d , between communicating line-
of-sight parabolic aerials with no intervening
obstacles is given by d = 7. 14 (kh)1/2 km.
where h, is the aerial height (km ) and k is a
factor to take into account the curvature the
Earth (approve =1 . 33)
 SATELITE COMMUNICATION
• A communication satellite is in effect, a microware relay station.
• It is used as a device for point to point and broadcast
transmission (ie it operator as a broadcast medium ) stations can
transmit to the satellite and a satellite transmission can be
received by many stations.
• The satellite receives a transmission on a frequency band
known as the uplink frequency and retransmits down to the
ground also known as the frequencies used should be ideally
between 1 and 10 GHz
• attenuation by atmospheric absorption is greater above 10 GHz
• higher frequencies than this are being used due to the situation
of the ideal band range
 Problems affecting sateliate transmission
• These are chiefly the high cost of placing the satelite correctly in or bit and high power
level required in order to relay information back to Earth station, which will need to be
equipped with high gain dish aerials .
• the lengthy transmission path will result in a considerable transmission signal delay of
about 240 – 300 ms .
• This is noticeable in ordinary telephone conversation and can introduce problem in digital
data transmission.
• Recently there has been significant interest in the development of low Earth Orbiting
Satellite ( LEO ) for commercial communication systems. Such systems consists of a
number of satellites each operating in of circular orbit at heights of between 50 – 1600
km,
• Under these conditions launching cost is low, transmission delay is reduced and power
requirements minimized.
• A major difficulty is a shift in carrier frequency that occur due to Doppler shift as the
satellites gasses over a receiving station.
• transmission waveform 1s and 0s
 RF Propagation

 There are three types of RF (radio frequency)

propagation:
 Ground Wave
 Ionospheric
 Line of Sight (LOS)
 Ground wave propagation follows the curvature of the
Earth
 Ground waves have carrier frequencies up to 2 MHz.
Amplitude Modulation (AM) radio is an example of
ground wave propagation
 Ionospheric propagation bounces off of the Earth's
ionospheric layer in the upper atmosphere.
 It is sometimes called double hop propagation. It
operates in the frequency range of 30 - 85 MHz.
Because it depends on the Earth's ionosphere, it
changes with the weather and time of day
 The signal bounces off of the ionosphere and back
to earth
 AM radios operate in this range
 Line of sight propagation transmits exactly in the line of sight
 The receiving station must be in the view of the transmit
station
 It is sometimes called space waves or tropospheric
propagation
 It is limited by the curvature of the Earth for ground-based
stations (100 km, from horizon to horizon). Reflected waves
can cause problems
 Examples of line of sight propagation are: Frequency
modulation (FM) radio, microwave and satellite.
 Radio Frequencies

Name Frequency (Hertz) Examples

Gamma Rays 1019+

X-Rays 1017
Ultra-Violet Light 7.5 x 1015
Visible Light 4.3 x 1014
 Infrared Light 3 x 1011
 
 Radio Frequencies cont.

•EHF - Extremely High Frequencies 30 GHz (Giga = 10 9) Radar

•SHF - Super High Frequencies 3 GHz Satellite & Microwaves
•UHF - Ultra High Frequencies 300 MHz (Mega = 10 6) UHF TV (Ch. 14-83)
•VHF - Very High Frequencies 30 MHz FM & TV (Ch2 - 13)
•HF - High Frequencies 3 MHz2 Short Wave Radio
•MF - Medium Frequencies 300 kHz (kilo = 10 3) AM Radio
•LF - Low Frequencies 30 kHz Navigation
•VLF - Very Low Frequencies 3 kHz Submarine Communications
•VF - Voice Frequencies 300 Hz Audio
•ELF - Extremely Low Frequencies 30 Hz Power Transmission

•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•
• Radio frequencies are in the range of
300 kHz to 10 GHz.
• We are seeing an emerging technology
called wireless LANs.
• Some use radio frequencies to connect
the workstations together, some use
infrared technology.
.
 Microwave

• Microwave transmission is line of sight transmission. The transmit

station must be in visible contact with the receive station.
• This sets a limit on the distance between stations depending on the
local geography.
• The line of sight due to the Earth's curvature is only 50 km to the
horizon.
• Repeater stations must be placed so that the data signal can hop, skip
and jump across the country.
• Microwaves operate at high operating frequencies of 3 to 10 GHz.
• This allows them to carry large quantities of data due to their large
bandwidth.
• Microwaves operate at high operating frequencies of 3 to 10 GHz. This
allows them to carry large quantities of data due to their large
bandwidth.
 Advantages

• They require no right of way acquisition between towers.

• They can carry high quantities of information due to their high
operating frequencies.
• Low cost land purchase: each tower occupies only a small area.
• High frequency/short wavelength signals require small antennae.
• Disadvantages:
• Attenuation by solid objects: birds, rain, snow and fog and buildings.
• Reflected from flat surfaces like water and metal.
• Diffracted (split) around solid objects.
• Refracted by atmosphere, thus causing beam to be projected away
from receiver
 Disadvantages

• Attenuation by solid objects: birds, rain, snow

and fog and buildings.
• Reflected from flat surfaces like water and
metal.
• Diffracted (split) around solid objects.
• Refracted by atmosphere, thus causing beam
to be projected away from receiver.
 Satellite

• Satellites are transponders (units that receive on one frequency and

retransmit on another) that are set in geostationary orbits directly over
the equator.
• These geostationary orbits are 36,000 km from the Earth's surface. At
this point, the gravitational pull of the Earth and the centrifugal force of
Earth's rotation are balanced and cancel each other out.
• Centrifugal force is the rotational force placed on the satellite that
wants to fling it out into space.
• The uplink is the transmitter of data to the satellite.
• The downlink is the receiver of data. Uplinks and downlinks are also
called Earth stations because they are located on the Earth.
• The footprint is the "shadow" that the satellite can transmit to, the
shadow being the area that can receive the satellite's transmitted
signal.
• The uplink is the transmitter of data to the
satellite
• The downlink is the receiver of data. Uplinks
and downlinks are also called Earth stations
because they are located on the Earth
• The footprint is the "shadow" that the satellite
can transmit to, the shadow being the area
that can receive the satellite's transmitted
signal.
• Iridium Telecom System
• The Iridium Telecom System is a new satellite system
that will be the largest private aerospace project.
• It is a mobile telecom system intended to compete
with cellular phones.
• It relies on satellites in lower Earth orbit (LEO). The
satellites will orbit at an altitude of 900 - 10,000 km in
a polar, non-stationary orbit.
• Sixty-six satellites are planned.
• The user's handset will require less power and will be
cheaper than cellular phones.
• There will be 100% coverage of the Earth.
 TRANSMISSION IMPAIRMENT
• A number of transmission limitations set a
fundamental limit to the rate at which data
can be transmitted through a medium and the
accuracy with which it can be reconstituted.
These are, (i) Attenuation (ii) Distortion (iii)
Nose (iv) Bandwidth
 Attenuation

• For hardware media the signal attenuation is generally logarithmic

and expressed as a constant number of decibels per unit distance.
The attenuation of a software media is proportional to the square
of the distance from the transmitter but for terrestrial transmission
this can also be affected by atmospheric conditions.
• The installation of linear amplifiers (for analogue signals) or
repeaters (for digital signals) at intervals along the transmission
path operates to counter the effects of signal attenuation.
• It does this by restoring the signal to a level sufficiently above the
accompanying noise level to permit the signal to be received
without error.
• Attenuation in a given medium is a function of frequency so that
different spectral constituents of a signal behave differently with
distance from the transmitter.
 DISTORTION

• Frequency distortion can be quite severe with

analogue (and hence carrier) systems.
Equalization techniques such as loading coils
and filters are commonly introduced into line
transmission systems to minimize these
effects, but can lead to deletion of results with
digital transmission due to transient impulse
signals initiated by the leading edge of the
rectangular waveform.
 Delay distortion
• Delay distortion can also be introduced by
hardware media propagation and its caused
by the variation of the frequency of the
velocity of propagation through the medium
• Delay distortion is particularly serious with
data transmission where it causes the spectra
associated with one digit pulses to affect the
spectral adjacent pulses
• This is known as inter-symbol interference
 NOISE
• The four general recognized categories of noise in data
transmission are –
• (1)Thermal noise
• (2) Gaussian noise
• (3) Jitter noise
• (4) Impulse noise.
• Carrier systems are also subject to inter-modulation noise which
occurs when signals of deferent frequencies share the same
transmission medium and encounter some non-linearity in the
system, eg a non-linear amplifier.
• Adjacent metallic conductors can be affected by cross – talk due
to electrical coupling existing between neighboring transmission
lines
 THERMAL NOISE
 Thermal noise is due to thermal agitation of
elections in a conductor.
 It has a uniformly wide spectrum and is a function of
temperature.
 Although is it cannot be eliminated and represents
an upper bound on communications system
performance,
 its actual level is very small (about 100 db selective
to 1 mw for a bandwidth in tens of MHz region)
 It can be ignored for most applications.
 GAUSSIAN NOISE

• Gaussian noise occurs in any transmission system

which contains amplifiers.
• In the PSTN (public switch telephone network )
Gaussian noise can be heard as background hiss)
• This noise has a zero direct current (dc) value and has
an approximately Gaussian amplitude distribution.
• For a given noise threshold level there is some
particular probability that the noise will add to the
value of the signal and change a correct signal into an
incorrect one.
 IMPULISE NOISE
• This consists of angular pulses or pulse bursts, such
as radiated ignition interference from automobiles .
• The interfering pulses are often high amplitude,
and although of limited duration
• they can encompass very many consecutive bits of
data and can irreparably damage a transmission
frame .
• In such a situation the damage frame would be
detected and a request forwarded for its
retransmission
 SIGNAL – TO – NOISE RATIO
The parameter used for determining the noise
performance of a transmission is its signal to noise
(SNR ) ratio .
Let the signal power be S, and the noise by N the
signal – to – noise radio is S / N and the quantity
is expressed in decibels as
• SNK = (10 log 10 Signal Power/ Noise Power) db
• This determines the possible data rate in a given
situation
 JITTER – NOISE
• The continuous series of short- term departures of the
individual transmitted pulses from their correct time position
is known as phase jitter.
• When isolated from the affected pulses, phase jitter shares
many of the characteristics electrical noise and can be
regarded as a phase shift noise additive to the signal.
• A major source of jitter noise lies in the process of digital
regeneration within repeaters spaced at intervals along a
transmission medium.
• This depends on the pattern content of the transmitted
signal and its often termed pattern dependent jitter.
 The root-mean- square ( r. m. s ) value depends
on the number of repeaters N through which the
signal passes, the bandwidth B, of the timing
recovery event and the low – frequency power
density of jitter injected at each repeater P.
Hence the r. m. s value becomes.

