Computer Networks Long Answers

Mid-1
1.

2.Topology defines the structure of the

network of how all the components are
interconnected to each other. There are two
types of topology: physical and logical
topology. Physical topology is the geometric
representation of all the nodes in a network.
a.Bus Topology: The bus topology is
designed in such a way that all the
stations are connected through a single
cable known as a backbone cable.
i. Each node is either connected to the
backbone cable by drop cable or
directly connected to the backbone
cable.
ii. The backbone cable is considered as
a "single lane" through which the
message is broadcast to all the
stations.

b. Ring Topology: Same as Bus topology

but with Comnbnected Ends
 i. The node that receives the message
from the previous computer will
retransmit to the next node.
ii. The data flows in one direction, i.e.,
it is unidirectional.
iii. The data flows in a single loop
continuously known as an endless
loop.

c. Star Topology:
i. Star topology is an arrangement of
the network in which every node is
 connected to the central hub, switch
or a central computer.
ii. The central computer is known as a
server, and the peripheral devices
attached to the server are known as
clients.
iii. Coaxial cable or RJ-45 cables are used
to connect the computers.
iv. Hubs or Switches are mainly used as
connection devices in a physical star
topology.

d.Tree Topology:
 i. Tree topology combines the
characteristics of bus topology and
star topology.
ii. A tree topology is a type of structure
in which all the computers are
connected with each other in
hierarchical fashion.
iii. There is only one path exists
between two nodes for the data
transmission. Thus, it forms a parent-
child hierarchy.

3.The transmission medium can be defined as

a pathway that can transmit information
from a sender to a receiver. Transmission
media are located below the physical layer
and are controlled by the physical layer.
Transmission media are also called
communication channels.
There are 2 types of transmission modes:
a.Guided Transmission Media
b.Unguided Transmission Media
i. Guided Transmission Media: Guided
transmission media are also called
bounded media or wired media. They
comprise cables or wires through
which data is transmitted. They are
called guided since they provide a
physical conduit from the sender
device to the receiver device. The
signal traveling through these media
are bounded by the physical limits of
the medium. Ex: Twisted Pair Cable,
CoAxial Cable, Fiber Optics
ii. Unguided Transmission Media:
Unguided transmission media are
also called wireless media. They
 transport data in the form of
electromagnetic waves that do not
require any cables for transmission.
These media are bounded by
geographical boundaries. These type
of communication is commonly
referred to as wireless
communications. Ex: Radio
Transmission, Infrared Transmission,
Light transmission.
4. TCP Model :
5.ARPANET was the network that became the
basis for the Internet. Based on a concept
first published in 1967, ARPANET was
developed under the direction of the U.S.
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
In 1969, the idea became a modest reality
with the interconnection of four university
 computers. Its initial purpose was to link
computers at Pentagon-funded research
institutions over telephone lines. At the
height of the Cold War, military commanders
were seeking a computer communications
system without a central core, with no
headquarters or base of operations that
could be attacked and destroyed by enemies
thus blacking out the entire network in one
fell swoop. ARPANET’s purpose was always
more academic than military, but, as more
academic facilities connected to it, the
network did take on the tentacle-like
structure military officials had envisioned.
a.Features:
i. Similar to WAN
ii. Uses Concept of Packet Switching
Network
iii. Uses IMPs for sub-netting
Internet: In simplest terms, the Internet is a
global network comprised of smaller networks
that are interconnected using standardized
communication protocols. The Internet
standards describe a framework known as the
Internet protocol suite. This model divides
methods into a layered system of protocols. The
Internet provides a variety of information and
communication facilities; contains forums,
databases, email, hypertext, etc. It consists of
private, public, academic, business, and
government networks of local to global scope,
linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless,
and optical networking technologies. Internet is
the foremost important tool and the prominent
resource that is being used by almost every
person across the globe. It connects millions of
computers, webpages, websites, and servers.
Using the internet we can send emails, photos,
videos, messages to our loved ones. Or in other
words, the internet is a widespread
interconnected network of computers and
electronics devices(that support internet). It
creates a communication medium to share and
get information online. If your device is
connected to the Internet then only you will be
able to access all the applications, websites,
social media apps, and many more services.
Internet nowadays is considered as the fastest
medium for sending and receiving information.
6. Difference between LAN MAN WAN:
Unit-II
I. Flow control tells the sender how much data
should be sent to the receiver so that it is not
lost. This mechanism makes the sender wait
for an acknowledgment before sending the
next data. There are two ways to control the
flow of data: Stop and Wait and sliding
window protocol
a.Go Back N Protocol: In Go-Back-N ARQ, N
is the sender's window size. Suppose we
say that Go-Back-3, which means that
the three frames can be sent at a time
before expecting the acknowledgment
from the receiver. It uses the principle of
protocol pipelining in which the multiple
frames can be sent before receiving the
acknowledgment of the first frame. If we
have five frames and the concept is Go-
Back-3, which means that the three
frames can be sent, i.e., frame no 1,
frame no 2, frame no 3 can be sent
before expecting the acknowledgment of
frame no 1. In Go-Back-N ARQ, the
frames are numbered sequentially as Go-
Back-N ARQ sends the multiple frames at
a time that requires the numbering
approach to distinguish the frame from
another frame, and these numbers are
known as the sequential numbers.
II. Flow control tells the sender how much data
should be sent to the receiver so that it is not
lost. This mechanism makes the sender wait
for an acknowledgment before sending the
next data. There are two ways to control the
flow of data: Stop and Wait and sliding
window protocol
The go-back-n protocol works well if errors are
less, but if the line is poor it wastes a lot of
bandwidth on retransmitted frames. An
alternative strategy, the selective repeat
protocol, is to allow the receiver to accept and
buffer the frames following a damaged or lost
one. This protocol(SRP) is mostly identical to GBN
protocol, except that buffers are used and the
receiver, and the sender, each maintain a
window of size. SRP works better when the link
is very unreliable. Because in this case,
retransmission tends to happen more frequently,
selectively retransmitting frames is more
efficient than retransmitting all of them. SRP also
requires full duplex link. backward
acknowledgements are also in progress.
III. 1-Persistent, Non-Persistent and P-
Persistent:
Parameter 1-persistent CSMA p-persistent CSMA Non-persistent CSMA

