Data Communications and Networks

EEC 4013 [LO2]

Lecture slides prepared by Ehsan Jarrar @ Sharjah

Colleges
Learning outcome(2): Explain, apply and demonstrate knowledge
of common terms and internationally recognized standards used
in the field of wireless local area networking using suitable
practical and/or simulation examples and demonstrate knowledge
Bluetooth wireless technology.
Sub-outcome 1: Describe the various Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 WLAN standards.
Sub-outcome 2: Explain the advantages and disadvantages of WLAN
in comparison to LAN.
Sub-outcome 3: Explain the configuration and operation of a WLAN
network using a labeled diagram and  explain and implement
common security measures used to limit access to WLAN.
Sub-outcome 4: Identify the basic components and benefits of
Bluetooth wireless.
Sub-outcome 5: Explain the core system architecture of Bluetooth
using a labeled block diagram.
Sub-outcome 6: Explain the concept, configuration, and operation of
a2 piconet as used with Bluetooth wireless devices.
IEEE 802.11- Wireless LANs
In this LO, we concentrate on two promising wireless
technologies for LANs:
IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs, sometimes called wireless
Ethernet.
Bluetooth, a technology for small wireless LANs.
A wireless local area network (WLAN) links two or more
devices and provides wireless connection through an access
point (AP) to the wider internet.
Most modern WLANs are based
on IEEE802.11 standards, marketed under the Wi-Fi brand
name.
This gives users the mobility to move around within a
local coverage area and still be connected to the network.
Same radio frequency for sending and receiving , two
3
way radio communication (half duplex).
 IEEE802.11 Standards

Main
802.11a 5GHz, 54 Mbps
802.11b 2.4GHz, 11Mbps
802.11g 2.4GHz, 54Mbps
Supplementary
802.11e Quality of Service (Qos)
802.11i security
802.11n high speed

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Advantages and Disadvantages of WLAN in comparison to LAN.
WLANs have the following advantages when compared
with wired LANs.
1. It is easier to add or move workstations.
2. It is easier to provide connectivity in areas where it is
difficult to lay cable.
3. Installation is fast and easy, and it can eliminate the
need to pull cable through walls and ceilings.
4. Access to the network can be from anywhere within
range of an access point.
5. Although the initial cost for WLAN hardware can be
similar to the cost of wired LAN hardware but
installation expenses can be lower.
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Advantages and Disadvantages of WLAN in comparison to
LAN.
WLANs also have some disadvantages:
1. As the number of computers using the network increases, the data
transfer rate to each computer will decrease accordingly.
2. As standards change, it may be necessary to replace wireless
cards and/or access points.
3. Lower wireless bandwidth means some applications such as video
streaming will be more effective on a wired LAN.
4. Security is more difficult to guarantee and requires configuration.
5. Devices will only operate at a limited distance from an access
point, with the distance determined by the standard used and
buildings and other obstacles between the access point and the
user.
6. A wired LAN is most likely to be required to provide a backbone
to the WLAN; a WLAN should be a supplement to a wired LAN
and not a complete solution.
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 IEEE 802.11 /Architecture
The standard defines two kinds of services: the basic service set
(BSS) and the extended service set (ESS).
Basic Service Set
IEEE 802.11 defines the basic service set (BSS) as the
building block of a wireless LAN.
A basic service set is made of stationary or mobile wireless
stations and an optional central base station, known as the
access point(AP)
Figure next slide shows two sets in this standard.
The BSS without an AP is a stand-alone network and cannot
send data to other BSSs. It is called an ad hoc architecture In
this architecture, stations can form a network without the need
of an AP; they can locate one another and agree to be part of a
7 BSS.
8
 Extended Service Set
An extended service set (ESS) is made up of two or more
BSSs with APs.
In this case, the BSSs are connected through a distribution
system , which is usually a wired LAN.
The distribution system connects the APs in the BSSs.
IEEE 802.11 does not restrict the distribution system; it can
be any IEEE LAN such as an Ethernet.
The extended service set uses two types of stations: mobile
and stationary.
The mobile stations are normal stations inside a BSS.
The stationary stations are AP stations that are part of a
wired LAN.
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When BSSs are connected, the stations within reach of one
another can communicate without the use of an AP.
However, communication between two stations in two different
BSSs usually occurs via two APs.
The idea is similar to communication in a cellular network if we
consider each BSS to be a cell and each AP to be a base station .
 Note that a mobile station can belong to more than one BSS at
the same time.
Station Types:
IEEE 802.11 defines three types of stations based on their
mobility in a wireless LAN:
No-transition,
 BSS-transition,
ESS-transition mobility.
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Extended Service Set
A station with no-transition mobility is either
stationary (not moving) or moving only inside a
BSS.
A station with BSS-transition mobility can
move from one BSS to another, but the
movement is confined inside one ESS.
A station with ESS-transition mobility can
move from one ESS to another. However, IEEE
802.11 does not guarantee that communication is
continuous during the move.
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 IEEE 802.11 Services
The service provider can be either the Station or the
Distribution System (DS ).
Station services are implemented in every 802.11 station,
including AP stations.
Distribution services are provided between BSSs; these
services may be implemented in an AP or in another special-
purpose device attached to the distribution system.
Three of the services are used to control IEEE 802.11 LAN
access and confidentiality.
 Six of the services are used to support delivery of MAC
service data units (MSDUs) between stations.
If the MSDU is too large to be transmitted in a single MAC
frame, it may be fragmented and transmitted in a series of MAC
13 frames. .
 IEEE 802.11 Services
Two services involved with the distribution
messages within DS and integration .
Distribution is the primary service used by
stations to exchange MAC frames when the frame
must traverse the DS to get from a station in one
BSS to a station in another BSS.
For example : suppose a frame is to be sent from
station STA2 to STA7 in the figure [next slide] ,
the frame is sent from STA2 to STA1 , which is
the AP for this BSS . The AP gives the frame to
the DS , which has the job of directing the frame to
14 the AP associated with STA5 . STA5 receives the
 IEEE 802.11 Architecture