 r. m. s jitter = ((PNB)/2 ) ½ for N > 100

 This error or increases or accumulated with
each passage through a repeater
 The public switched telephone Network

• The public switched telephone Network(PSTN), speech or

other analogue signals constituting a communication
channel on the PSTN, is only conveyed as far as the local
switching exchange in its original 300 – 400 Hz bandwidth
form.
• At the exchange it is joined by many other channels which
are then combined together for onward transmission
(switching) over a single wide band communication channel
• The process of modulation evolves the variation of some
parameter of one signal, the carrier with the message signal
• The modulated carrier can then be transmitted to
its destination and an inverse process of
demodulation invokes to recover the original
modulation signal message.
• The advantage of using a carrier system in the PSTN
instead of transmitting the speech signal directly is
that the speech are no longer limited to sharing a
spectral location within the same low frequency
region.
• Types of modulation techniques includes Amplitude
modulation, Multiplexing, Frequency modulation.
Phase modulation and Pulse code modulation
 MODEM CATEGORIES
• the modem enables digital data to be represented by
an analogue carrier signal,
• With increasing transmission speed come greater
complexity. In terms of speed of operation,
modulation methods are categorized based on speed.
• Low speed ( up to 300 bps ) using FSK ( frequency –
shift keying )
• Medium opened ( up to 1200 bps ) using
Differentiated Phase Shift Keying (DPSK )
• High speed ( 2400 bps or more ) using, QA (Quadrate
amplitudes modulation)
 DATA RATIOS

• Data rates for telegraphy and data carried on the

telephone system have data rates related to 75 x 2n eg
75, 150, 300, - …9600.
• These rates have nothing, in common with computer
network transmission rates, which are based on a
multiple or sub multiple of digital transmission rate ,64 k
bps ( ISDN ) Integrated Service Digital Network ) Error –
Connection modes .
• Two Techniques are used in modem designed to
overcome data errors due to noise .
• (1) Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) flow control and
Error correction scheme.
• The general principle is to hold the outgoing data
in a buffer register until an acknowledgement or
request for retransmission is made,
• this ensures that the undistorted data is not lost
before it is checked at the receiving end.
• In general, modems convert analogue signals
from PSNT lines to digital signals so that it can be
transmitted and the modem at the destination
convert it back to analogue such that it can be
received by the destination PSTN device.
• Forward error correction of asynchronous
data is employed in fast modems operating at
9600 to 19200 bps) in which additional bits
are added to the data being transmitted
 BASEBAND MODEMS

 A part from modulation / demodulation system, a number of

devices are available which perform similar function but
operate directly on the digital input signal
 These are referred to as baseband modems or line drivers
and carry out data transmission without modulating or
demodulating a carrier signal.
 The digital signal is first filtered to reduce the high frequency
content and the modified signal is transmitted directly over
the line media.
 Baseband modems are only suitable for transmission over
short distances but can achieve data rates up 192 kbps.
 THE CODEC

• the codec ( coder / decoder ) allow analogue

data to be represented by digital signals.
(transmission and storing speech information in
digital from over data network
• The analogue signal is subjected to an analogue
/ digital conversion process to approximate the
signal to an equivalent bit stream
• At the receiving end the bit stream is used to
reconstitute the analogue signal
• digital data transmitted often contains strings of
repeated characters which can result in spectral peaks
in the transmission information which can cause
interference with adjacent channels
• To overcome this, codec randomizes the data by
scrambling the bit stream (i .e re-ordering of the
message digits for transmission)
• This is carried out by adding the signal being
transmitted to the sum of certain selected stage
outputs from multi- stage shift register to which the
signal input is applied ( A reverse process is carried
out at the same time.
 THE MODERN MODEM
 The modern modem does more than simply, converting digitally
coded information into a form suitable for transmission over a
telephone network
 The modem is designed for duplex operation, that is the
simultaneous transmission of data in both directions over two-wire
telephone circuits.
 The most common method for bit speeds of up to 1200 bps;

 (1) is simple frequency division multiplexing which the full

telephone bandwidth is employed for both directions of
transmission,

• (2) adaptive canceling circuits used in each receiver
to cancel the interference from both its own
transmission and returned echoes.

• The modem contains other electronics such as

equalization filters to minimize channel distortion,
automatic answering facilities, data compression /
expansion, automatic channel speed recognition
and bit rate switching (so called frequency ‘agiles’
modems ) and facsimile equipment connection
• All these are in the modem as a result of a
microprocessor fixed in the modem
 MULTIPLEXING
• Establishing connections with a large number of
terminals or devices requires multiple channels
• These need to be transmitted as a group as costs of
communications are to be kept low
• A solution is to use multiplexing techniques either in
the form of a compute network, which is considered
as a form of distributed multiplier sharing
communication time or bandwidth between
connected devices
• or hardware multiplexing unit or a concentrator to
combine the data traffic from a number of devices into
a single stream for transmission over the medium.
 MULTIPLEXING cont’
• A multiplexer attempts to maintain data transparency, in
the sense that the data input is identical in form to the
data output although it will be combined with other data
from other channels
• A concentrator, on the other hand can operate on the
data as well thus carrying out some data processing on
the signals to removal of blank spaces included in the
input data, thus applying a form of code compression to
the message
• thus reduces the transmission bandwidth requirement -
the removed spaces can be replaced by carrying out code
expansion at the receiving end.
 GROOMING

• In this process a number of channels carrying

mixed signals are grouped
• mixture of digital packet such as samples for
speech, video or data transmission are
processed within the device to produce an
output stream of each signal
• which contains packets of only one medium’s
type of signal.
 Consolidation
• It is synonymous with concentration in which a
number of input channels convey sequential packets
of data interspersed with empty packets to where no
information is carried
• The consolidation acts to remove redundant packets
in each channel and assemble the valid data from all
input channels as a single data stream
• This long data will need to include details of where
input signal with empty packets are removed
together with the identification of each channel or
permit re-assembly of the combined data
FREQUNCY DIVISION MULTIPLEXING (FDM)

• The use of frequency division multiplexing

( FDM ) is to share the circuit capacity of a
single transmission line
• It is a type of multiplexing in which the
available signal bandwidth is divided into
separate sections with each section used for
one channel of communication
 TIME DIVISION MULTIPLEXING(TDM)
• In Time division multiplexing ( TDM) the time
available transmission is subdivided into
separate time slots with each slot for one
channel of communication
• It is used to provide high density
transmission
• e.g Time slots in radio and TV transmission
CODE DIVISION MULTIPLEXING (CDM)

• This is an encrypted method originally

developed for the military in order to overcome
interference or jamming.
• The technique involves multiplying the data
signal to be coded with a high bit rate; pseudo –
random code
• To recover the data this unique code needs to
be known at the receiving end to be multiplied
to the transmission signal
 BROADBAND TRANSMISSION
• frequency division multiplexing ( FDM )
enables the share of circuit capacity of a single
transmission line
• When broadband systems are used for data
transmission a separate modem operating
frequency is required for each channel, and this
frequency needs to be different for each
direction of transmission
• Thus the modems in this mode(broadband
modems) form a complementary pair
 BROADBAND TRANSMISSION cont’

• This means the transmitting channel used by one

modem becomes the receiving channel of the
other and vice versa
• There are two solution to this problem;
• The first is to employ frequency – a gile modems
• These modems are able to change operating
frequency in response to a signal sent from a
central controlling device or a computer
 BROADBAND TRANSMISSION cont
• The second is to route all the transmitted
signals to a signal device called a HEADENED
which counts a whole set of the transmitted
frequencies into another set of frequencies
used only for reception
• The advantage of the technique is that the
pair of modems need not be complimentary
but can be identical; both transmitting on one
frequency and receiving at another
 Baseband Signaling
• When a digital data is conveyed directly over the entire
capacity of the line used to support the transmission of a
single 0 or 1 bit at a time, it is referred to as a baseband
signaling
• its applied when only one digital signal is transmitted as in
point-to-point connection or a TDM situation where the
time available for transmission of a number of signals is
share the link
• At any given time only one digital signal element can be
present on the transmission line
• This is a problems associated to baseband signaling
 Baseband Signaling conti’

 First only one derive connected to the line can

transmit at a time
 other wise the transmitted data will be corrupted
 Secondly, it is necessary to know precisely the
type and duration of each digit transmitted so
that the logical value can be recognized at the
receiving end
 In the case of TDM, the channel allocation for
each of the transmitted digits must be known
 Baseband Signaling conti’
• It implies that means must be found to
recognize when two or move devices attempt
to transmit at the same time
• How to deal with the consequences should
this occur
• This is a difficulty with broadcast media in
each Local Area Network as transmissions fail
(Complex methods are recalled to overcome
this)
 Synchronous Time – division Multiplexing
• With both forms of TDM each channel is
allocated the full digital bandwidth of the
communication link in turn
• Giving to each terminal user the impression of
realizing a fraction of the total bandwidth, but
allocated permanently
• This gives rise to a difficulty that a time-slot
allocated is made repeatedly for a given
channel whether this does or does not have
data to transmit at the time of allocation
 Synchronous Time – division Multiplexing
• Due to the dialogue or busty nature of much
computer generated data; this can result in
idle channel with consequent waste of
available bandwidth
 Statistical Time Division Multiplexing

• The statistical TDM or ‘statmix’ is used to

overcomes this. From the graphs. We can see
that us the stat TDM or stratum eg channels
1, 2, 4, 7, 9, and 12 are narrow and could
represent each containing a single flag bit
permitting other channels e g 3, 5,6, to be
excluded for
 Choice Of Multiplexing Technique
 TDM can be used to interleave bits or characters from
various channels being multiplexed
 Bit – interleave multiplexers are used with or synchronous
data source.
 Each time slot contains just one bit
 They are fast in operation since very little delay is
experienced, are suitable for medium -to – high speed
devices such as synchronous VDUs termials
 A single bit buffer is included in each incoming data circuit
 Character device operating under start – stop control
require a character – interleaved multiplexer.
 Choice Of Multiplexing Technique
• With synchronous T D M Input Channels one allocating a
time slot to each channel in strict rotation
• if all the channel operate at the same speed then there is
to need to identify a permissible channel since they all
follow in a recognized sequence
• It is however necessary to maintain overall synchronization
between a transmitter and a receiver since if a
transmitter or a receiver are out of step, then data is lost.
• To achieve this data is organized into frames with a
synchronizing digit added
•  
 Modulation Techniques

