Chapter 6

Switching and Multiplexing

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 6.1. Switching and Multiplexing

 A network is a set of connected devices. Whenever we

have multiple devices, we have the problem of how to
connect them to make one-to-one communication possible.
 One solution is to have Mesh or star network:
 These methods, however, are impractical and wasteful when applied
to very large networks.
 Employing multipoint connections, such as a bus, there is
a limited number of devices connected to the medium
 A better solution is switching: a network consists of
interlinked switches.
 Switches are devices capable of creating temporary
connections between two or more devices linked to the
switch
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Ch06 Switching and Muxing
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Circuit Switching:
• A physical path established between end systems.
• E.g. Telephone system

Three phases:
• Setup Phase – circuit established by sending req
• Data Transfer Phase
• Teardown Phase – release resources

Advantages:
• Fixed data rate and hence fixed delays
• Guaranteed continuous delivery
• There is no addressing involved during data transfer
• No delay during data transfering
Disadvantages:
• circuits are not used when session is idle
• Inefficient for burst data-rate varies drastically
• usually done using a fixed rate stream (e.g., 64 Kbps)- Difficult to support variable
data rates
• mainly used by the telephone network, rarely in computer networks
• Inefficient for short messages (call setup)
• Easy for hacking
• Delay = request sending + acknowledgment sending + tearing down the connection
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 Packet Switching Network

 Messages broken into discrete units called packets

 Each packet contains data and headers
 Store and forward, on a packet basis-no connection
setup
 Packet switching is more fault tolerant than circuit
switching.
 With circuit switching, charging has historically been
based on distance and time.
 With packet switching, connect time is not an issue, but
the volume of traffic.
Two approaches:
Datagram– mainly used in the Network Layer
Virtual Circuit– a Data Link Layer technology

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Datagram packet switching
• Provides connectionless service
• no connection established before transmission of packet
• Each packet may be individually routed
• Each packet contains headers (address info, and other)
• May take different routes and arrive out of order
• Reassembled at the destination
Advantages:
• Efficient for bursty data
• OnDemand resource allocation
Disadvantages:
• Variable delays
• Each packet may experience a wait at a switch before it is
forwarded.
• Difficult to provide QoS assurances (Best-effort service)
• Packets can arrive out-of-order
• Destination address based routing table needed
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 Virtual Circuit packet switching

 It has some characteristics of both  As in a circuit-switched network, all packets

follow the same path established during the
Datagram and circuit switching
connection.
 Resources can be allocated during the setup  Two types of addressing are involved: global and
phase, as in a circuit-switched network, or on
local (virtual-circuit identifier).
demand, as in a datagram network.
 all switches need to have a table entry for created
 As in a datagram network, data are packetized
virtual circuit.
and each packet carries an address in the header.
However, the address in the header has local
 Each packet contains a virtual circuit identifier
jurisdiction (it defines what the next switch (VCI) instead of destination address
should be and the channel on which the packet is
being carried), not end-to-end jurisdiction: no
final destination address carried by a packet.

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 Virtual Circuit packet switching(cont’d.)
 In the setup phase, a switch creates an entry for a virtual
circuit
 When the frame arrives, the switch looks in its table to
find port 1 and a VCI of 14. When it is found, the switch
knows to change the VCI to 66 and send out the frame
from port 3.
 The procedure at the switch is the same for each frame
of a message.
 The process creates a virtual circuit, not a real circuit,
between the source and destination.
 One big advantage of Virtual circuit packet switching
even if it OnDemand. The source can check the
availability of the resources, without actually reserving
it.

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  Setup phase
 A switch
Acknowledgement
creates an entry for a virtual circuit.
 Request
 Acknowledgment

Request

Data with VCI

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 Virtual Circuit Vs Datagram
• Virtual circuits
– Provide sequencing (in order delivery) and error control
– Packets are forwarded more quickly
o No routing decisions to make
– Less reliable
o Loss of a node looses all circuits through that node
• Datagram
– No call setup phase
o Better if few packets
– More flexible
o Routing can be used to avoid congested parts of the network

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 Message Switching:

We can have only message switching in the application layer

No physical path is established in advance
Store and forward, in its entirety.

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 6.2. Sharing a Media: Multiplexing

 Multiplexing
 the set of techniques the simultaneous transmission of multiple signals across a
single data link that allows
 in a multiplexed system, n lines share the bandwidth of one link
 MUX (multiplexer by the sender) and DEMUX (demultiplexer by the receiver)
required

 Categories of Multiplexing
 For analog signals
 FDM - Frequency-Division Multiplexing
 WDM - Wave-Division Multiplexing; mainly for fiber optic cable
 For digital signals
 TDM - Time-Division Multiplexing
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Sharing a Media: Multiplexing

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6.3. Introduction to Ethernet & Wireless Networks

 Ethernet and Fast Ethernet

 Introduction to Wireless Network

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 Introduction to Ethernet & Wireless Networks

A LAN is a computer network that is designed for a limited

geographical area such as a building or a campus

The Internet has no specifications for LANs and WANs; it accepts

any LAN as a communication pathway for transferring its network
layer packet

LANs operate at the physical and data link layers

In 1985, IEEE started a project, called Project 802 to set standards

(too much politics between manufacturers)

It divided the data link layer into 2 sublayers:

• logical link control (LLC) and
• media access control (MAC)

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 LLC is not architecture specific, i.e., it is the same for all IEEE-defined LANs;
 MAC contains a number of distinct modules
 Among the common LANs are Ethernet (+ Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet), Token
Bus, Token Ring and Wireless LANs
 They are identified by their medium access control protocol and physical layer
specification

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 IEEE 802.6 is a standard for Metropolitan Area Networks
 It is an improvement of an older standard which used the Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI)
network structure
 The FDDI-based standard failed due to its expensive implementation and lack of compatibility with
current LAN standards.
 IEEE 802.6 uses the Distributed Queue Dual Bus (DQDB) network form which supports 150 Mbps
transfer rates
 DQDB is rated for a maximum of 160 km before significant signal degradation over fiber optic cable
 It has also failed, mostly due to the same reasons that the FDDI standard failed.
 Most MANs now use Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) or Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
network designs.

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 1. Ethernet
Ethernet IEEE Operate at Common cabling Features
standard (in mbps) name cable Max
seg. (M)
Traditional IEEE-802.3 10 10Base-5 Thick coax 500 Popular, uses
Ethernet 10Base-2 Thin coax 185 CSMA/CD
  10Base-T Twisted pair 100
10Base-F Fiber optic 2000
Fast Ethernet IEEE 100 100Base-T4 Twisted pair 100 Auto-Negotiation for
802.3z 100Base-TX Twisted pair 100 compatibility
100Base-FX Fiber optic 2000
Gigabit Ethernet IEEE 1000 1000Base-SX Fiber optic 550 ethernet go 10 times
802.3u 1000Base-LX Fiber optic 5000 faster, yet remain
1000Base-CX 2 pair of STP 25 backward compatible
10Base-T 4 pair of UTP 100  
10 Gigabit IEEE 10G 10GBase-SR Fiber optic 300 More faster
Ethernet 802.3ae 10GBase-LR Fiber optic 10,000  
10GBase-ER Fiber optic 40,000
10GBase-CX4 4 pair of twinax 15,000
10GBase-T
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 Segmentation (of a network not a frame)

 Performance depends on the number of stations

 The more stations we have the less will be the performance
 When a lot of stations have data to transmit, the network gets congested, and many collisions
occur (in a network with severe congestion, there may actually be more collisions occurring
on the network than data being transmitted)
 One solution: segmentation
 The process of splitting a large ethernet network into two or more segments linked by routers
 The resulting segments have fewer stations to contend with for access to the network and the
router transfers data from one segment to the other only when the destination for the data is
on the other segment
 The rest of the network traffic stays within the segment where it belongs

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 2. Token Bus (IEEE 802.4)

 was a 4 Mbps Local Area Networking technology created

by IBM to connect their terminals to IBM mainframes.
 the stations on the bus form a logical ring, i.e., the stations
are assigned logical positions in an ordered sequence,
with the last member followed by the first
 the physical ordering of the stations on the bus is
irrelevant and independent of the logical ordering; it has
ring logical topology and bus physical topology
 token was created by the Token Bus protocol to manage
or 'arbitrate' access to the bus.

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 in the example, stations 60, 50, 30, and 10, in that order, are part of the logical ring
 station 60 passes the token to 50, which in turn passes it to 30, then to 20, to 10, then back to
60;
 stations20 and 40 are not part of the logical ring
 each participating station knows the address of its predecessor (previous station- PS)
and successor (next station - NS)
 the logical ring is created and maintained dynamically in such a way that the stations are logically
ordered in numerically descending order of MAC address,

10 20 30 40 50 60

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 3. Token Ring (IEEE 802.5)
 By IBM in early 1980’s
 To improve upon their previous token bus technology
 Has ring logical topology; the physical topology can be ring or star
 It uses token passing medium access control protocol
 Still in use at some IBM sites; but virtually nowhere else

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 Wireless LANs

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 Wireless LAN (802.11)
 The need arose as a result of the appearance of mobile computing devices such as
notebooks
 Radio waves are the medium of transmission
 The standard defines two kinds of services:
 basic service set (BSS) and
 extended service set (ESS)
 A BSS is the building block of a wireless LAN; it is made up of stationary or mobile
wireless stations and a possible central base station, known as the access point (AP)

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 BSS without an AP is a stand-alone network, called an ad hoc architecture (or
networking);
 an ESS is made up of two or more BSSs with APs connected through a distribution
system (usually a wired LAN of any IEEE defined) which connects the APs in the BSSs

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Two types of stations in ESS:
 Mobile (normal stations inside a BSS) and
 Stationary (AP stations that are part of a wired LAN)
it should be possible to send an IP packet over a wireless LAN
the same way a wired computer sends an IP packet over
Ethernet
several differences exist with Ethernet in the physical and data
link layers

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 Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15)

 Originally started as a project by ericson

 The standard defines a wireless personal-area network (WPAN) operable
in an area the size of a room or a hall - within a distance of 10 meters
 Designed to connect devices of different functions such as telephones,
notebooks, computers (desktop and laptop), cameras, printers, coffee
makers, ...; the devices are sometimes called gadgets
 An ad hoc network; the network is formed spontaneously
 It defines two types of networks: piconets and scatternet
 A bluetooth network is called a piconet, or a small net

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 WIMAX (IEEE 802.16)

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Thank You !!!