Switching &

Multiplexing
Chapter 5
 Multiplexing
• Whenever the bandwidth of a medium linking two devices is greater than the
bandwidth needs of the devices, the link can be shared.
 Multiplexing
• In a multiplexed system, n lines share the bandwidth of one link.
• The lines on the left direct their transmission streams to a multiplexer (MUX),
which combines them into a single stream (many-to-one).
• At the receiving end, that stream is fed into a de-multiplexer (DEMUX), which
separates the stream back into its component transmissions (one-to-many) and
directs them to their corresponding lines.
 Multiplexing
• The word link refers to the physical path.
• The word channel refers to the portion of a link that carries a transmission
between a given pair of lines.
• One link can have many (n) channels.
• The most fundamental need of any communication system design is to provide
to large number of users.
• But this requires a large number of resources and large bandwidths supporting
multiple channels.
• Remember: Bandwidth is the range of frequencies contained in a composite signal.
• It is the maximum rate of data transfer across a given path.

• Requirement for large number of resources can be met if the resources are
available, but this makes it cost ineffective.
• Therefore, the aim is always to use minimum number of resources and make
their utilization to their fullest potential.
• As shown Figure below, n number of signals from the low speed channels have
been combined to one high speed link using a n:1 multiplexer.
• Whereas the opposite process is carried out at the other end, where the signals
are further separated into n number of low speed channels.
• This opposite process is referred as de-multiplexing.
• Frequency-Division Multiplexing
• Frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) is an analog technique that can be applied when
the bandwidth of a link (in hertz) is greater than the combined bandwidths of the signals
to be transmitted.
• In FDM, signals generated by each sending device modulate different carrier frequencies.
• These modulated signals are then combined into a single composite signal that can be
transported by the link.
• Channels can be separated by strips of unused bandwidth—guard bands—to prevent
signals from overlapping.
• Wavelength-Division Multiplexing
• Wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) is designed to use the high-data-rate capability
of fiber-optic cable.
• The optical fiber data rate is higher than the data rate of metallic transmission cable, but
using a fiber-optic cable for a single line wastes the available bandwidth.
• Multiplexing allows us to combine several lines into one.
• WDM is conceptually the same as FDM, except that the multiplexing and demultiplexing
involve optical signals transmitted through fiber-optic channels.
• The idea is the same: We are combining different signals of different frequencies. The
difference is that the frequencies are very high.
• Time-Division Multiplexing
• Time-division multiplexing (TDM) is a digital process that allows several connections to
share the high bandwidth of a link.
• Instead of sharing a portion of the bandwidth as in FDM, time is shared.
• Each connection occupies a portion of time in the link.
• TDM is a digital multiplexing technique for combining several low-rate channels into one
high-rate one.
 Switching
• A network is a set of connected devices.
• Whenever we have multiple devices, we have the problem of how to connect
them to make one-to-one communication possible.
• One solution is to make a point-to-point connection between each pair of
devices (a mesh topology) or between a central device and every other device
(a star topology).
 Switching
• These methods, however, are impractical and wasteful when applied to very
large networks.
• The number and length of the links require too much infrastructure to be cost-
efficient, and the majority of those links would be idle most of the time.
• Other topologies employing multipoint connections, such as a bus, are ruled
out because the distances between devices and the total number of devices
increase beyond the capacities of the media and equipment.
• A better solution is switching.
• A switched network consists of a series of interlinked nodes, called switches.
• Switches are devices capable of creating temporary connections between two
or more devices linked to the switch.
• In a switched network, some of these nodes are connected to the end systems
(computers or telephones, for example). Others are used only for routing.
• Circuit-switched networks
• A circuit-switched network is made of a set of switches connected by physical links, in
which each link is divided into n channels.
• The end systems, such as computers or telephones, are directly connected to a switch.
• When end system A needs to communicate with end system M, system A needs
to request a connection to M that must be accepted by all switches as well as
by M itself.
• This is called the setup phase;
• a circuit (channel) is reserved on each link, and
• the combination of circuits or channels defines the dedicated path.
• After the dedicated path made of connected circuits (channels) is established, the data-
transfer phase can take place.
• After all data have been transferred, the circuits are torn down.
• Circuit switching takes place at the physical layer.
• Before starting communication, the stations must make a reservation for the
resources to be used during the communication.
• These resources, such as channels (bandwidth in FDM and time slots in TDM),
switch buffers, switch processing time, and switch input/output ports, must
remain dedicated during the entire duration of data transfer until the teardown
phase.