• Modulation techniques are methods that are used to encode digital

information in an analog world. The 3 basic modulation techniques
are as follows:
• AM (amplitude modulation)
• FM (frequency modulation)
• PM (phase modulation)
• All 3 modulation techniques employ a carrier signal
• A carrier signal is a single frequency that is used to carry the
intelligence (data).
• For digital, the intelligence is either a 1 or 0.
• When we modulate the carrier, we are changing its characteristics to
correspond to either a 1 or 0
 Modulation Techniques conti’
• Modulation techniques are methods that are used to
encode digital information in an analog world. The 3 basic
modulation techniques are as follows:
• AM (amplitude modulation)
• FM (frequency modulation)
• PM (phase modulation)
• All 3 modulation techniques employ a carrier signal. A
carrier signal is a single frequency that is used to carry the
intelligence (data). For digital, the intelligence is either a 1
or 0. When we modulate the carrier, we are changing its
characteristics to correspond to either a 1 or 0.
 Amplitude Modulation- AM

• Amplitude Modulation modifies the amplitude of the carrier to

represent 1s or 0s
• In the above example, a 1 is represented by the presence of
the carrier for a predefined period of 3 cycles of carrier.
Absence--or no carrier--indicates a 0.
• Advantages:
• Simple to design
• Disadvantages:
• Noise spikes on transmission medium interfere with the carrier
signal
• Loss of connection is read as 0s
 Frequency Modulation- FM

• Frequency Modulation modifies the frequency of the carrier to represent

the 1s or 0s.
• In the above example, a 0 is represented by the original carrier frequency,
and a 1 by a much higher frequency (the cycles are spaced closer together).
 
Advantages:
• Immunity to noise on transmission medium
• Always a signal present
• Loss of signal easily detected
• Disadvantages:
• Requires 2 frequencies
• Detection circuit needs to recognize both frequencies when signal is lost
 PM - Phase Modulation
• Phase Modulation modifies the phase of the carrier to represent a 1 or
0
• The carrier phase is switched at every occurrence of a 1 bit, but remains
unaffected for a 0 bit
• The phase of the signal is measured relative to the phase of the
preceding bit
• The bits are timed to coincide with a specific number of carrier cycles (3
in this example = 1 bit).
• Advantage:
• Only 1 frequency used
• Easy to detect loss of carrier
• Disadvantages:
• Complex circuitry that is required to generate and detect phase
changes.
 Modem Modulation

• Here are the 3 basic types of modulation used

in modems:
• FSK - Frequency Shifted Keying
• QPSK - Quadrature Phase Shift Keying
• QAM - Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
• Modern modems use a combination of the
above basic modulation techniques and
compression to achieve high data transfer
rates (14.4 Kbps and up)
 FSK - Frequency Shift Keying
• Frequency Shift Keying (or FSK) is the frequency
modulation of a carrier that represents digital
intelligence
• For Simplex or Half Duplex operation, a single carrier
(1170 Hz) is used - communication can only be
transmitted in one direction at a time
• A Mark or 1 is represented by 1270 Hz, and a Space
or 0 is represented by 1070 Hz
• The following diagram shows the Voice Channel with
Simplex/Half Duplex FSK.
• Simplex / Half Duplex FSK
 Full Duplex FSK
• For Full Duplex (i.e. simultaneous data communication in both
directions), the upper bandwidth of the Voice Channel is utilized
• Another carrier is added at 2125 Hz
• A Mark or 1 is represented by 2225 Hz, and a Space or 0 is
represented by 2025 Hz
• The originating modem (the one which dials the phone number
and starts the connection) uses the lower carrier (1170 Hz) and
the answer modem (the one which answers the ringing phone
line) uses the upper carrier (2125 Hz)
• This allocation of carriers is done automatically by the modem's
hardware
• The following diagram shows the Voice Channel with Full Duplex
FSK
 Full Duplex FSK conti’

• The originate modem transmits on the 1170 Hz carrier and

receives on the 2125 Hz carrier
• The answer modem receives on the 1170 Hz carrier and
transmits on the 2125 Hz carrier
• This way, both modems can be transmitting and receiving
simultaneously
• The FSK modem described above is used for 300 baud
modems only.
• The logical question is: "Why not use it for higher modems?"
• Higher data rates require more bandwidth
• This would require that the Mark and Space
frequencies for each band be moved farther
apart (the originate and answer bands
become wider)
• The two carriers would have to move farther
apart from each other to prevent crosstalk
(interference with each other)
• The limit for present phone lines is 1200 Baud
Half Duplex (one way) used by Bell 202
compatible modems
 Quadrature Phase Shift Keying
• 28b. QPSK - Quadrature Phase Shift Keying
• Quadrature Phase Shift Keying employs shifting the phase
of the carrier at a 600 baud rate plus an encoding
technique
• QPSK is used in Bell 212A-compatible modems and V.22 -
both are 1200 bps Full Duplex standards
• The originate modem transmits at 1200 Hz, and receives
on 2400 Hz
• The answer modem receives on 1200 Hz, and transmits on
2400 Hz
• The digital information is encoded using 4 (Quad) level
differential PSK at 600 baud.
 FRAME

• A frame consists of a group of binary digits generally in additional bits.

• Transmission consists sending a sequence of consecutive frames across
the network which can be individually checked at the receiving end
• Basic modulation methods in modem design is assisted by
incorporation of a number of ancillary tasks, including multiplexing
• Multiplexing of a number of channels into one transmission routs is
achieved by frequency Division multiplexing ( F D M )or time division
multiplexing ( T D M )
• The F D M is used in the Public Switch Telephone Network ( P S T N )
• While the (T D M ) is applied to data transmission, viable length data
frames are used in the statistical method which is shown to be more
economical in use of available bandwidth than fixed length
multiplexing
 Data on the Telephone network
• The circuit used to translates digital information into a form suited to
voice transmission is known as a modulator and the circuit to perform
the reverse function is known as a demodulator
• Transmission is normally a duplex ( in both directions ) as both circuits
are required at each end
• The combination is called a modem ( modulator / demodulator )
• Two other modes of operation are in use
• These are half duplex mode where both ends of the communication
link can send and receive information but not at the same time
• In simplex mode information can only be sent in one direction across
the link
• Early modems were exorcise and limited in performance to a low
transmission rate of 300 dps full duplex or 1200 dps ( half duplex over a
normal PSTN
 Data Switching
• Data Switching is the transmission of data in
any kind of essentially transfixing or switching
the data from one node in the network to the
next in the passage from the originating
station attached to a node to the intended
receiving station associated with different
node.
 CIRCUIT Switching in PSTN

• In such a service distinct phases of operation can be distinguished namely

(1) Call mediation by lifting the receiver and dialing
(2) conversation exchange
(3) Termination of the call by replacing the handset
• There are 3 processes involves ;
• Circuit establishment - the settling up of an end – to –end circuit through
an appropriate set of nodes located between the two end devices on the
network, i e establishing a dedicated route .
• Data transfer- transmission of data across the network following the
dedicated route
• Circuit disconnect- termination of the connection after data transfer is
completed and the separate node paths made available for other data
signal.
 CIRCUIT Switching in PSTN conti’
• The essential feature of circuit switching lies in the
existence of a dedicated communication path between the
two end devices
• circuit establishment demands a certain amount of elapsed
time ( set – up – time ) before a message can be sent.
• To do this a cell request signal needs to be sent and this
requires an acknowledgement
• Each node needs time to set up the route of its onward
connection through the network
• e g the set up time for the PSTN is relatively ( tens of
seconds) but with a computer – controlled exchange this
need to be reduced to a few tens of milliseconds
 CIRCUIT Switching in PSTN conti’
• End device A, requires a connection to end device B ( A might be for eg
microprocessor and B a printer )
• First it is necessary to establish the complete circuit between A and B where
data can flow
• to do this A sends a request to its connecting node for onward connection to
B
• stored in the node software will be details of routes available and the order
of preference based on economy of use and dynamic consideration such as
channels availability
• We will assume that node 3 forms the next part of the route 4, 6, or 4, 6, 3
can also be chosen)
• A dedicated channel is allocated between nodes 1 and 3 and similar request
is made at node 3 in which all onward routes are considered except that
leading back to node 1.
 CIRCUIT Switching in PSTN conti’
• assuming node 5 is selected it remains for this
request access to its connected device B
• if this is ready to accept data then an
acknowledgement is passed through the
dedicated route to device A and the process
of data transfer commences
• (normally the allocated connection between
A and B will almost certainly be duplex )
 CIRCUIT Switching in PSTN conti’
• For very short interaction it comes or
significant overhand up the connections which
caucused be tolerate in bank or cash traction
or accrete booking inf channel capacity is
allocated for the duration of the requires
connection even if little or no data is belling
transferred it is easeful is PSTN and private
exchange which may varying speech darts,
fancied and other services in digitally seceded
 MESSAGE SWITCHING
• It is not necessary to establish is advance a dedicated path between two
end devices. Instead if a device wishes to send a message it appends a
destination address to the message data to be delivered to the end
device ( or devices ) to which the message is to the be delivered.
• This message is then passed through the network from node to node
over a traversed route . At each nodes the entire message is stored
briefly and transmitted to the next node the process is repeated until
the message has reached its destination . This process is termed store –
and forward technique.
Advantages over Circuit Switching
• It does not require a dedicated channel or data route set up procedure
but the entire message must be received at each node so that it can be
transmitted ie total transmission delay is variable and generally longer
than with Circuit Switching .
 PACKET SWITCHING

• In packet – switching the message handle much smaller data

lengths than are found in message switching. The message is
to be transmitted is divided into a series data called data
packets having a maximum length of only a few thousand
bits.
• Advantages The short packet experiences minimum delay
in progression through a high performance network.
• The method used is still a store and - forward process but
since the packets are small they are quickly transmitted by
each node and require little memory space. Secondly by
appending a sequences number to each packet as it move
to its destination address the nodes are able to interleave
packets from several different sources. This leads to more
efficient use of the transmission mode ( P S was first applied
to ARPANET AND TRNUST)
 THE DATAGRAM

• In the datagram approach, each packet is

treated independently. As it routes distances
across a series of nodes to its destination can
vary depending on the network traffic.
• Datagrams are single packet messages each of
which contains the full addresses of the
destination in its header also require ie
sequence number so that its place in a
sequence can be determined
• Example of a datagram Canadian DATA pac
systems.
• The network offers a call – base service with
two types of calls permanent and switched.
• Permanent calls are analogous to a private
telephone line and require no call set – up or
call clearing
• switched calls are analogous to designate calls
and packets are classified as normal or
prioritized with the latter given preference for
onward transmission .
 The Virtual Circuit
• In the virtual circuit approach, the logical connection across the
network is established between the packet to be sent sent ie a
specific data routes or series of nodes are determined so that the
packet may be transmitted to reach the end device.

