03 - Fundamentals of WANs

03 - Fundamentals of WANs
By Muhammad Asghar Khan

Reference: CCENT/CCNA ICND1 Official Exam Certification Guide By Wendell Odom
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Agenda

Wide Area Networks Point-to-Point WANs Physical Layer (L1)

WAN Cabling Standards WAN Speeds WAN Link in a LAB WAN Protocols
Data Link Layer (L2)
HDLC Frame Relay ATM

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Wide Area Networks
WANs interconnect host devices over a broad area (i.e. any network that links across metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries) Enterprise networks use WANs to connect remote sites LANs & WANs both implement the same OSI Layer 1 and Layer 2 functions, but with different mechanisms and details
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Point-to-Point WANs

A point-to-point WAN link acts like an Ethernet trunk between two Ethernet switches Example LAN in two buildings
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Point-to-Point WANs
Imagine that the buildings are 1000 miles apart instead of right next to each other, you will face two problems:

Ethernet does not support cabling to run for 1000 miles Even if Ethernet support 1000 mile trunk, you dont have the right-of-way needed to bury a cable b/w buildings
To create such long links/circuits the physical cabling is owned, installed and managed by a company/service provider usually called telco or telephone company
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Point-to-Point WANs

The circuit or point-to-point WAN link provided by the service provider is called a leased line/circuit For point-to-point WAN link the service provider will install the circuit Figure below shows the key concepts and terms relating WAN circuits
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Point-to-Point WANs
Routers connect to a device called Channel Service Unit/ Data Service Unit (CSU/DSU), the cable length could be up to 50 feet long The much longer four-wire cable from telco plugs into the CSU/DSU while on other side ends up in the WAN switch The term demarcation point (demarc) is a point at which the telcos responsibility is on one side and customers responsibility is on the other The term customer premises equipment (CPE) refers to devices that are at the customer site from telcos perspective e.g. CSU/DSU and Routers
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WAN Cabling Standards
As several types of physical layer implementations for LANs exist, various kinds of serial and router connections can also be used in a WAN environment Serial connections support dedicated leased lines that run the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) or Frame Relay, speed of these connections ranges up to E1 (2.048 Mbps) Serial connection uses one-at-a-time transmission contrasts with parallel data transmission, which transmits several bits at a time
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Figure shows a typical connection with some serial cabling options
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Router is termed as DTE (Data Terminal Equipment), a device that receive clocking CSU/DSU is termed as DCE (Data Communications Equipment), a device that provides clocking To install a new point-to-point leased line b/w two routers

A network engineer contacts service provider and orders the circuit and speed of circuit Purchases two CSU/DSUs, install & configure one at each site
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Purchases and install routers, and connects serial cables from each router to the respective CSU/DSU At the end the telco installs the new line into the customer premises and the line is connected to the CSU/DSU
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WAN Speeds
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WAN Link in a LAB

You can create a serial link in a lab without using CSU/DSU, to do so one router must supply clocking You must have two routers, a DTE serial cable for one router and a DCE serial cable for the other
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WAN Link in a LAB

The router with DCE cable can be configured to provide clocking (clock rate command) This type of connection b/w two routers is called a back-to-back serial link
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WAN Protocols
Data link layer protocols define how data is encapsulated for transmission to remote sites and the mechanisms for transferring the resulting frames The most common WAN data link protocols are:

HDLC PPP Frame Relay ATM
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High-Level Data Link Control Protocol (HDLC)
HDLC uses the services of a physical layer, and provides a reliable communications path between the transmitter and receiver (i.e. with acknowledged data transfer) HDLC discards the frame if errors occurred Additionally, HDLC needs to identify the type of packets inside the HDLC frame Figure on next slide shows the HDLC framing
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The beginning of an HDLC frame is marked by flag characters Control indicates whether the frame is a Control or Data frame
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Type field indicates the type packet held inside the frame FCS field in the HDLC trailer is used for error detection
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Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)
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PPP is used for communication between two computers using a serial interface or point-to-point link Comparing the basics, PPP behaves much like HDLC The framing looks identical to the Cisco proprietary HDLC framing The address field is there but it does not matter It discard errored frames that dont pass the FCS check Type field is part of the standard for PPP, any vendor that conforms to the PPP standard can communicate So, when connecting a Cisco router to another vendors router over a point-to-point serial link, PPP is the protocol of choice
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Frame Relay

Frame Relay is a high-performance WAN protocol that operates at the physical and data link layers Frame Relay is an example of a packet-switched technology Packet-switched networks enable end stations to dynamically share the network medium and the available bandwidth Company can connect a large number of routers to the packet-switching service, and each router can send packets to all other routers; like devices connected to Ethernetwww.asghars.blogspot.com switch 20
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Frame Relay

Frame Relay has benefit of scaling over PPP WANs In PPP WANs only a pair of routers can be connected Figure below shows the components of Frame Relay
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Frame Relay
Access Links are leased line b/w each router and a nearby Frame Relay switch Access Links run at the same speed and signaling standards as that of PPP leased lines; however, instead of extending from one router to other, each leased line runs from one router to a Frame Relay switch Frame Relay defines its own data-link header and trailer Frame Relay header holds an address field called a Data-Link Connection Identifier (DLCI)
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Frame Relay

Frame Relay header and trailer are defined by a protocol; Link Access Procedure-Frame (LAPF) Figure below depicts the end-to-end connectivity associated with virtual circuit (VC)
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Frame Relay
The logical path that frame travels b/w each pair of routers is called a Frame Relay VC Typically service provider pre-configures all the required details of a VC; these VCs are called permanent VC (PVC) Figure below shows typical Frame Relay network with three sites
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Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
ATM is a high-speed WAN protocol designed to support both voice and data communications ATM operates at the data link layer ATM is a switching technology that organizes digital data into 53-byte cell Each cell consists of a 5-byte header and a payload of 48 bytes of information ATM also uses VCs ATM connections has two levels:

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Virtual Path Connections Virtual Channel Connections


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03 - Fundamentals of WANs

By Muhammad Asghar Khan

Wide Area Networks Point-to-Point WANs Physical Layer (L1)

Data Link Layer (L2)

HDLC Frame Relay ATM

Wide Area Networks

WAN Cabling Standards

WAN Cabling Standards

Figure shows a typical connection with some serial cabling options

WAN Cabling Standards

WAN Cabling Standards

WAN Link in a LAB

WAN Link in a LAB

HDLC PPP Frame Relay ATM

High-Level Data Link Control Protocol (HDLC)

High-Level Data Link Control Protocol (HDLC)

High-Level Data Link Control Protocol (HDLC)

Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

Virtual Path Connections Virtual Channel Connections

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