Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jennifer Rexford
Teaching Assistant: Ioannis Avramopoulos
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spring07/cos461/ 1
Goals of Today’s Lecture
• Devices that shuttle data at different layers
– Repeaters and hubs
– Bridges and switches
– Routers
– Amplifier
– Access point
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Message, Segment, Packet, and Frame
host host
HTTP message
HTTP HTTP
TCP segment
TCP TCP
router router
Application gateway
Transport gateway
Frame Packet TCP User
Router header header header data
Bridge, switch
Repeater, hub
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Physical Layer: Repeaters
• Distance limitation in local-area networks
– Electrical signal becomes weaker as it travels
– Imposes a limit on the length of a LAN
Repeater
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Physical Layer: Hubs
• Joins multiple input lines electrically
– Designed to hold multiple line cards
– Do not necessarily amplify the signal
hub
hub
hub hub
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Limitations of Repeaters and Hubs
• One large shared link
– Each bit is sent everywhere
– So, aggregate throughput is limited
– E.g., three departments each get 10 Mbps independently
– … and then connect via a hub and must share 10 Mbps
Bridge
A C
switch
D 9
Advantages Over Hubs/Repeaters
• Only forwards frames as needed
– Filters frames to avoid unnecessary load on segments
– Sends frames only to segments that need to see them
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Moving From Switches to Routers
• Advantages of switches over routers
– Plug-and-play
– Fast filtering and forwarding of frames
– No pronunciation ambiguity (e.g., “rooter” vs. “rowter”)
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Access Point - 1
• In computer networking, a wireless access
point (WAP), or more generally just access
point (AP), is a networking hardware device that
allows other Wi-Fi devices to connect to a wired
network.
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Access Point - 2
• The AP usually connects to a router (via a wired
network) as a standalone device, but it can also be
an integral component of the router itself.
• An AP is differentiated from a hotspot, which is the
physical location where Wi-Fi access to a WLAN is
available.
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Comparing Hubs, Switches, Routers
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