• A packet is still stored temporarily at each node and queued for onward
transmission together with other packets
• Access to the data is obtained using a set of numbers
• A virtual circuit is referred to as permanent if it is a leased line or
personal.
• If the virtual connection can be transferred only to the device the
message is intended to, it is termed a virtual call ( eg phoning from a
public phone ) and this is connected by means of a call request packet.
• This call request packet must contain both the called end
number ( or address ) and the number of a free local
logical channel . In the call request, the network routes
it to the node connected to the end device called
• If this device is free to receive the call the node inserts
the number of a logical channel which can carry the
incoming data and forwards the call request as an
incoming call packet. The end device then retains a call
accept packet, which is routed back to the Network
connected to the sending device .
• This node thus sends a call connects packet to the source
node and the establishment of the virtual call is
completed.
• Propagation delay - This is the time taken to
transmit the data across the media.
• Node delay - It is the time taken by the
node to carry out the switching process.
• Transmission delay -Is the time required for
a sending device to transmit data across the
network. This depends on the length of the
message and the pace of the transmission the
network.
• Control for data flowing thro a NW is vested as
the used which are generally intelligent
microprocessor ie device in and stoned py /
data
• ( i ) Knotting ( ii ) Flowing ( iii)
Enron Control
•  
•  
 ROUTING

• Routing is one of the most important features in a

network that needs to connect with other
networks. On this page I will explain the difference
between Routed and Routing protocols and explain
different methods used to achieve the routing of
protocols. The fact is that if routing of protocols was
not possible, then we wouldn't be able to
communicate using computers because there would
be no way of getting the data across to the other
end !
• Definition
• Routing is used for taking a packet (data) from
one device and sending it through the
network to another device on a different
network. If your network has no routers then
you are not routing. Routers route traffic to all
the networks in your internetwork. To be able
to route packets, a router must know the
following
• Destination address
• Neighbor routers from which it can learn
about remote networks
• Possible routes to all remote networks
• The best route to each remote network
• How to maintain and verify routing
information
• Before we go on, I would like to define 3 networking terms :
• Convergence: The process required for all routers in an
internetwork to update their routing tables and create a
consistent view of the network, using the best possible paths. No
user data is passed during convergence.
• Default Route: A "standard" route entry in a routing table which
is used as a first option. Any packets sent by a device will be sent
first to the default route. If that fails, it will try alternative routes.
• Static Route: A permanent route entered manually into a routing
table. This route will remain in the table, even if the link goes
down. It can only be erased manually.
• Dynamic Route: A route entry which is dynamically
(automatically) updated as changes to the network occur.
Dynamic routes are basically the opposite to static routes.
•  
• Routers are very common today in every network area, this is mainly
because every network these days connect to some other network,
whether it's the Internet or some other remote site. Routers get their
name from what they do.... which is route data from one network to
another.
• For example, if you had a company which had an office in Sydney and
another one in Melbourne, then to connect the two you would use a
leased line to which you would connect a router at each end. Any
traffic which needs to travel from one site to another will be routed via
the routers, while all the other unnecessary traffic is filtered (blocked),
thus saving you valuable bandwidth and money.
• There are two type of routers: 1) Hardware routers 2) Software
routers.
• So what's the difference ?
• When people talk about routers, they usually don't use the terms
"hardware" or "software" router but we are, for the purpose of
distinguishing between the two.
• Hardware routers are small boxes which run special
software created by their vendors to give them the
routing capability and the only thing they do is
simply route data from one network to another.
Most companies prefer hardware routers because
they are faster and more reliable, even though their
cost is considerably more when compared with a
software router.
• So what does a hardware router look like? Check the
picture below, it displays a Cisco 1600 and 2500
series router along with a Netgear RT338 router.
They look like a small box and run special software as
we said.
• Software routers do the same job with the above hardware
routers (route data), but they don't come in small flashy boxes.
A software router could be an NT server, NetWare server or
Linux server. All network servers have built-in routing
capabilities.
• Most people use them for Internet gateways and firewalls but
there is one big difference between the hardware and software
routers. You cannot (in most cases) simply replace the hardware
router with a software router.
• Why? Simply because the hardware router has the necessary
hardware built-in to allow it to connect to the special WAN link
(frame relay, ISDN, ATM etc), where your software router (e.g a
NT server) would have a few network cards one of which
connects to the LAN and the other goes to the WAN via the
hardware router.
 IP Routing Process
• Example:
• In our example, we have 2 networks, Network A and
Network B. Both networks are connected via a router
(Router A) which has 2 interfaces: E0 and E1. These
interfaces are just like the interface on your network card
(RJ-45), but built into the router.
• Now, we are going to describe step by step what happens
when Host A (Network A) wants to communicate with
Host B (Network B) which is on a different network.
•  
• 1) Host A opens a command prompt and enters >Ping
200.200.200.5.
• 2) IP works with the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) to
determine which network this packet is destined for by
looking at the IP address and the subnet mask of the Host
A. Since this is a request for a remote host, which means
it is not destined to be sent to a host on the local
network, the packet must be sent to the router (the
gateway for Network A) so that it can be routed to the
correct remote network (which is Network B).
 
 
• The difficulties and realizable efficiency in routing data
through a network depend on the layout and the
topology of the network eg if the node
• 3) Now, for Host A to send the packet to the router, it needs to know the
hardware address of the router's interface which is connected to its network
(Network A), in case you didn't realize, we are talking about the MAC (Media
Access Control) address of interface E0. To get the hardware address, Host A
looks in its ARP cache - a memory location where these MAC addresses are
stored for a few seconds .
•  
• 4) If it doesn't find it in there it means that either a long time has passed since
it last contacted the router or it simply hasn't resolved the IP address of the
router (192.168.0.1) to a hardware address (MAC). So it then sends an ARP
broadcast. This broadcast contains the following "What is the hardware (MAC)
address for IP 192.168.0.1 ? ". The router identifies that IP address as its own
and must answer, so it sends back to Host A a reply, giving it the MAC address
of its E0 interface. This is also one of the reasons why sometimes the first
"ping" will timeout. Because it takes some time for an ARP to be sent and the
requested machine to respond with its MAC address, by the time all that
happens, the TTL (Time To Live) of the first ping packet has expired, so it times
out !
• 5) The router responds with the hardware address of its E0 interface, to which the
192.168.0.1 IP is bound. Host A now has everything it needs in order to transmit a packet out
on the local network to the router. Now, the Network Layer hands down to the Datalink Layer
the packet it generated with the ping (ICMP echo request), along with the hardware address
of the router. This packet includes the source and destination IP address as well as the ICMP
echo request which was specified in the Network Layer.
•  
• 6) The Datalink Layer of Host A creates a frame, which encapsulates the packet with the
information needed to transmit on the local network. This includes the source and
destination hardware address (MAC) and the type field which specifies the Network Layer
protocol e.g IPv4 (that's the IP version we use), ARP. At the end of the frame, in the FCS
portion of the frame, the Datalink Layer will stick a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) to make
sure the receiving machine (the router) can figure out if the frame it received has been
corrupted. To learn more on how the frame is created, visit the Data Encapsulation -
Decapsulation.
• 7) The Datalink Layer of Host A hands the frame to the Physical layer which encodes the 1s
and 0s into a digital signal and transmits this out on the local physical network.
• 8)The signal is picked up by the router's E0 interface and
reads the frame. It will first do a CRC check and compare
it with the CRC value Host A added to this frame, to make
sure the frame is not corrupt.
• 9)After that, the destination hardware address (MAC) of
the received frame is checked. Since this will be a match,
the type field in the frame will be checked to see what
the router should do
• with the data packet. IP is in the type field, and the
router hands the packet to the IP protocol running on the
router. The frame is stripped and the original packet that
was generated by Host A is now in the router's buffer.
•  
• 10) IP looks at the packet's destination IP address to determine if
the packet is for the router. Since the destination IP address is
200.200.200.5, the router determines from the routing table that
200.200.200.0 is a directly connected network on interface E1.
 
• 11) The router places the packet in the buffer of interface E1. The
router needs to create a frame to send the packet to the
destination host. First, the router looks in the ARP cache to
determine whether the hardware address has already been
resolved from a prior communication. If it is not in the ARP cache,
the router sends an ARP broadcast out E1 to find the hardware
address of 200.200.200.5
• 12) Host B responds with the hardware address of its network
interface card with an ARP reply. The router's E1 interface now has
everything it needs to send the packet to the final destination.
•  
• 13)The frame generated from the router's E1 interface has the
source hardware address of E1 interface and the hardware
destination address of Host B's network interface card. However,
the most important thing here is that even though the frame's
source and destination hardware address changed at every
interface of the router it was sent to and from, the IP source and
destination addresses never changed. The packet was never
modified at all, only the frame changed.
• 14) Host B receives the frame and runs a CRC. If that checks out, it
discards the frame and hands the packet to IP. IP will then check the
destination IP address. Since the IP destination address matches the
IP configuration of Host B, it looks in the protocol field of the packet
to determine the purpose of the packet.
•  
• 15) Since the packet is an ICMP echo request, Host B generates a
new ICMP echo-reply packet with a source IP address of Host B and
a destination IP address of Host A. The process starts all over again,
except that it goes in the opposite direction. However, the hardware
address of each device along the path is already known, so each
device only needs to look in its ARP cache to determine the
hardware (MAC) address of each interface.
• And that just about covers our routing analysis. If you found it
confusing, take a break and come back later on and give it another
shot. Its really simple once you grasp the concept of routing.
 Routed Protocols