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 IEEE 802 Services
 To deliver a message within a DS, the distribution service needs to
know where the destination station is located.
 To meet this requirement, a station must maintain an association with
the AP within its current BSS.
 Three services relate to this requirement:
Association: Establishes an initial association between a station
and an AP. (Before a station can transmit or receive frames on a
wireless LAN, its identity and address must be known).
Reassociation: Enables an established association to be
transferred from one AP to another, allowing a mobile station to
move from one BSS to another.
Disassociation: A notification from either a station or an AP that
an existing association is terminated. A station should give this
notification before leaving an ESS or shutting down.
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Distributed Coordination Function
One of the two protocols defined by IEEE and used in WLAN
is called the Distributed coordination function (DCF).
DCF uses CSMA/CA ( Carrier Sense Multiple Access /
Collision Avoidance ) as the access method. Wireless LANs
cannot implement CSMA/CD ( Carrier Sense Multiple Access /
Collision Detection ) for three reasons:
1. For collision detection a station must be able to send data and
receive collision signals at the same time. This can mean
costly stations and increased bandwidth requirements.
2. Collision may not be detected because of the hidden station
problem.
3. The distance between stations can be great. Signal fading
could prevent a station at one end from hearing a collision at
17 the other end.
Figure below shows DCF uses CSMA/CA

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 The following steps explain sending the frames by using DCF
protocol :
1. Before sending a frame, the source station senses the channel by
checking the energy level until the channel is idle.
2. After the station is found to be idle, the station waits for a period
of time called the distributed interframe space (DIFS); then the
station sends a control frame called the request to send (RTS).
3. After receiving the RTS and waiting a period of time called the
short interframe space (SIFS), the destination station sends a
control frame, called the clear to send (CTS), to the source station.
4. This control frame indicates that the destination station is ready to
receive data.
5. The source station sends data after waiting an amount of time
equal to SIFS.
6. The destination station, after waiting an amount of time equal to
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SIFS, sends an acknowledgment to show that the frame has been
 Network Allocation Vector
How do other stations defer sending their data if one station
acquires access? In other words, how is the collision
avoidance aspect of this protocol accomplished ?
The key is a feature called NAV.
When a station sends an RTS frame, it includes the duration
of time that it needs to occupy the channel.
The stations that are affected by this transmission create a
timer called a network allocation vector (NAV) that shows
how much time must pass before these stations are allowed
to check the channel for idleness. Each time a station
accesses the system and sends an RTS frame, other stations
start their NAV.
In other words, each station, before sensing the channel to
20 see if it is idle, first checks its NAV to see if it has expired.
 Collision During Handshaking
What happens if there is collision during the time
when RTS or CTS control frames are in transition,
often called the handshaking period ?
Two or more stations may try to send RTS frames
at the same time. These control frames may collide.
However, because there is no mechanism for
collision detection, the sender assumes there has
been a collision if it has not received a CTS frame
from the receiver.
The back-off strategy is employed, and the sender
tries again.
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 IEEE 802.11 SECURITY OPTIONS
Access and Privacy Services
IEEE 802.11 defines three services that provide a
wireless LAN with Authentication and Privacy features :
Authentication : Used to establish identity of station to
each other . IEEE 802.11 supports several authentication
schemes and requires mutually acceptable successful
authentication before a station can establish an
association with an AP .
DE authentication : This service is invoked whenever
an existing authentication is to be terminated.
Privacy : Used to prevent the contents of messages
from being read by other than the intended recipient.
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IEEE 802.11 SECURITY OPTIONS
When the IEEE created the 802.11 specification, it
implemented a feature called Wired Equivalent Privacy
(WEP) with the intent of providing basic levels of
authentication and data encryption.
The goal of WEP is to provide an equivalent level of
security as normally present in an unsecured wired LAN.
This is clearly important, as wireless networks do not
have the physical protection that wired environments do.
Both 802.11a and 802.11b specifications use WEP.
For authentication, an access point that has WEP enabled
will send a text request to the client to verify the client's
identity.
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 WIRELESS SECURITY OPTIONS
The client uses RC4 encryption with a secret key to
encrypt the text, then returns the encrypted text back to
the access point.
 Once received, the access point decrypts the text using
the same key. If the text matches the text that was sent,
then the client is authenticated and granted access.
Companies should realize that WEP was never
designed to provide end-to-end security.
It is intended for usage in conjunction with existing
security mechanisms such as firewalls, virtual private
networks (VPNs), and application-level security.

