Communication Networks

MAP-TELE 2011/12 Jos Ruela

Network basic mechanisms

Framing

Need for framing

Data communications is based on the exchange of data units (usually called frames), with a known structure (format)
In general, frames are of variable length (up to a predefined maximum that depends on a number of factors, such as type of network technology and physical medium, Bit Error Ratio on the channel, etc.) In ATM the basic communication unit has fixed size and is called a cell

This structure must be recovered (recognized) by the receiver out of a sequence of raw bits, which requires identifying the frame boundaries Frame synchronization or delineation (or simply framing) is the process of defining and locating frame boundaries (start and end of the frame) on a bit sequence When channel multiplexing at the physical layer is based on a physical frame structure, frame synchronization is also required (it is different and can coexist with data framing performed on each channel)
Examples are the plesiochronous (PDH) and the synchronous (SONET/SDH) multiplexing digital hierarchies based on STDM

Framing methods
The problem of framing is solved in different ways depending on the frames having a fixed (known) length or a variable length For frames of fixed length (e.g., a physical layer SONET/SDH frame or an ATM cell), it is only necessary to identify the start of the frame and add the frame size to locate the end of the frame framing methods can thus exploit the occurrence of either periodic patterns or known correlations that occur periodically in bit sequences (the latter is exploited in ATM) For frames of variable size, special synchronization characters or bit patterns are used to identify the start of a frame, while different explicit or implicit methods can be used for identifying the end of a frame (e.g., special characters or bit patterns, a length field or some event that may be associated with the end of the frame)

Stuffing techniques
Earlier data link layer protocols were character oriented the code used to represent sequences of printable characters (e.g., ASCII) was also used to support other protocol functions, such as frame synchronization, by means of special (non printable) characters
This method, in its basic form, is not transparent, since a frame cannot carry any arbitrary sequence of bits as data To achieve transparency it is necessary to use special character sequences based on an escape character (character stuffing)

Bit oriented protocols were developed to overcome the limitations of character oriented protocols and, in particular, to allow independence of codes (transparency)
In point-to-point links, frames are usually delimited with a special bit sequence (flag) and transparency is achieved by means of bit stuffing

Frames delimited with flags may also be organized as a collection of bytes (byte oriented protocols)
Transparency in this case is achieved by means of byte stuffing, which is different from character stuffing used in character oriented protocols

Character oriented protocols and character stuffing

In character oriented protocols, a frame starts with synchronization characters (one or more) the ASCII character used for this purpose is SYN (Synchronous Idle) and is coded as 0x16 Other ASCII characters are used to organize the frame
SOH (Start of Heading) precedes a header (when there is one) STX (Start of Text) indicates that a data field (text) follows ETX (End of Text) or ETB (End of Transmission Block) indicate the end of a data field initiated with STX when a message is fragmented to be transmitted in multiple frames, ETB is used in intermediate frames and ETX in the last one

With this basic method it is only possible to carry data coded with the same code used by the protocol (the original objective in text-based applications) Transparency is achieved by using an escape character DLE (Data Link Escape) in ASCII and delimiting the transparent data field with DLE STX and DLE ETX (or DLE ETB)
If the DLE character appears in the data field it must be replaced by the sequence DLE DLE (character stuffing)

Bisync (Binary Synchronous) was one popular example of a character oriented protocol

Character oriented frames and transparency

Normal frame format
Used to carry characters coded with the protocol code (e.g., ASCII)
SYN SYN SOH Header STX Data ETX BCC

Modified frame format

Used to carry transparent data A DLE character that occurs in the transparent data field must be replaced with DLE DLE (one DLE is removed by the receiver) Escape sequences (starting with DLE) may be used for other purposes
SYN SYN SOH Header DLE STX Transparent Data DLE ETX BCC

BCC Binary Check Character (for error detection)

Bit oriented protocols and bit stuffing

In bit oriented protocols, a frame is a collection of bits, organized in fields typically an address field, a control field, a data field and a Frame Check Sequence (FCS) field for error detection The frame is delimited (at the beginning and at the end) with a special bit sequence (01111110) known as flag a single flag may be used to terminate a frame and to start the next frame (if they are contiguous) The data field may be any arbitrary sequence of bits it is not tied to a particular code (transparency) and its size is not necessarily a multiple of eight bits (byte), since code words may be of any size The other fields may also have any possible pattern, since they are coded to support a variety of protocol functions To achieve total transparency and to prevent a sequence 01111110 to be interpreted by the receiver as a real flag, it is necessary to avoid its occurrence inside the frame (in all fields except the real flags) The technique used for this purpose is called bit stuffing and consists in inserting one zero after five consecutive ones (no matter the value of the following bit) at the sender and removing it at the receiver Bit stuffing is used in HDLC and its variants (except PPP)

Bit stuffing
Frame format
Flag Address Control Data FCS Flag

Example of bit stuffing / destuffing

Original sequence

00111111011111111111000111110100
Stuffing

Transmitted sequence (after stuffing)

001111101011111011111010001111100100
Destuffing

Recovered sequence (after destuffing)

00111111011111111111000111110100

Byte oriented protocols and byte stuffing

Some protocols adopt the same frame structure as bit oriented protocols like HDLC, but with a restriction that the frame fields are made up of an integer number of bytes the Point to Point Protocol (PPP) is one such example Such byte oriented protocols are also inherently transparent since framing and other protocol functions are independent of the code used to represent the information
They are less flexible than bit oriented protocols, due to the restriction of using code words with a length multiple of eight bits

To achieve transparency, it is also necessary to prevent any byte within a frame to coincide with the flag pattern For this purpose, a special escape byte (ESC) is inserted before the byte with the flag pattern this is called byte stuffing The use of the escape byte to achieve transparency means that the occurrence of a byte with the ESC pattern must also be stuffed