• Introduction
• We all understand that TCP/IP, IPX-SPX are protocols which are used in
a Local Area Network (LAN) so computers can communicate between
with each other and with other computers on the Internet.
• Chances are that in your LAN you are most probably running TCP/IP.
This protocol is what we call a "routed" protocol. The term "routed"
refers to something which can be passed on from one place (network)
to another. In the example of TCP/IP, this is when you construct a data
packet and send it across to another computer on the Internet
• This ability to use TCP/IP to send data across networks and the
Internet is the main reason it's so popular and dominant. If you're
thinking also of NetBeui and IPx/SPX,
• then note that NetBeui is not a routed protocol, but
IPX/SPX is! The reason for this is actually in the
information a packet holds when it uses one of the
protocols.
• explaination:
• If you looked at a TCP/IP or IPX/SPX packet, you will
notice that they both contain a "network" layer. For
TCP/IP, this translates to the IP layer (Layer 3), as for
IPX/SPX, it's the IPX layer (Layer 3). To make it easy to
understand, I will use TCP/IP as an example.
• NetBeui on the other hand has no such information! This
means that NetBeui has no information about the
destination network to which it needs to send the data, as
it was developed for LAN use only, or you could say that all
hosts are considered to be on the same logical network and
all resources are considered to be local. This classifies
NetBeui as a "non
• Routing protocols were created for routers. These protocols
have been designed to allow the exchange of routing
tables, or known networks, between routers. There are a
lot of different routing protocols, each one designed for
specific network sizes, so I am not going to be able to
mention and analyse them all, but I will focus on the most
popular.
 The two main types of routing: Static routing and Dynamic routing

• The router learns about remote networks from neighbor routers or from an administrator. The
router then builds a routing table, the creation of which I will explain in detail, that describes
how to find the remote networks. If the network is directly connected then the router already
knows how to get to the network. If the networks are not attached, the router must learn how to
get to the remote network with either static routing (administrator manually enters the routes in
the router's table) or dynamic routing (happens automatically using routing protocols).
• The routers then update each other about all the networks they know. If a change occurs e.g a
router goes down, the dynamic routing protocols automatically inform all routers about the
change. If static routing is used, then the administrator has to update all changes into all routers
and therefore no routing protocol is used.
• Only Dynamic routing uses routing protocols, which enable routers to:
• Dynamically discover and maintain routes
• Calculate routes
• Distribute routing updates to other routers
• Reach agreement with other routers about the network topology
• Statically programmed routers are unable to discover routes, or send routing information to
other routers. They send data over routes defined by the network Administrator.
• A Stub network is so called because it is a
dead end in the network. There is only one
route in and one route out and, because of
this, they can be reached using static routing,
thus saving valuable bandwidth.
 Dynamic Routing Protocols

• There are 3 types of Dynamic routing protocols, these differ

mainly in the way that they discover and make calculations
about routes.
• 1) Distance Vector
• 2) Link State
• 3) Hybrid
• Distance Vector routers compute the best path from
information passed to them from neighbors
• Link State routers each have a copy of the entire network map
• Link State routers compute best routes from this local map
•  
 Dynamic Routing Protocol
• You can also classify the routing protocols in terms of
their location on a network
• E.g, routing protocols can exist in, or between,
autonomous systems
• Exterior Gateway Protocols (EGP's) are found
between autonomous systems, whereas Interior
Gateway Protocols (IGP'S) are found within
autonomous systems:
• Example of an EGP is the Border Gateway Protocol
(BGP) which is also used amongst the Internet
routers, whereas examples of IGP protocols are RIP,
IGRP, EIGRP
 Distance Vector Protocol

• Distance Vector routing protocols use frequent

broadcasts (255.255.255.255 or FF:FF:FF:FF) of their
entire routing table every 30 sec. on all their interfaces
in order to communicate with their neighbors.
• The bigger the routing tables, the more broadcasts.
This methodology limits significantly the size of
network on which Distance Vector can be used.
• Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and Interior
Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) are two very popular
Distance Vector routing protocols
 Distance Vector Protocol conti’
• Distance Vector protocols view networks in terms of
adjacent routers and hop counts, which also happens to
be the metric used
• The "hop" count (max of 15 for RIP, 16 is deemed
unreachable and 255 for IGMP), will increase by one
every time the packet transits through a router
• So the router makes decisions about the way a packet
will travel, based on the amount of hops it takes to reach
the destination and if it had 2 different ways to get there,
it will simply send it via the shortest path, regardless of
the connection speed
• This is known as pinhole congestion.
 Distance Vector Protocol conti

 Now, when a router is powered on, it will

immediately know about the networks to
which each interface is directly connected
 In this case Router B knows that interface E0 is
connected to the 192.168.0.0 network and the
S0 interface is connected to the 192.168.10.0
network .routing table required
 Distance Vector Protocol conti
• Looking again at the routing table for Router B, the numbers you see
on the right hand side of the interfaces are the "hop counts" which,
as mentioned, is the metric that distance vector protocols use to
keep track on how far away a particular network is
• Since these 2 networks are connected directly to the router's
interface, they will have a value of zero (0) in the router's table entry
• The same rule applies for every router in our example
• Remember we have "just turn the routers on", so the network is
now converging and that means that there is no data being passed.
• When I say "no data" I mean data from any computer or server that
might be on any of the networks.
•
 Distance Vector Protocol conti
• During this "convergence" time, the only type of data being passed
between the routers is that which allows them to populate their routing
tables and after that's done, the routers will pass all other types of data
between them

• That's why a fast convergence time is a big advantage

• One of the problems with RIP is that it has a slow convergence time
• Each router will broadcast its entire routing table every 30 seconds
• Routing based on Distance Vector can cause a lot of problems when links
go up and down, this could result in infinite loops and can also de-
synchronize the network
• Routing loops can occur when every router is not updated close to the
same time.
• Let's have a look at the problem before we look at the various solutions:
 Distance Vector Protocol conti
• When a say, Network 5 fails, Router E knows about it since it's
directly connected to it and tells Router D about it on its next
update (when it will broadcast its entire routing table)
• This will result in Router D stopping routing data to Network 5
through Router E
• But as you can see in the above picture, routers A B and C
don't know about Network 5 yet, so they keep sending out
update information
• Router D will eventually send out its update and cause Router
B to stop routing to Network 5, but routers A and C are still not
updated
• To them, it appear that Network 5 is still available through
Router B with a metric of 3.
 Distance Vector Protocol conti
• Now Router A sends its regular broadcast of its entire routing table
which includes reachability for Network 5
• Routers C and B receive the wonderful news that Network 5 can be
reached from Router A, so they send out the information that
Network 5 is now available
• From now on, any packet with a destination of Network 5 will go to
Router A then to Router B and from there back to Router A
(remember that Router B got the good news that Network 5 is
available via Router A).
• So this is where things get a bit messy and you have that wonderful
loop, where data just gets passed around from one router to
another
• Seems like they are playing ping pong :)
• To deal with these problems we use the following techniques:
 Maximum Hop Count
• The routing loop we just described at is called "counting to
infinity" and it is caused by gossip and wrong information being
communicated between the routers
• Without something to protect against this type of a loop, the
hop count will keep on increasing each time the packet goes
through a router !
• One way of solving this problem is to define a maximum hop
count
• Distance Vector (RIP) permits a hop count of up to 15, so
anything that needs 16 hops is unreachable
• So if a loop occurred, it would go around the network until the
packet reached a hop count of 15 and the next router would
simply discard the packet.
 Split Horizon

• Split Horizon works on the principle that it's

never useful to send information about a
router back to the destination from which the
original packet came from
• So if for example I told you a joke, it's
pointless you telling me that joke again !
• In our example it would have prevented
Router A from sending the updated
information it received from Router B back to
Router B
 Route Poisoning

• Alternative to split horizon, when a router receives

information about a route from a particular
network, the router advertises the route back to
that network with the metric of 16, indicating that
the destination is unreachable.
• In our example, this means that when Network 5
goes down, Router E initiates router poisoning by
entering a table entry for Network 5 as 16, which
basically means it's unreachable
• This way, Router D is not susceptible to any
incorrect updates about the route to Network 5
 Route Poisoning
• When Router D receives a router poisoning
from Router E, it sends an update called a
poison reverse, back to Router E
• This make sure all routes on the segment have
received the poisoned route information
• Route poisoning, used with hold-downs (see
section below) will certainly speed up
convergence time because the neighboring
routers don't have to wait 30 seconds before
advertising the poisoned route
 Hold-Down Timers

• Routers keep an entry for the network-down state, allowing time for
other routers to re-compute for this topology change, this way,
allowing time for either the downed router to come back or the
network to stabilize somewhat before changing to the next best
route is the hold-down time
• When a router receives an update from a neighbor indicating that a
previously accessible network is not working and is inaccessible, the
hold-down timer will start
• If a new update arrives from a neighbor with a better metric than
the original network entry, the hold-down is removed and data is
passed
• But an update is received from a neighbor router before the hold-
down timer expires and it has a lower metric than the previous
route, therefore the update is ignored and the hold-down timer
keeps ticking
 Hold-Down Timers

• This allows more time for the network to

converge
• Hold-down timers use triggered updates,
which reset the hold-down timer, to alert the
neighbor's routers of a change in the network.
Unlike update messages from neighbor
routers, triggered updates create a new
routing table that is sent immediately to
neighbor routers because a change was
detected in the network.
 Hold-Down Timers

 There are three instances when triggered updates will reset the
hold-down timer:
 1) The hold-down timer expires
 2) The router received a processing task proportional to the
number of links in the internetwork.
 3) Another update is received indicating the network status has
changed.
 In our example, any update received by Router B from Router A,
would not be accepted until the hold-down timer expires
 This will ensure that Router B will not receive a "false" update
from any routers that are not aware that Network 5 is unreachable
 Router B will then send a update and correct the other routers'
tables.
 Link State Routing Protocols

• Link State protocols, unlike Distance Vector broadcasts,

use multicast.
• Multicast is a "broadcast" to a group of hosts, in this case
routers (Please see the multicast page for more
information)
• So if I had 10 router of which 4 where part of a "multicast
group" then, when I send out a multicast packet to this
group, only these 4 routers will receive the updates, while
the rest of them will simply ignore the data
• The multicast address is usually 224.0.0.5 & 224.0.0.6, this
address is defined by the IGRP (Interior Gateway Routing
Protocol).
 Link State Routing Protocols

• Link State routing protocols do not view networks in

terms of adjacent routers and hop counts, but they
build a comprehensive view of the overall network
which fully describes the all possible routes along
with their costs
• Using the SPF (Shortest Path First) algorithm, the
router creates a "topological database" which is a
hierarchy reflecting the network routers it knows
about
• It then puts it's self on the top of this hierarchy, and
has a complete picture from it's own perspective
 Link State Routing Protocols