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 WIRELESS SECURITY OPTIONS
A virtual private network (VPN)
It enables a host computer to send and receive data
across shared or public networks as if it were a private
network with all the functionality, security and
management policies of the private network.
This is done by establishing a virtual point-to-point
connection through the use of dedicated connections,
encryption , or a combination of the two.
A virtual private network (VPN) provides a secure
communications mechanism for data and other
information transmitted between two endpoints.

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WIRELESS SECURITY OPTIONS
A firewall is a set of related programs, located at
a network gateway server, that protects the
resources of a private network from users from
other networks.
A firewall, working closely with a router
program, examines each network packet to
determine whether to forward it toward its
destination.
A firewall also includes or works with a proxy
server that makes network requests on behalf of
26 workstation users.
 Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a wireless LAN technology designed to
connect devices of different functions such as
telephones, notebooks, computers , cameras, printers,
and so on.
A Bluetooth LAN is an ad hoc network, which means
that the network is formed spontaneously; the devices,
sometimes called devices, find each other and make a
network called a piconet.
 A Bluetooth LAN can even be connected to the
Internet if one of the devices has this capability.
A Bluetooth LAN, by nature, cannot be large. If there
are many devices that try to connect, there is disorder
27 state .
 Bluetooth
Bluetooth technology has several applications.
Peripheral devices such as a wireless mouse or
keyboard can communicate with the computer through
this technology.
Monitoring devices can communicate with sensor
devices in a small health care center.
Home security devices can use this technology to
connect different sensors to the main security controller.
Conference attendees can synchronize their laptop
computers at a conference.
Bluetooth technology is the implementation of a protocol
defined by the IEEE 802.15 standard.
The standard defines a wireless personal-area network
28 (PAN) operable in an area the size of a room or a hall.
Bluetooth Overview
 A short-range wireless capability, available globally for
unlicensed users
 Operates in the 2.4-GHz band
 Devices within 10 m can share up to 1Mbps of capacity
 Supports open-ended list of applications, data, audio, graphics,
video
 Cable replacement, eliminates need for numerous cable
attachments for connection
 Ad hoc networking
Device with Bluetooth radio can establish connection with
another when in range
 Key features are
Robustness,
Low complexity,
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Low power,
Bluetooth Architecture
Bluetooth defines two types of networks: piconet and
scatternet.
Piconets
A Bluetooth network is called a piconet, or a small
net.
A piconet can have up to eight stations, one of which
is called the primary;† the rest are called secondaries.
All the secondary stations synchronize their clocks and
hopping sequence with the primary.
Piconet can have only one primary station.
The communication between the primary and the
secondary can be one-to-one or one-to-many.
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Bluetooth Architecture
Although a Piconet can have a
maximum of seven secondaries,
an additional eight secondaries
can be in the parked state.
A secondary in a parked state is
synchronized with the primary,
but cannot take part in
communication until it is moved
from the parked state.
Because only eight stations can
be active in a Piconet, activating
a station from the parked state
means that an active station
31 must go to the parked state.
Scatternet
Piconets can be combined to form what is called a Scatternet.
 A secondary station in one Piconet can be the primary in another
Piconet. This station can receive messages from the primary in the first
Piconet (as a secondary) and, acting as a primary, deliver them to
secondaries in the second Piconet.
 A station can be a member of two Piconets.
Figure below illustrates a Scatternet.

