University of the People

Written Assignment Unit 6

CS 2204: COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING

03/10/2021
1. Assuming standard 1500 byte Ethernet max payloads: how many IPv4 fragments will be
needed to transfer 2000 bytes of user data with a single UDP send? And, how do the 2000 bytes
get split over the frags?

We will need two IPv4 fragments. First one will be a full-size Ethernet frame and the second what
is left:
1st fragment: 1500 – 20 (IP header) – 8 (UDP header) = 1472 bytes
2nd fragment: (2000 – 1472 =) 528 bytes

2. Despite its conceptual elegance, RPC (Remote Procedure Call) has a few problems. Discuss any
3 of those in brief.

Security – since RPC executes code on the remote system, we have to make sure that the user
who is executing the code has the proper permission to do so because RPC does not have secure
communication.
Communication handling – we can use any existing transfer protocol. We can also construct a
new one; however, if we use the given connection is a protocol, we may issue how the client
several handle a situation where our request or the response is missing.
Protocol requirements – we could have an issue with the protocol requirements because even
the simplest input-output between the server and the client can have unique and complicated
specifications and parameters.

3. Why is timestamping needed in real-time applications? This is in the context of Real-time

Transport Protocol (RTP).
Timestamping is used for synchronization as well control or the old invalid data packets. For
example, suppose some old packages didn’t have a timestamp. In that case, we could have an
issue with mixing all the information with the new information, bringing an invalid and confusing
outcome.
4. Why does UDP exist? Would it not have been enough to just let user processes send raw IP
packets?

UDP exists to support real-time applications containing packets that are time-sensitive and will
need to keep a time order of data sent and received. In a nutshell, we could let users process
send raw IP packets but using UDP, this process is more secure and safer to avoid errors.

5. Explain how QUIC eliminates a couple of RTTs usually needed at the start of a secure web
connection.

QUIC makes data to be included in the first packet of a new connection that saves one RTT than
TCP while usually eliminating a second RTT during TLS encryption negotiation.

Reference(s):
Dordal, P. (2019). An introduction to computer networks. This book is licensed under Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)