It sends with the It sends with the

Carrier probability of 1 when probability of p when
Sense channel is idle. channel is idle. It send when channel is id

It continuously It will wait for the random

senses the channel It waits for the next time amount of time to check t
Waiting or carrier. slot. carrier.

Less chances as
There is highest compared to 1- Less chances as compar
Chances of chances of collision persistence and p- to 1-persistence but more
Collision in this. persistence. than the p-persistence.

It’s utilization is
above ALOHA as It’s utilization is above 1-
frames are only sent persistent as not all the
when the channel is It’s utilization is depend stations constantly check
Utilization idle. upon the probability p. channel at the same time

Delay Low It is low as frames It is large when p is It is small as station will s

 Parameter 1-persistent CSMA p-persistent CSMA Non-persistent CSMA

whenever channel is foun

small as station will not idle but longer than 1-
are send when the always send when persistent since it checks
Load channel become idle. channel is idle. the random time when bu

It is large when the

probability p of sending
is small when channel It is longer than 1-persiste
Delay High It is high due to is idle and channel is as channel is checked
Load collision. rarely idle. randomly when busy.

IV. n this, all stations have same superiority that

is no station has more priority than another
station. Any station can send data depending
on medium’s state( idle or busy). It has two
features:
a.There is no fixed time for sending data
b.There is no fixed sequence of stations
sending data
CSMA/CD: CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple
Access/ Collision Detection) is a media access
control method that was widely used in Early
Ethernet technology/LANs When there used to
be shared
Bus Topology and each node ( Computers)
were connected By Coaxial Cables. Now a Days
Ethernet is Full Duplex and CSMA/CD is not
used as Topology is either Star (connected via
Switch or Router)
or Point to Point ( Direct Connection) but they
are still supported though.

Consider a scenario where there are ‘n’

stations on a link and all are waiting to transfer
data through that channel. In this case, all ‘n’
stations would want to access the link/channel
to transfer their own data. Problem arises
when more than one station transmits the
data at the moment. In this case, there will be
collisions in the data from different stations.

CSMA/CD is one such technique where

different stations that follow this protocol
agree on some terms and collision detection
measures for effective transmission. This
protocol decides which station will transmit
when so that data reaches the destination
without corruption.
CSMA/CA: Carrier sense multiple
access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) is a
protocol for carrier transmission in 802.11
networks. It was developed to minimize the
potential of a collision occurring when two or
more stations send their signals over a data
link layer. The basic idea behind CSMA/CA is
that the station should be able to receive while
transmitting to detect a collision from different
stations. In wired networks, if a collision has
occurred then the energy of received signal
almost doubles and the station can sense the
possibility of collision. In case of wireless
networks, most of the energy is used for
transmission and the energy of received signal
increases by only 5-10% if a collision occurs. It
can’t be used by the station to sense collision.
Therefore CSMA/CA has been specially
 designed for wireless networks.