• Packet switching
• In data communications, if the message is going to pass through a packet-
switched network, it needs to be divided into packets of fixed or variable
size.
• In packet switching, there is no resource allocation for a packet.
• This means that there is no reserved bandwidth on the links, and there is
no scheduled processing time for each packet.
• Resources are allocated on demand.
• The allocation is done on a first-come, first-served basis.
• When a switch receives a packet, no matter what the source or destination
is, the packet must wait if there are other packets being processed.
• As with other systems in our daily life, this lack of reservation may create
delay.
• We can have two types of packet-switched networks: datagram networks
and virtual circuit networks.
• Datagram Networks
• In a datagram network, each packet is treated independently of all others.
• Even if a packet is part of a multi-packet transmission, the network treats it as though it existed alone.
• Packets in this approach are referred to as datagrams.
• Datagram switching is normally done at the network layer.
• The switches in a datagram network are traditionally referred to as routers.
• Datagram Networks
• In this example, all four packets (or datagrams) belong to the same message, but may travel different
paths to reach their destination.
• This is so because the links may be involved in carrying packets from other sources and do not have
the necessary bandwidth available to carry all the packets from A to X.
• This approach can cause the datagrams of a transmission to arrive at their destination out of order
with different delays between the packets.
• Datagram Networks
• Packets may also be lost or dropped because of a lack of resources.
• In most protocols, it is the responsibility of an upper-layer protocol to reorder the datagrams or ask
for lost datagrams before passing them on to the application. The datagram networks are sometimes
referred to as connectionless networks.
• The term connectionless here means that the switch (packet switch) does not keep information about
the connection state.
• There are no setup or teardown phases.
• Datagram Networks
• Each packet is treated the same by a switch regardless of its source or destination.
• If there are no setup or teardown phases, how are the packets routed to their destinations in a
datagram network?
• In this type of network, each switch (or packet switch) has a routing table which is based on the
destination address. The routing tables are dynamic and are updated periodically. The destination
addresses and the corresponding forwarding output ports are recorded in the tables.
• Virtual-Circuit Networks
• A virtual-circuit network has some characteristics of both circuit-switched network and a datagram
network.
• As in a circuit-switched network, there are setup and teardown phases.
• Resources can be allocated during the setup phase, as in a circuit-switched network, or on demand, as
in a datagram network.
• As in a datagram network, data are packetized and each packet carries an address in the header.
However, the address in the header has local jurisdiction (it defines what the next switch should be
and the channel on which the packet is being carried), not end-to-end jurisdiction.
• As in a circuit-switched network, all packets follow the same path established during the connection.
• A virtual-circuit network is normally implemented in the data-link layer, while a circuit-switched
network is implemented in the physical layer and a datagram network in the network layer.
• But this may change in the future.
 Ethernet : wired LAN
• Ethernet is a networking technology that includes the protocol, port, cable, and
computer chip needed to plug a desktop or laptop into a local area network (LAN) for
speedy data transmission.
• Ethernet describes how network devices format and transmit data so other devices on
the same LAN can recognize, receive and process the information.
• Ethernet, Token rings, and Wireless LAN using IEEE 802.11 are examples of standard
LAN technologies.
• Ethernet provides a connectionless service, which means each frame sent is
independent of the previous or next frame.
• Ethernet has no connection establishment or connection termination phases.
• The sender sends a frame whenever it has it; the receiver may or may not be ready for
it.
• The sender may overwhelm the receiver with frames, which may result in dropping
frames.
• If a frame drops, the sender will not know about it.
• Since IP, which is using the service of Ethernet, is also connectionless, it will not know
about it either.
• If the transport layer is also a connectionless protocol, such as UDP, the frame is lost and
salvation may only come from the application layer.
• However, if the transport layer is TCP, the sender TCP does not receive acknowledgment
for its segment and sends it again.
• Ethernet is also unreliable like IP and UDP. If a frame is corrupted during transmission
and the receiver finds out about the corruption, the receiver drops the frame silently. It is
the duty of high-level protocols to find out about it.
• The Ethernet frame contains seven fields.
1- Preamble. This field contains 7 bytes (56 bits) of alternating 0s and 1s that alert the receiving
system to the coming frame and enable it to synchronize its clock if it’s out of synchronization. 2* 2-2-
Start frame delimiter (SFD). This field (1 byte: 10101011) signals the beginning of the frame.