• When a router using a Link State protocol, such a

OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) knows about a
change on the network, it will multicast this change
instantly, there for flooding the network with this
information
• The information routers require to build their
databases is provided in the form of Link State
advertisement packets (LSAP).
• Routers do not advertise their entire routing tables,
instead each router advertises only its information
regarding immediately adjacent routers.
 Comparison of link state protocol and distance vector Protocols

• Link State protocols in comparison to Distance Vector protocols

have:
• Big memory requirements
• Shortest path computations require many CPU circles
• If network is stable little bandwidth is used; react quickly to
topology changes
• Announcements cannot be “filtered”. All items in the database must
be sent to neighbors
• All neighbors must be trusted  
• Authentication mechanisms can be used to avoid undesired
adjacencies
• No split horizon techniques are possible
 Problems associated with link state protocol
• Even though Link State protocols work more efficiently, problem can arise.
Usually problems that occur are the cause of changes in the network topology
(links go up-down),
• All routers don't get updated immediately because they might be on different
line speeds, therefore, routers connected via a fast link will receive these
changes faster than the others on a slower link
• Different techniques have been developed to deal with these problem and these
are :
• 1) Dampen update frequency
• 2) Target link-state updates to multicast
• 3) Use link-state area hierarchy for topology
• 4) Exchange route summaries at area borders
• 5) Use Time-stamps Update numbering & counters
• 6) Manage partitions using a area hierarchy
• Please select one of the following Link State routing protocols:
• Open Shortest Path First - OSPF
 Hybrid Protocols

 Hybrid routing protocols are something in-

between Distance Vector and Link State
routing protocols.
 Please select the Hybrid protocol you want to
read about:
 Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol -
EIGRP
 HUBS
• Here we will talk about hubs and explain how they work. In the next section we
will move to switches and how they differ from hubs, how they work and the
types of switching methods that are available; we will also compare them
• Before we start there are a few definitions which I need to speak about so you
can understand the terminology we will be using
• Domain: Defined as a geographical area or logical area (in our imagination)
where anything in it becomes part of the domain
• In computer land, this means that when something happens in this domain
(area) every computer that's part of it will see or hear everything that happens
in it
• Collision Domain: Putting it simple, whenever a collision between two computers
occurs, every other computer within the domain will hear and know about the
collision
• These computers are said to be in the same collision domain. As you're going to
see later on, when computers connect together using a hub they become part of
the same collision domain. This doesn't happen with switches.
 HUBS conti’
• Broadcast Domain: A domain where every broadcast (a
broadcast is a frame or data which is sent to every computer) is
seen by all computers within the domain
• Hubs and switches do not break up broadcast domains. You
need a router to achieve this.
• There are different devices which can break-up collision domains
and broadcast domains and make the network a lot faster and
efficient
• Switches create separate collision domains but not broadcast
domains
• Routers create separate broadcast and collision domains.
• Hubs are too simple to do either, can't create separate collision
or broadcast domain
 Hubs & Repeaters

• Hubs and repeaters are basically the same, so we will

be using the term "Hub" to keep things simple
• Hubs are common today in every network.
• They are the cheapest way to connect two or more
computers together Hubs are also known as Repeaters
and work on the first layer of the OSI model
• They are said to work on the first layer because of the
function they perform
• They don't read the data frames at all (like switches
and routers do), they only make sure the frame is
repeated out on each port and that's about it
 Hubs & Repeaters
• The Nodes that share an Ethernet or Fast Ethernet
LAN using the CSMA/CD rules are said to be in the
same collision domain
• In plain English, this means that all nodes connected
to a hub are part of the same collision domain
• In a Collision domain, when a collision occurs
everyone in that domain/area will hear it and will be
affected
• The Ethernet section talks about CSMA/CD and
collision domains since they are part of the rules
under which Ethernet functions.
 The picture below shows a few hubs : 8 port Netgear and a D-link hub.

•The computers (nodes) connect to the hub using Unshielded Twisted Pair cable
(UTP).
•Only one node can be connected to each port of the hub. The pictured hub has a
total of 8 ports, which means up to 8 computers can be networked

•When hubs were not that common and also expensive, most offices and home
networks use to install coax cable
•The way hubs work is quite simple and straightforward: When a computer on
any one of the eight ports transmits data, this is replicated and sent out to the
other seven ports
•Check out the below picture which shows it clearly
 
 
 Hubs
• EXPLANATION:
• Node 1 is transmitting some data to Node 6 but all nodes
are receiving the data as well. This data will be rejected by
the rest of the nodes once they figure out it's not for them
• This is accomplished by the node's network card reading
the destination MAC address of the frame (data) it
receives, it examines it and sees that it doesn't match with
it's own and therefore discards the frame
• Please see the Datalink layer in the OSI section for more
information on MAC addresses
• Most hubs these days also have a special port which can
function as a normal port or as an "uplink" port
 Hubs
• An uplink port allows you to connect another
hub to the existing one, increasing the amount
of ports which will be available to you
• This is a cheap solution when you need to get
a few more computers networked and it works
quite well up to a point
• This is how 2 eight port hubs would look when
connected via the uplink port and how the
data is replicated to all 16 ports :
 Hubs
• In the above picture you can see that Node 1 is again transmitting data
to Node 6 and that every other node connected to the hub is receiving
the information
• As we said, this is a pretty good and cheap solution, but as the network
gets busier, you can clearly understand that there is going to be a lot of
unnecessary data flowing all over the network
• All Nodes here are in the same broasdcast and collision domain since
they will hear every broadcast and collision that occurs
• This is the same situation you get when you use coax cable, where
every node or computer is connected onto the same cable and the data
that's put onto it travels along the cable and is received by every
computer
 
 Hubs
• Most hubs these days also have a special port which
can function as a normal port or as an "uplink" port
• An uplink port allows you to connect another hub
to the existing one, increasing the amount of ports
which will be available to you
• This is a cheap solution when you need to get a few
more computers networked and it works quite well
up to a point
• This is how 2 eight port hubs would look when
connected via the uplink port and how the data is
replicated to all 16 ports :
 Hubs
• You probably also noticed the two orange boxes labled
"50 Ohm"
• These are called terminating resistors and are used on
both ends of the coax cable so when the signal gets to
them, it's absorbed by them and that way you don't get
the signal reflecting back
• Think of them as shock absorbent and the data signal is
the shock wave which gets absorbed when it reaches
the destination
• terminating resistors
• The coax cable can be up to 185 meters and can contain
no more than 30 nodes per segment
 Hubs
• What you're looking at in the above picture is one
segment 25 meters long with 4 nodes attached to it
• Now coming back to the hubs, there are a few standard
features most of them have these include a link and
activity LED for each port, a power LED and collision LED
• Some hubs have separate link lights and activity lights,
others combine them into one where the link light will
flash when there is activity, otherwise it remains
constantly on
• The Netgear hub which is displayed at the beginning of
this page has two separate LEDs for the activity and link
but the Compex hub below has only one.
 Hubs
• This little hub also contains a special BNC connection so you
can connect a coax cable to it
• When you do connect it, the BNC light comes on. Notice the
label at the top where they have written "8 port Ethernet
Repeater"
• As we already have said, hubs are just simple repeaters 
• The collision light on the hubs will only light up when a
collision is detected.  
 Hubs
• Collision is when 2 computers or nodes try to talk on the network at the
same time.
• When this happens, their frames will collide and become corrupted. The
hubs are smart enough to detect this and will light up the collision LED for
a small amount of time (1/10 of a second for each collision)
• If you find yourself wondering why couldn't they make things work so
more than two computers can talk on the network

• Read about Ethernet where all this is explained in detail about;

• Collisions and the fact that only one computer can talk on the network at
any given time along with the cabling rules are all part of the Ethernet
rules. Remember that any node connected to a hub becomes part of the
same collision domain
 Switching Technology

• As we mentioned earlier, hubs work at the first layer of the

OSI model and simply receive and transmit information without
examining any of it.
• Switches (Layer-2 Switching) are a lot smarter than hubs and
operate on the second layer of the OSI model.
• What this means is that a switch will not simply receive data and
transmit it throughout every port, but it will read the data and find
out the packet's destination by checking the MAC address
• The destination MAC address is located always at the beginning of
the packet so once the switch reads it, it is forwarded to the
appropriate port so no other node or computer connected to the
switch will see the packet.
 Switching Technology
 Switches use Application Specific Integrated Circuits
(ASIC's) to build and maintain filter tables

Layer-2 switches are a lot faster than routers because they
do not look at the Network Layer ( i.e Layer-3) header or if
you like, information
 Instead all they look at the frame's hardware address
(MAC address) to determine where the frame needs to be
forwarded or if it needs to be dropped
 If we had to point a few features of switches we would say:
 Switching Technology conti’

 They provide hardware based bridging (MAC

addresses)
 They work at wire speed, therefore have low latency
 They come in 3 different types:
 Store & Forward, Cut-Through and Fragment Free
(Analysed later)
 Below is a picture of two typical switches. Notice
how they looks similair to a hubs, but they aren't.
It's just that the difference is on the inside!
 