V. In controlled access, the stations seek

information from one another to find which
station has the right to send. It allows only
one node to send at a time, to avoid collision
of messages on shared medium.
The three controlled-access methods are:
a.Reservation : In the reservation method,
a station needs to make a reservation
before sending data.
i. There are M stations, the reservation
interval is divided into M slots, and
each station has one slot.
b. Polling: Polling process is similar to the
roll-call performed in class. Just like the
teacher, a controller sends a message to
each node in turn. In this, one acts as a
primary station(controller) and the
others are secondary stations. All data
exchanges must be made through the
controller. The message sent by the
controller contains the address of the
node being selected for granting access.
Although all nodes receive the message
but the addressed one responds to it and
 sends data, if any. If there is no data,
usually a “poll reject”(NAK) message is
sent back.
c. Token Passing: In token passing scheme,
the stations are connected logically to
each other in form of ring and access of
stations is governed by tokens.
i. A token is a special bit pattern or a
small message, which circulate from
one station to the next in the some
predefined order.
ii. In Token ring, token is passed from
one station to another adjacent
station in the ring whereas incase of
Token bus, each station
iii. uses the bus to send the token to the
next station in some predefined
order.
iv. In both cases, token represents
permission to send. If a station has a
frame queued for transmission when
it receives the token, it can send that
 frame before it passes the token to
the next station. If it has no queued
frame, it passes the token simply.
v. After sending a frame, each station
must wait for all N stations (including
itself) to send the token to their
neighbors and the other N – 1
stations to send a frame, if they have
one.
vi. There exists problems like
duplication of token or token is lost
or insertion of new station, removal
of a station, which need be tackled
for correct and reliable operation of
this scheme.
VI. Design issues with data link layer are :
a.Services provided to the network layer –
b.The data link layer act as a service
interface to the network layer. The
principle service is transferring data from
network layer on sending machine to the
network layer on destination machine.
 This transfer also takes place via DLL
(Dynamic Link Library).
c. Frame synchronization –
d.The source machine sends data in the
form of blocks called frames to the
destination machine. The starting and
ending of each frame should be
identified so that the frame can be
recognized by the destination machine.
e.Flow control –
f. Flow control is done to prevent the flow
of data frame at the receiver end. The
source machine must not send data
frames at a rate faster than the capacity
of destination machine to accept them.
g.Error control –
h.Error control is done to prevent
duplication of frames. The errors
introduced during transmission from
source to destination machines must be
detected and corrected at the
destination machine.
VII.

VIII. Collision, in computer networking, is a

condition that occurs when two or more
computers on a network try to transmit
signals at the same time. Handling collisions
is one of the main functions of a networking
access method. When a station begins
transmitting a signal and detects a collision,
the station stops transmitting and issues a
jam signal to tell the other station that a
collision has occurred. Both stations then
stop transmitting and wait a random interval
of time before retransmitting their signals.
The amount of time the stations wait before
retransmitting increases with the number of
 collisions occurring on the network. A
collision can only occur at the physical layer
in the OSI model. When multiple devices
share a common media at the physical layer,
which happens when you have multiple
devices connected with a hub, there is a
possibility that you will have a collision. The
network area where a collision may occur is
called a collision domain.
a.Advantages of Collision Free Protocols:
i. Pay constant overhead to achieve
performance guarantee.
ii. Good when network load is high.

Unit-III
1) Network layer is majorly focused on
getting packets from the source to the
destination, routing error handling and
congestion control.
a.Features: Addressing, Packeting and
Routing.
b.Issues:
1. Store and Forward packet switching:
The host sends the packet to the nearest
router. This packet is stored there until it has
fully arrived once the link is fully processed
by verifying the checksum then it is
forwarded to the next router till it reaches
the destination. This mechanism is called
“Store and Forward packet switching.”

2. Services provided to Transport Layer:

Through the network/transport layer
interface, the network layer transfers it’s
services to the transport layer.
3. Implementation of Connectionless and
Connection-Oriented Service:
Packet are termed as “datagrams” and
corresponding subnet as “datagram
subnets”. When the message size that has to
be transmitted is 4 times the size of the
packet, then the network layer divides into 4
 packets and transmits each packet to router
via. a few protocol. Each data packet has
destination address and is routed
independently irrespective of the packets.
To use a connection-oriented service, first we
establishes a connection, use it and then release
it. In connection-oriented services, the data
packets are delivered to the receiver in the same
order in which they have been sent by the
sender.

1) In telecommunications, store − and −

forward packet switching is a technique where
the data packets are stored in each
intermediate node, before they are forwarded
to the next node. The intermediate node
checks whether the packet is error−free before
transmitting, thus ensuring integrity of the
data packets. In general, the network layer
operates in an environment that uses store
and forward packet switching. The node which
has a packet to send, delivers it to the nearest
node, i.e. router. The packet is stored in the
router until it has fully arrived and its
checksum is verified for error detection. Once,
this is done, the packet is transmitted to the
next router. The same process is continued in
each router until the packet reaches its
destination. Store − and forward packet
switching ensures high quality data packet
transmission. Since erroneous packets are
discarded at each router, bad packets or
invalid packets in the network are mostly
eliminated. However, error − free packet
transmission is achieved by compromising on
the overall speed of transmission. Switch
latency is introduced due to waiting for entire
packet to arrive as well as computation of CRC.
Though the latency at each router may seem
small enough, the inappropriate for time −
critical online applications.