Byte stuffing in PPP

The Point to Point Protocol uses the same frame structure as HDLC The Flag is 01111110 (0x7E), as in HDLC In PPP the escape byte (ESC) is 01111101 (0x7D) Byte stuffing is performed when a byte within a frame has the same pattern as the Flag or ESC
The Flag is replaced with two bytes ESC followed by 0x5E (the exclusive OR of the Flag with 0x20) ESC is also replaced with two bytes ESC followed by 0x5D (the exclusive OR of ESC with 0x20)

The receiver performs the reverse operation when ESC is found in the byte stream, it is removed, and the following byte is replaced by performing an exclusive OR with 0x20 (thus obtaining 0x7E or 0x7D and recovering the Flag or ESC, respectively)

Byte count method

In this method, the length of the frame is included as a field in the frame header (byte count) the length field occupies a well defined position in the frame header, which is easily determined after the start of the frame is identified by any of the usual methods This method has a serious drawback if the count field is corrupted (due to transmission errors) the end of the frame is not correctly detected (a wrong number of bytes will be assembled)
Hopefully the error detection mechanism will in most cases detect that there is such a framing error, because error detection will be performed over a wrong number of bytes, using for error checking a sequence of bits not related with the group of bits it was supposed to protect The receiver will synchronize on the next frame The method can be improved by protecting the header as well

This method was used in DECNETs DDCMP (Digital Data Communications Message Protocol) A length field can be used together with end of frame delimiters, thus providing an extra verification mechanism
A frame will be accepted only if the end delimiter appears in the position determined by the length field and the error checking mechanism does not detect an error

Framing in Ethernet / IEEE 802.3

In Ethernet, biphase (or Manchester) coding is used for transmission
A 0 and a 1 are coded with two elementary pulses with different levels, with a transition in the middle

The protocol used in the original Ethernet is based on listening to the activity on a shared medium (carrier sense)
A station detects that there is no transmission in course when no carrier is present (no transitions detected)

When a station acquires the medium it starts to transmit a frame and at the end of the frame it simply ceases to transmit coded bits At a receiving station the start of a frame is identified by a known pattern that consists in
A Preamble that is made up of seven bytes with the pattern 10101010 and is used for bit synchronization A Start of Frame Delimiter (SFD) with the pattern10101011 that precedes the remaining fields of the frame

At a receiving station, the end of a frame is detected by the absence of transitions in the coded signal (no carrier present)

Framing in IEEE 802. 5 Token Ring

A method based on Physical layer code violations may be used when the transmission code has some redundancy the biphase (or Manchester) code (including its differential variants) has this property This method is used in the IEEE 802.5 Token Ring LAN, which uses differential Manchester coding
The line signal used to represent data symbols (binary 0 and 1) has a transition (the signal changes value) at the middle of the bit interval Binary 0 is coded such that the line signal has another transition at the start of the bit interval, while there is no such transition when coding binary 1

The start and the end of a frame are identified by a Start of Frame Delimiter (SFD) and an End of Frame Delimiter (EFD), respectively Two symbols (called J and K) with a duration of one bit interval are used in SFD and EFD as code violations of the differential Manchester code
J and K are represented as line signals without any transition at the middle of a bit interval K is coded such that the line signal has a transition at the start of the bit interval (like binary 0), while J is coded without such a transition (like binary 1)

The first six bits of SFD and EFD are coded as JK0JK0 and JK1JK1, respectively (the other two bits are used for other purposes)

IEEE 802.5 example of line coding and violations

1 0 1 1 0 J
NONE

K
NONE BINARY NRZ

DIFFERENTIAL MANCHESTER

Transition at the start

Transition in the middle YES YES NO NO

0 1 J K

YES NO NO YES

Framing in FDDI Token Ring

The method used in the Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) Token Ring LAN is also based on exploiting the redundancy of the line code (4B5B) In a 4B5B code, 16 code words (5 bits long) represent data symbols (4 bits long) and the remaining 16 code words may represent non-data symbols, which can be used for different purposes In FDDI, four non-data symbols are used for framing: 11111 (I), 11000 (J), 10001 (K) and 01101 (T) A frame starts with a Preamble of at least sixteen I symbols (idle state) followed by a Start Delimiter made up of a JK pair
Since the 4B5B line code is used together with NRZI signaling, the sixteen I symbols generate a square wave signal that is used to synchronize the receiver

The End Delimiter is represented by a single T symbol and is followed by three frame status control symbols The FDDI physical interface (and 4B5B coding) was also adopted by the ATM Forum in the specification of an ATM private interface at 100 Mbit/s
Transmission of cells in not necessarily contiguous and, in the absence of cells to transmit, pairs of JK symbols are inserted (11000 1001) Each cell is preceded by a TT pair (01101 01101)

ATM cell delineation

ATM cells are of fixed size (a 5-byte header and a 48-byte payload) and are transmitted contiguously in most physical interfaces (e.g., an SDH-based or a cell-based Physical Layer) Cell delineation thus reduces to identifying the start of a cell and repeating (and verifying) the process every 53 bytes The general method of ATM cell delineation is based on the fact that the fifth byte of the cell header is a Header Error Control (HEC) field used to protect the whole header Since there is a correlation between the HEC bits and the remaining bits of the header, the method is based on searching for such a correlation over multiple cells and, once synchronization is achieved, verifying that it is kept by analysing that the expected HEC field is still correct To improve the robustness of the method, the cell payload is scrambled

ATM cell delineation state machine

bit by bit

Correct HEC

hunt presynch
Incorrect HEC consecutive incorrect HEC consecutive correct HEC

cell by cell

sync
= 7 = 6 (SDH-based Physical Layer) 8 (cell-based Physical Layer)

cell by cell