 The Three Stages of switching

• All switches regardless of the brand and various

enhancements they carry, have something in
common, it's the three stages (sometimes 2
stages) they go through when powered up and
during operation.
• These are as follows:
• Address Learning
• Forward/Filter decisions
• Loop Avoidance (Optional)
 Address Learning

• When a switch is powered on, the MAC

filtering table is empty
• When a device transmits and an interface
receives a frame, the switch places the source
address in the MAC filtering table
remembering the interface on which the
device on is located
• The switch has no choice but to flood the
network with this frame because it has no
idea where the destination device is located
 Address Learning conti’
• If a device answers and sends a frame back, then the switch will take the source address
from that frame and place the MAC address in the database, associating this address
with the interface that received the frame.
• Since the switch has two MAC addresses in the filtering table, the devices can make a
point-to-point connection and the frames will only be forwarded between the two
devices.
• This makes layer-2 switches better than hubs.
• In a hub network all frames are forwarded out to all ports every time.
• Most desktop switches these days can hold up to 8000 MAC addresses in their table,
and once the table is filled, then starting with the very first MAC entry, the switch will
start overwriting the entries.
• Even though the number of entries might sound big .. it only takes a minute or two to
fill it up, and if a workstation does not talk on the network for that amount of time, then
chances are that its MAC address has been removed from the table and the switch will
forward to all ports the packet which has a destination for a particular workstation.
 Address Learning conti’

• Most desktop switches these days can hold up

to 8000 MAC addresses in their table, and
once the table is filled, then starting with the
very first MAC entry, the switch will start
overwriting the entries.
 Address Learning conti’

• Even though the number of entries might

sound big ,it only takes a minute or two to fill
it up, and if a workstation does not talk on the
network for that amount of time, then
chances are that its MAC address has been
removed from the table and the switch will
forward to all ports the packet which has a
destination for a particular workstation.
 Address Learning conti’
 And after the first frame has been successfully
received by Node 2, Node 2 sends a reply to
Node 1, check out what happens:
 Notice how the frame is not transmitted to
every node on the switch.
 The switch by now has already learned that
Node 1 is on the first port, so it send it straight
there without delay
 From now on, any communication between the
two will be a point-to-point connection
 Forward/Filter Decision
• When a frame arrives at the switch, the first step is
to check the destination hardware address, which is
compared to the forward/filter MAC database.
• If the destination hardware address is known, then
it will transmit it out the correct port, but if the
destination hardware address is not known, then it
will broadcast the frame out of all ports, except the
one which it received it from
• If a device (computer) answers to the broadcast,
then the MAC address of that device is added to the
MAC database of the switch.
 Loop Avoidance

• It's always a good idea to have a redundant link between your switches, in case one
decides to go for a holiday.
• When you setup redundant switches in your network to stop failures, you can create
problems.
• Have a look at the picture below and I'll explain: 
• The above picture shows an example of two switches which have been placed in the
network to provide redundancy in case one fails.
• Both switches have their first port connected to the upper section of the network, while
their port 2 is connected to the lower section of the same network.
• This way, if Switch A fails, then Switch B takes over, or vice versa.
• Things will work fine until a broadcast come along and causes alot of trouble.
• For the simplicity of this example, I am not going to show any workstations, but only the
server which is going to send a broadcast over the network, and keep in mind that this is
what happens in real life if your switch does not support Spanning-Tree Protocol (STP),
this is why I stuck the "Optional" near the "Loop Avoidance" at the start of this section:
 Loop Avoidance

• The Server for one reason or another decides to do

a broadcast. This First Round (check arrow)
broadcast is sent down to the network cable and
firstly reaches Port 1 on Switch A.
• As a result, since Switch A has Port 2 connected to
the other side of the lan, it sends the broadcast out
to the lower section of the network, this then is sent
down the wire and reaches Port 2 on Switch B which
will send it out Port 1 and back onto the upper part
of the network.
 Loop Avoidance

• At this point, as the arrows indicate (orange colour)

the Second Round of this broadcast starts.
• So again... the broadcast reaches Port 1 of Switch A
and goes out Port 2 back down to the lower section
of the network and back up via Port 2 of Switch B
• After it comes out of Port 1 of Switch B, we get the
Third Round, and then the Fourth Round, Fifth
Round and keeps on going without stopping.....!
• This is what we call a Broadcast Storm
 Loop Avoidance
 A Broadcast Storm will repeat constantly,
chewing up the valuable bandwidth on the
network.
 This is a major problem, so they had to solve it
one way or another, and they did... with the
Spanning-Tree Protocol or STP in short
 What STP does, is to find the redundant links,
which this case would be Port 2 of Switch B and
shut it down, thus eliminating the possibility of
looping to occur.
 LAN Switch Types

• At the begining of this page we said that the switches

are fast, therefor have low latency. This latency does
vary and depends on what type of switching mode
the switch is operating at. You might recall seeing
these three switching modes at the beginning: Store
& Forward, Cut-Through and Fragment Free.
• The picture below shows how far the different
switching modes check the frame:
•  
 LAN Switch Types

• So what does this all mean ? Switching modes ?

I Don't understand !
• Let's Explain!
• The fact is that switches can operate in one of
the three modes. Some advance switches will
allow you to actually pick the mode you would
like it to operate in, while others don't give you
any choice. Let's have a quick look at each
mode:
 Store & Forward mode

 This is one of the most popular switching methods

 In this mode, when the switch receives a frame
from one of it's ports, it will store it in memory,
check it for errors and corruption, and if it passes
the test, it will forward the frame out the
designated port, otherwise, if it discovers that the
frame has errors or is corrupt, it will discard it. This
method is the safest, but also has the highest
latency.
 Cut-Through (Real Time)

 Cut-Through switching is the second most

popular method
 In this mode, the switch reads the frame until it
learns the destination MAC address of the frame
it's receiving
 Once it learns it, it will forward the frame
straight out the designated port without delay
 This is why we say it's -Real Time-, there is no
delay or error checking done to the frame
 Fragment Free

• The Fragment free switching method is mainly used to check for frames
which have been subject to a collision.
• The frame's first 64 bytes are only checked before forwarding the frame
out the designated port.
• Reason for this is because almost all collisions will happen within the first
64 bytes of a frame.
• If there is corruption in the first 64 bytes, it's most likely that that frame
was a victim of a collision
• Just keep one important detail in mind:
When you go out to buy a switch, make sure you check the amount of
memory it has.
 Fragment Free conti’

 A lot of the cheap switches which support the Store

&Forward mode have very small amounts of memory
buffer (256KB- 512KB) per port.
 The result of this is that you get a major decrease in
performance when you have more than 2 computers
communicating via that switch cause there isn't enough
memory to store all incoming packets (this also depends
on the switching type your switch supports), and you
eventually get packets being discarded
 The table below is a guide on what amounts of memory
you should be looking at for switches of different
configuration
 Bridges

 A bridge is device filters data traffic at a network

boundary
 Bridges reduce the amount of traffic on a LAN by
dividing it into two segments
 Bridges operate at the data link layer (Layer 2) of the OSI
model.
 Bridges inspect incoming traffic and decide whether to
forward or discard it
 An Ethernet bridge, for example, inspects each
incoming Ethernet frame - including the source and
destination MAC addresses, and sometimes the frame
size - in making individual forwarding decisions
 Bridges conti’
 Bridges serve a similar function as switches, that also
operate at Layer 2
 Traditional bridges, though, support one network
boundary, whereas switches usually offer four or more
hardware ports
 Switches are sometimes called "multi-port bridges" for
this reason
 Bridges tend to be more complex than hubs or repeaters
 Bridges can analyze incoming data packets to determine
if the bridge is able to send the given packet to another
segment of the network.
 Network Bridge
• A network bridge connects multiple network segments at
the data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model
• The term layer 2 switch is very often used interchangeably
with bridge.
• Bridges are similar to repeaters or network hubs, devices
that connect network segments at the physical layer;
however, with bridging, traffic from one network is managed
rather than simply rebroadcast to adjacent network
segments
• In Ethernet networks, the term "bridge" formally means a
device that behaves according to the IEEE 802.1D standard—
this is most often referred to as a network switch in
marketing literature
 Since bridging takes place at the data link layer
of the OSI model, a bridge processes the
information from each frame of data it
receives
 In an Ethernet frame, this provides the
MAC address of the frame's source and
destination
 Bridges use two methods to resolve the
network segment that a MAC address belongs
to-Transparent bridging and Source route
bridging
 Transparent bridging
• This method uses a forwarding database to send frames
across network segments.
• The forwarding database is initially empty and entries in
the database are built as the bridge receives frames. I
• f an address entry is not found in the forwarding
database, the frame is rebroadcast to all ports of the
bridge, forwarding the frame to all segments except the
source address.
• By means of these broadcast frames, the destination
network will respond and a route will be created along
with recording the network segment to which a particular
frame is to be sent,
 Transparent bridging conti’
• bridges may also record a bandwidth metric to
avoid looping when multiple paths are
available
• Devices that have this transparent bridging
functionality are also known as adaptive
bridges
• They are primarily found in Ethernet
networks.
 Source route bridging
• With source route bridging two frame types are used in
order to find the route to the destination network segment.
• Single-Route (SR) frames make up most of the network
traffic and have set destinations
• while All-Route (AR) frames are used to find routes Bridges
send AR frames by broadcasting on all network branches;
• Each step of the followed route is registered by the bridge
performing it
• Each frame has a maximum hop count, which is determined
to be greater than the diameter of the network graph, and is
decremented by each bridge
 Source route Bridging conti’
 Frames are dropped when this hop count reaches zero, to avoid
indefinite looping of AR frames.
 The first AR frame which reaches its destination is considered to
have followed the best route, and the route can be used for
subsequent SR frames; the other AR frames are discarded
 This method of locating a destination network can allow for indirect
load balancing among multiple bridges connecting two networks.
 The more a bridge is loaded, the less likely it is to take part in the
route finding process for a new destination as it will be slow to
forward packets.
 A new AR packet will find a different route over a less busy path if
one exists.
 
 Source route Bridging conti’
 This method is very different from transparent
bridge usage, where redundant bridges will be
inactivated
 however, more overhead is introduced to find
routes, and space is wasted to store them in
frames
 A switch with a faster backplane can be just as
good for performance, if not for fault
tolerance. They are primarily found in Token
Ring networks
 Advantages of network bridges

 Self configuring
 Primitive bridges are often inexpensive
 Reduce the size of collision domain by
microsegmentation in non switched networks
 Transparent to protocols above the MAC layer allows
the introduction of management/performance
information and access control
 LANs interconnected are separate, and physical
constraints such as number of stations, repeaters and
segment length don't apply
 Helps minimize bandwidth usage
 Disadvantages of network bridges

 Does not limit the scope of broadcasts

 Does not scale to extremely large networks
 Buffering introduces store and forward delays; on
average traffic destined for bridge will be related to the
number of stations on the rest of the LAN
 Bridging of different MAC protocols introduces errors
 Because bridges do more than repeaters by viewing
MAC addresses, the extra processing makes them slower
than repeaters
 Bridges are more expensive than repeaters
 Disadvantages of network bridges

 Although infinite bridges (or layer 2 switches)

can be connected in theory, often a broadcast
storm will result as more and more collisions
occur
 Collisions delay service advertisements, which
causes the hosts to back off and attempt to
retransmit after a pseudo-random interval
 Because bridges simply repeat any Layer 2
broadcast traffic, this can result in undesirable
• example would be a bridge in between adjacent
office buildings. It is unlikely that the advantages
of bridging would outweigh the loss of network
bandwidth associated with all of the service
advertisements.
• Another major disadvantage is that any
standards-compliant implementation of bridging
cannot have any closed loops in a network. This
limits both performance and reliability.
 Bridging versus routing