• The SFD warns the station or stations that this is the last chance for synchronization.
• The last 2 bits are (11) 2 and alert the receiver that the next field is the destination address.
• This field is actually a flag that defines the beginning of the frame.
• We need to remember that an Ethernet frame is a variable-length frame.
• It needs a flag to define the beginning of the frame.
• The SFD field is also added at the physical layer.
3- Destination address (DA).
• This field is six bytes (48 bits) and contains the link layer address of the destination station or stations to receive the
packet.
• When the receiver sees its own link-layer address, or a multicast address for a group that the receiver is a member of,
or a broadcast address, it decapsulates the data from the frame and passes the data to the upperlayer protocol defined
by the value of the type field.
4- Source address (SA).
• This field is also six bytes and contains the link-layer address of the sender of the packet.
5- Type.
• This field defines the upper-layer protocol whose packet is encapsulated in the frame.
• This protocol can be IP, ARP, OSPF, and so on.
• In other words, it serves the same purpose as the protocol field in a datagram and the port number in a segment or
user datagram. It is used for multiplexing and demultiplexing.
6. Data.
• This field carries data encapsulated from the upper-layer protocols. It is a minimum of 46 and a maximum of 1500
bytes.
• If the data coming from the upper layer is more than 1500 bytes, it should be fragmented and encapsulated in more
than one frame.
• If it is less than 46 bytes, it needs to be padded with extra 0s.
• A padded data frame is delivered to the upper-layer protocol as it is (without removing the padding), which means that
it is the responsibility of the upper layer to remove or, in the case of the sender, to add the padding.
• The upper-layer protocol needs to know the length of its data. For example, a datagram has a field that defines the
length of the data.
8 - CRC.
• The last field contains error detection information, in this case a CRC-32.
• The CRC is calculated over the addresses, types, and data field.
• If the receiver calculates the CRC and finds that it is not zero (corruption in
transmission), it discards the frame.
• Ethernet technology provides rules that allow network-connected devices to talk to
one another without talking over each other.
• In a verbal conversation, when two people speak at the same time, each may have
difficulty understanding what the other is saying.
• This is amplified when, say, 10 people are talking at once. Imagine 100 or 1000 at
once.
• In order to handle collisions, the Access control mechanism used in Ethernet is
CSMA/CD.
• More formally, Ethernet is a common name for the IEEE 802.3 standard based on the
Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) protocol.
• CSMA/CD defines when to transmit and what is to happen if a collision is detected, as well as
endpoint addressing, transmission speeds, and media.
• When a machine on the network wants to send data to another, it senses the carrier, which is
the main wire connecting the devices.
• If it is free, meaning no one is sending anything, it sends the data packet on the network, and
the other devices check the packet to see whether they are the recipient.
• The recipient consumes the packet. If there is a packet on the highway, the device that wants to
send holds back for some thousandths of a second to try again until it can send.
• Ethernet lies in the lower layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model.
• It facilitates the operation of physical and data link layers.
• Users enter their queries through the application, which forwards it to the next layer.
• Ethernet has gone through four generations: Standard Ethernet (10 Mbps), Fast Ethernet
(100 Mbps), Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbps), and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 Gbps).
• Standard Ethernet
• We refer to the original Ethernet technology with the data rate of 10 Mbps as the Standard Ethernet.
• Fast Ethernet
• It can transfer data at a speed of around 100 Mbps (megabits per second).
• Fast Ethernet uses both fiber optic and twisted pair cables to enable communication.
• There are three categories of Fast Ethernet: 100BASE-TX, 100BASE-FX, and 100BASE-T4.
• The number 100 represents the frequency in MHz
• The word "Base" refers to Baseband. Baseband is the type of communication used by Ethernet and it means that when a
computer is transmitting, it uses all the available bandwith, whereas Broadband (cable modems) shares the bandwidth
available.
• Gigabit Ethernet
• This is an upgrade from Fast Ethernet and is more common nowadays.
• It can transfer data at a speed of 1000 Mbps or 1 Gbps (gigabit per second).
• Gigabit Ethernet also uses fiber optic and twisted pair cables for communication.
• It often uses advanced cables, which can transfer data at a speed of 10 Gbps.
• 10-Gigabit Ethernet
• This is an advanced and high-speed network that can transmit data at a speed of 10
gigabits per second.
• It uses special cables like CAT6a or CAT7 twisted-pair cables and fiber optic cables.