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 Bluetooth Devices
Because the Bluetooth device has a built-in short-range
radio transmitter with data rate is 1 Mbps divided into
79 channels and 2.4-GHz bandwidth there is a
possibility of interference between the IEEE 802.11b
wireless LANs and Bluetooth LANs.
Bluetooth uses the frequency-hopping spread
spectrum (FHSS) method in the physical layer to avoid
interference from other devices or other networks.
Bluetooth hops 1600 times per second, which means
that each device changes its modulation frequency 1600
times per second. A device uses a frequency for only
625 μs (1/1600 s) before it hops to another frequency;
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the live time is 625 μs.
 Bluetooth Devices
The access method is TDMA ( Time Division Multiple
Access)- TDD(time-division duplex) .
It is a channel access method for shared-medium
networks. It allows several users to share the same
frequency channel by dividing the signal into different time
slots. The users transmit in rapid succession, one after the
other, each using its own time slot.
The primary and secondary communicate with each other
using time slots.
The length of a time slot is 625 μs. This means that during
the time that one frequency is used, a sender sends a frame
to a secondary, or a secondary sends a frame to the primary.
The communication is only between the primary and a
34 secondary; secondaries cannot communicate directly with
 Protocol Architecture
 Core protocols
1. Radio (The range for Bluetooth communication is 0-30 feet (10
meters) with a power consumption of 0dBm (1mW)).
2. Baseband:
It handles packets and does paging and inquiry to access and
inquire Bluetooth devices in the area.
The baseband transceiver applies a time-division duplex (TDD)
scheme. (Alternate transmits and receives)
3. Link manager protocol (LMP)
The link manager protocol is responsible for link set-up between
Bluetooth devices. This includes setting up of security functions
like authentication and encryption by generating, exchanging
and checking
of link and encryption keys and the control and negotiation of
baseband
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packet sizes. Furthermore it controls the power modes and duty
cycles of the Bluetooth radio device, and the connection states of
 Protocol Architecture
4. Logical link control and adaptation protocol
(L2CAP)
Used for Segmentation and reassembly of packets and
providing one-way transmission management of
multicast data to a group of other Bluetooth devices.
5. Service discovery protocol (SDP)
Used to allow devices to discover what services are
supported by each other, and what parameters to use
to connect to them. For example, when connecting a
mobile phone to a Bluetooth headset, SDP will be used
to determine which Bluetooth specifications are
supported by the headset.
 Cable replacement protocol, (RFCOMM) Telephony
control protocol.
36  It defines the call control signaling for the
Protocol Architecture
Adopted protocols
1. PPP(Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)( is a
communications protocol used to establish a
direct connection between two nodes).
2. TCP/UDP/IP( Internet protocols)
3. WAP(Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is
a technical standard for accessing information
over a mobile wireless network).

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 Establishing Connections in Bluetooth
Consider the following scenario: A person walks in to
a hotel lobby and wants to access her email over her
Bluetooth enabled device, which could be a laptop or a
Personal Digital Assistant. What would she have to do?
The device would automatically carry out the following
steps,
1. Inquiry
2. Paging
3. Link establishment
4. Service Discovery
5. L2CAP channel
6. Security
7. RFCOMM channel ( if necessary)
8. PPP ( if necessary)
9. Network Protocols (Adaptation)
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Establishing Connections in Bluetooth
The device automatically carry out the following steps:
1. Inquiry: Reaching a new environment, the device would
automatically initiate an inquiry to find out what access points
are within its range. This will result in the following events:
All nearby access points respond with their addresses.
The device picks one out of the responding devices.

2. Paging: The device will invoke a baseband procedure called

paging. This results in synchronization of the device with the
access point, in terms of its clock and frequency hop.

3. Link establishment: The LMP will now establish a link with

the access point. As the application in this case is email.

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 Establishing Connections in Bluetooth
4. Service Discovery: The LMP will use the SDP (Service
Discovery Protocol) to discover what services are available
from the access point, in particular whether email access is
available. If not other applications offered at the access point
may be presented to the user.
5. L2CAP channel :L2CAP's functions include:
 Segmentation and reassembly of packets.
 Providing one-way transmission management of multicast
data to a group of other Bluetooth devices.
6. Security: the access point will send a security request for
"pairing". This will be successful if the user knows the correct
PIN code to access the service. Encryption will be invoked if
secure mode is used.
7. RFCOMM channel: Depending on the need of the email
application an RFCOMM or other channel will be created
over the L2CAP channel. This feature allows existing
40 applications developed for serial ports to run without
modification over Bluetooth platforms.
 Establishing Connections in Bluetooth
8. PPP: If a PPP link is used over serial modem as in
dial up networking, the same application will now be
able to run PPP over RFCOMM (which emulates the
serial port). This link will allow the user to login to
his email account.

9. Network Protocols: The network protocols like

TCP/IP (Internet Network ) can now send and receive
data over the link.
In the above procedure, user interaction is required only
at the usual login for his email and additionally for
the security to be implemented. The remaining steps
are automatic.
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 END LO2
LO2 has been prepared from the textbook (Chapter 14 , sections 1
&2)

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