• Bridging and routing are both ways of performing data

control, but work through different methods
• Bridging takes place at OSI Model Layer 2 (Data-Link
Layer) while Routing takes place at the
OSI Model Layer 3 (Network Layer)
• This difference means that a bridge directs frames
according to hardware assigned MAC addresses while
a router makes its decisions according to arbitrarily
assigned IP Addresses
• As a result of this, bridges are not concerned with and
are unable to distinguish networks while routers can
 Bridging versus routing

 When designing a network, one can choose to

put multiple segments into one bridged network
or to divide it into different networks
interconnected by routers
 If a host is physically moved from one network
area to another in a routed network, it has to get
a new IP address
 if this system is moved within a bridged
network, it doesn't have to reconfigure anything.
These days bridges are replaced with switches
 Bridge versus Layer 2 Switch conti’

• Bridge frame handling is controlled in the

bridge's software. Conversely, layer 2 switch
performs address recognition and frame
forwarding with hardware
• Similarly, a router and a layer 3 switch differ only
by whether they forward in software, or
hardware.
• A bridge can typically analyze/forward only one
packet at a time, while a layer 2 switch has
multiple parallel data paths and can handle
multiple frames simultaneously.
• A bridge uses store-and-forward (it buffers the
incoming frame, and then performs a CRC to
ensure data integrity before forwarding the
frame)
• while a layer 2 switch can be configured to
either use store-and-forward, or to use cut-
through (sending the frame through as soon
as the destination MAC address is realized,
without checking the data for correctness).
• Because a layer 2 switch can incorporate the
functions of a bridge, the bridge has suffered
commercially
• New installations typically include layer 2
switches with bridge functionality, rather than
bridges.
• This has led to the general mixing of the two
terms- Brouter
 Wireless bridge conti’
• A wireless bridge is a hardware component used to
connect two or more network segments (LANs or
parts of a LAN) which are physically and logically (by
protocol) separated
• .It does not necessarily always need to be a
hardware device, as some operating systems (such as
Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and FreeBSD) provide
software to bridge different protocols
• This is seen commonly in protocols over wireless to
cable. So in a sense the computer acts as a bridge by
using bridging O/S software.
 Wireless bridge conti’
 wireless routers and wireless access points offer
either a "bridge" mode or a "repeater" mode, both
of which perform a similar common function.
 The difference being the bridge mode connects to
different protocol types and the repeater modes
relays the same protocol type
 Wireless routers, access points, and bridges are
available that are compliant with the IEEE802.11a, b,
g and n standards
 The frequency bands for these wireless standards
can be used license-free in most countries
 Wireless bridge CONTI’
 Wireless bridge devices work in pairs (
point-to-point), one on each side of the
"bridge". However, there can be many
simultaneous "bridges" using one central
device (point to multipoint)
 During bridge setup, the wireless devices used
for the bridge must be set to the same
service set identifier (SSID) and radio channel
 Wireless bridge conti’
• Bridging has historically referred to propagation of data across a device
without traversing a network stack, such as TCP/IP
• Wireless bridging is a colloquial term.
• A more accurate description of connecting two local area networks would
be a Wireless LAN to LAN bridge
• The distinction is important
• While device may not support bridging to a remote wireless access point
to connect two LANs,
It may be desirable (and supported) that a wireless access point support
true bridging; where packets traverse from a wireless to wired network
without passing through an internal protocol stack, firewall or other
network abstraction.
 Wireless bridge conti
 Two bridged networks could be treated as parts
of a single subnet under Internet Protocol (IP)
 A wireless client would be able to make a DHCP
request from a wired server if the wired and
wireless networks were bridged
 In the ISO OSI model, a device in which packets
traverse the network layer is considered a router,
a device in which packets traverse the data link
layer only is considered a bridge
 Transparent Bridging

• Transparent bridging refers to a form of bridging

"transparent" to the end systems using it, in the
sense that the end systems operate as if the
bridge isn't there in the way that matters
• bridges segment broadcasts between networks,
and only allows specific addresses to pass
through the bridge to the other network
• It is used primarily in Ethernet networks, where
it has been standardized as IEEE 802.1D
 Transparent Bridging
• The bridging functions are confined to network bridges which
interconnect the network segments.
• The active parts of the network must form a tree.
• This can be achieved either by physically building the network as a tree or
by using bridges that use the spanning tree protocol to build a loop-free
network topology by selectively disabling network broadcast addresses.
• If one computer on network A sent a broadcast packet (packet with
destination mac address FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF) to address FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF,
the bridge would stop this from getting to network B.
• Note we have 3 addresses: source address and target address of the
packet and the address where we send the packet.
 Transparent Bridging
• The mac address FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF is the broadcast address
for both networks; when a frame is sent to this address, the
frame is then resent out on every available port on that
specific network segment
• This method allows the bridge to only switch frames that
have a specific MAC address, that is, one that is not mac
FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF.
• When an address is specified and a frame is sent, the bridge
automatically switches the frame to both network segments
while noting the source MAC addresses' home segment
• This allows the bridge to send frames across the networks,
by recording and resolving MAC addresses of devices on
each side
 Transparent Bridging cont’

 Next, the bridges monitor all frames traveling

on the network, noting the frame's source
addresses in a table, and then broadcasting
the frame with a specific destination (not
broadcast) address to the other networks,
effectively rebroadcasting it to every device
available on every network segment until the
specified destination is found
 Without broadcast segmentation, the bridge
would get caught in an infinite loop.
 Transparent Bridging cont’

•Note that both source and destination addresses are used in this
algorithm. Source addresses are recorded in entries in the table,
while destination addresses are looked up in the table and matched
to the proper segment to send the frame to.
•As an example, consider two hosts (A and B) and a bridge (C). The
bridge has two interfaces, (C1, C2).
•A is connected to the C1 and B is connected to the C2. Note the
physical connection is A - C - B, since C has two ports.
•A sends a frame to (C), and C records the source MAC address into
its table
•The bridge now has an address for A in its table, so it forwards it to
B by broadcasting it to FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF, or every address possible
•B, having received a packet from A, now transmits a packet in
response
 Transparent Bridging cont’
this time, the bridge has A's address in the table, so it
records B's address sends it to A's unique MAC
address specifically
Two-way communication is now possible between A
and B without any further broadcasting.
 Note, however, that only the bridge along the direct
path between A and B possess table entries for B
 If a third host (D), on the same side as A sends a
frame to B, the bridge simply records the address
source, and broadcasts it to B's segment
 Source route bridging
• Source route bridging is used primarily on
token ring networks, and is standardized in
Section 9 of the IEEE 802.2 standard
• The spanning tree protocol is not used, the
operation of the network bridges is simpler,
and much of the bridging functions are
performed by the end systems, particularly
the sources, giving rise to its name.
 Source route bridging
• A field in the token ring header, the routing
information field (RIF), is used to support
source-route bridging
• Upon sending a packet, a host attaches a RIF
to the packet indicating the series of bridges
and network segments to be used for
delivering the packet to its destination
• The bridges merely follow the list given in the
RIF - if a given bridge is next in the list, it
forwards the packet, otherwise it ignores it.
 Source route bridging
• When a host wishes to send a packet to a destination for
the first time, it needs to determine an appropriate RIF
• A special type of broadcast packet is used, which
instructs the network bridges to append their bridge
number and network segment number to each packet as
it is forwarded
• Loops are avoided by requiring each bridge to ignore
packets which already contain its bridge number in the
RIF field
• At the destination, these broadcast packets are modified
to be standard unicast packets and returned to the
source along the reverse path listed in the RIF
 Source route bridging
 Thus, for each route discovery packet
broadcast, the source receives back a set of
packets, one for each possible path through
the network to the destination

 It is then up to the source to choose one of

these paths (probably the shortest one) for
further communications with the destination
 Source routing transparent bridging

• Source routing transparent bridging,

abbreviated SRT bridging, is a hybrid of source
routing and transparent bridging, standardized
in Section 9 of the IEEE 802.2 standard.
• It allows source routing and transparent
bridging to coexist on the same bridged
network by using source routing with hosts
that support it and transparent bridging
otherwise
 Gateway
• In telecommunications, the term gateway has the following
meaning
• In a communications network, a network node equipped for
interfacing with another network that uses different protocols.
– A gateway may contain devices such as
– protocol translators,
– impedance matching devices, rate converters,
– fault isolators,
– signal translators as necessary to provide system interoperability. It
also requires the establishment of mutually acceptable
administrative procedures between both networks.
 Gateway

A protocol translation/mapping gateway

interconnects networks with different network
protocol technologies by performing the required
protocol conversions.
 Loosely, a computer configured to perform the
tasks of a gateway. For a specific case, see
default gateway
 Routers exemplify special cases of gateways.
 Gateway

• A gateway is a network point that acts as an entrance

to another network
• On the Internet, a node or stopping point can be
either a gateway node or a host (end-point) node
• Both the computers of Internet users and the
computers that serve pages to users are host nodes,
while the nodes that connect the networks in
between are gateways
• For example, the computers that control traffic
between company networks or the computers used by
internet service providers (ISPs) to connect users to
the internet are gateway nodes
 Gateway
• In the network for an enterprise, a computer server
acting as a gateway node is often also acting as a
proxy server and a firewall server
• A gateway is often associated with both a router, which
knows where to direct a given packet of data that arrives
at the gateway, and a switch, which furnishes the actual
path in and out of the gateway for a given packet.
• On an IP network, clients should automatically send IP
packets with a destination outside a given subnet mask
to a network gateway. A subnet mask defines the IP
range of a network
 Gateway conti’
• For example, if a network has a base IP address of
192.168.0.0 and has a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0,
then any data going to an IP address outside of
192.168.0.X will be sent to that network's gateway
• While forwarding an IP packet to another network, the
gateway might or might not perform
Network Address Translation.
• A gateway is an essential feature of most routers,
although other devices (such as any PC or server) can
function as a gateway.
 Gateway conti’
 Most computer operating systems use the
terms described above
 A computer running Microsoft Windows
however describes this standard networking
feature as Internet Connection Sharing; which
will act as a gateway, offering a connection
between the Internet and an internal network.
Such a system might also act as a DHCP server.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
 Gateway conti’

• DHCP is a protocol used by networked devices

(clients) to obtain various parameters
necessary for the clients to operate in an
Internet Protocol (IP) network
• By using this protocol, system administration
workload greatly decreases, and devices can
be added to the network with minimal or no
manual configurations.
•