• With the help of fiber optic cables, this network can cover longer distances, up to
around 10,000 meters.
• Switch Ethernet
• This type of network involves using switches or hubs to improve network
performance.
• Each workstation in this network has its own dedicated connection, which improves
the speed and efficiency of data transfer.
• Switch Ethernet supports a wide range of speeds, from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps,
depending on the version of Ethernet being used.
 Introduction to Wireless
Networking
• Wireless communication is one of the fastest-growing technologies.
• The demand for connecting devices without the use of cables is increasing
everywhere.
• The first difference between a wired and a wireless LAN is the medium.
• In a wired LAN, we use wires to connect hosts.
• In a wireless LAN, the medium is air, the signal is generally broadcast.
• When hosts in a wireless LAN communicate with each other, they are sharing the same medium
(multiple access).
• In a wired LAN, a host is always connected to its network at a point with a fixed link
layer address related to its network interface card (NIC).
• Of course, a host can move from one point in the Internet to another point.
• In this case, its link-layer address remains the same, but its network-layer address will change.
• However, before the host can use the services of the Internet, it needs to be physically
connected to the Internet.
• In a wireless LAN, a host is not physically connected to the network; it can move freely
and can use the services provided by the network.
• A wired isolated LAN is a set of hosts connected via a link-layer switch
(in the recent generation of Ethernet).
• A wireless isolated LAN, called an ad hoc network in wireless LAN
terminology, is a set of hosts that communicate freely with each
other.
• The concept of a link-layer switch does not exist in wireless LANs.
• A wired LAN can be connected to another network or an internetwork
such as the Internet using a router.
• A wireless LAN may be connected to a wired infrastructure network,
to a wireless infrastructure network, or to another wireless LAN.
Characteristics of Wireless LAN
• Attenuation
• The strength of electromagnetic signals decreases rapidly because the signal disperses in all directions;
only a small portion of it reaches the receiver.
• The situation becomes worse with mobile senders that operate on batteries and normally have small
power supplies.
• Interference
• Another issue is that a receiver may receive signals not only from the intended sender, but also from
other senders if they are using the same frequency band.
• Multipath Propagation
• A receiver may receive more than one signal from the same sender because electromagnetic waves
can be reflected back from obstacles such as walls, the ground, or objects.
• The result is that the receiver receives some signals at different phases (because they travel different
paths).
• This makes the signal less recognizable.
Characteristics of Wireless LAN
• Error
• With the above characteristics of a wireless network, we can expect that errors and error detection
are more serious issues in a wireless network than in a wired network.
Access Control
• The most important issue in a wireless LAN is access control—how a wireless host can
get access to the shared medium (air).
• The Standard Ethernet uses the CSMA/CD algorithm.
• In this method, each host contends to access the medium and sends its frame if it finds the
medium idle.
• If a collision occurs, it is detected and the frame is sent again.
• Collision detection in CSMA/CD serves two purposes.
• If a collision is detected, it means that the frame has not been received and needs to be resent.
• If a collision is not detected, it is a kind of acknowledgment that the frame was received.
• The CSMA/CD algorithm does not work in wireless LANs for three reasons:
• To detect a collision, a host needs to send and receive at the same time (sending the frame and
receiving the collision signal), which means the host needs to work in a duplex mode.
• Wireless hosts do not have enough power to do so (the power is supplied by batteries).
• They can only send or receive at one time.
• Because of the hidden station problem, in which a station may not be aware of another station’s
transmission due to some obstacles or range problems, collision may occur but not be detected.
• The distance between stations can be great. Signal fading could prevent a station at one end from
hearing a collision at the other end.
• To overcome the above three problems, Carrier Sense Multiple Access with
Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) was invented for wireless LANs.
• Wireless local area networks use a protocol called Carrier Sense, Multiple
Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA).
• Collisions cannot be detected in wireless media as they can in Ethernet.
• In a WLAN, a device cannot simultaneously transmit or receive data.
• It either does one thing or it doesn’t.
• As a result, it is unable to recognize when two frames collide.
• To prevent a collision, devices rely on signals called “Ready to Send” (RTS) and “Clear to
Send” (CTS).
• A device will scan the airwaves for a signal when it is ready to send.
• If there isn’t already one, it will create a request to transmit (RTS) signal.
• It then delivers its own data and concludes with a CTS signal, which lets other wireless
devices know it’s their turn to communicate.