Lecturer-4

Network Software
Network Software

• Protocol Hierarchies
• Design Issues for the Layers
• Connection-Oriented and Connectionless Services
• Service Primitives
• The Relationship of Services to Protocols
Protocol Hierarchies

• To reduce their design complexity, most

networks are organized as a stack of layers or
levels, each one built upon the one below it
• The purpose of each layer is to offer certain
services to the higher layers.
• Services are available at SAPs ( Service Access)
called the interface
eg : Socket in to which the modular telephone
can be plugged.
Protocol
• Protocol – in general ……
- an acceptable way of behaving.
Eg:driving on the left hand side of the road
Eg: how to participate in a tutorial discussion.

• Protocols are critical and there must be agreement on them.

A network protocol
Is the set of very detailed rules, sequences, message formats,
and procedures that computer systems use and understand
when exchanging data with each other
Network Software
Protocol Hierarchies

virtual communication is shown by dotted lines and physical communication

by solid lines.
What is Protocol

• When layer n on one machine carries on a

conversation with layer n on another machine,
the rules and conventions used in this
conversation are collectively known as the layer n
protocol
• No data are directly transferred from layer n on
one machine to layer n on another machine.
Below layer 1 is the physical medium through
which actual communication occurs. In
Interface.
• The interface defines which primitive
operations and services the lower layer makes
available to the upper one.
• A set of layers and protocols is called a
network architecture.
Protocol Hierarchies (2)
The philosopher-translator-secretary architecture.
Protocol Hierarchies (3)
• Example information flow supporting virtual communication
in layer 5.
Design Issues for the Layers

• Addressing
• Error Control
• Flow Control
• Multiplexing
• Routing
Design Issues for the Layers
• Addressing:Every layer needs a mechanism for identifying the
senders and receivers that are involved in a particular
message.
• Error Control: Error detection. error correction,
• Multiplexing:Share network bandwidth dynamically,
• Flow control:how to keep a fast sender from swamping a slow
receiver with data. Congestion control
• Routing :Another reliability issue is finding a working path
through may be some links or routers that are broken
The network should automatically make this decision
Quality of service
• It is interesting to observe that the network has more
resources to offer than simply bandwidth.
• For uses such as carrying live video, the timeliness of
delivery matters a great deal.
• Most networks must provide service to applications that
want this real-time delivery at the same time that they
provide service to applications that want high throughput.
• Quality of service is the name given to mechanisms that
reconcile these competing demands.
• Confidentiality
• Authentication
• integrity
Connection-Oriented and Connectionless
Services
• Layers can offer two different types of service to
the layers above them:
-connection-oriented
-connectionless.
connection-oriented: is modeled after the
telephone system
To use a connection-oriented network service, the
service user first establishes a connection, uses the
connection, and then releases the connection
Connection-Oriented and Connectionless
Services
connectionless service: is modeled after the
postal system.
Each message (letter) carries the full destination
address.
Each one is routed through the intermediate
nodes inside the system independent of all the
subsequent messages.
If two messages are send , may be the first one arrive last
store-and-forward switching
Connection-Oriented and Connectionless
Services
Each service the can be characterized by the quality
of service.
1.Relaiable : In the sense they never loose data.
How??? Use Acko
- Message sequence ( boundary are preserved)
 When two 1024-byte messages are sent, they
arrive as two distinct 1024-byte messages never as
one 2048-byte message.
- Byte sequence( nor sure about the send message )
2. Unreliable: delay are unacceptable ( Digitized
voice)
Unreliable-meaning not acknowledged
Connectionless Services
Not all application requires connection
eg : Email.
Connection less service often called as Datagram service
Analogy : telegram
• In other situations, the convenience of not having to
establish a connection to send one message is desired,
but reliability is essential
Eg:It is like sending a registered &letter and requesting a
return receipt.
Text messaging on mobile phones is an example
Connectionless Services
• request-reply:example, amobile phone client
might send a query to a map server to retrieve
the map data for the current location.
• Using unreliable communication may be
confusing at first…………………
• For example, Ethernet does not provide reliable
communication.
• In particular,many reliable services are built on
top of an unreliable datagram service
Connection-Oriented and Connectionless Services

• Six different types of service.

Service Primitives
• A service is formally specified by a set of
primitives (operations) available to user
processes to access the service.
• If the protocol stack is located in the operating
system, as it often is, the primitives are
normally system calls
Service Primitives

• Five service primitives for implementing a

simple connection-oriented service.
request-reply interaction in a client-server
environment- example
1.The server executes LISTEN to indicate that it
is prepared to accept incoming connections.
2. Next, the client process executes CONNECT to
establish a connection with the server.
The operating system then typically sends a
packet to the peer asking it to connect.
3. The server process can then establish the
connection with the ACCEPT call.
Service Primitives (2)

• Packets sent in a simple client-server interaction on a

connection-oriented network.
Services to Protocols Relationship
• The relationship between a service and a
protocol.
Services to Protocols Relationship
• A service is a set of primitives (operations)
that a layer provides to the layer above it.
• The service defines what operations the layer
is prepared to perform on behalf of its users
• A service relates to an interface between two
layers, with the lower layer being the service
provider and the upper layer being the service
user.
Services to Protocols Relationship
• A protocol, in contrast, is a set of rules governing the
format and meaning of the packets, or messages that
are exchanged by the peer entities within a layer.
• Entities use protocols to implement their service
definitions.
Eg Analogy :A service is like an abstract data type or an
object in an object-oriented language.
In contrast, a protocol relates to the implementation of
the service and as such is not visible to the user of the
service.
Reference Models
• The OSI Reference Model
• The TCP/IP Reference Model
• A Comparison of OSI and TCP/IP
• A Critique of the OSI Model and Protocols
• A Critique of the TCP/IP Reference Model
The OSI Reference Model
• This model is based on a proposal developed
by the International Standards Organization
(ISO) as a first step toward international
standardization of the protocols used in the
various layers(Day and Zimmermann, 1983)
It was revised in 1995 (Day,1995). The model is
called the ISO OSI (Open Systems
Interconnection
1 Reference Models
1. The OSI Reference Model

In the late 1970s, to promote the compatibility of network

designs, the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) proposed an architecture model called the open
systems interconnection references model (OSI model).
services
layer N layer N
PDUs (protocol data unit)
layer N-1 layer N-1

actual data flow on the lowest level

Reference Models

The OSI
reference
model .
1. Reference Models
1. The OSI Reference Model

7 application
6 presentation
5 session
4 transport
3 network
2 data link
1 physical
The principles that were applied to arrive at the seven layers can be briefly
summarized as follows:
1. A layer should be created where a different abstraction
is needed.
2. Each layer should perform a well-defined function.
3. The function of each layer should be chosen with an
eye toward defining internationally standardized
protocols.
4. The layer boundaries should be chosen to minimize the
information flow across the interfaces.
5. The number of layers should be large enough that distinct
functions need not be thrown together in the same layer out of
necessity and small enough that the architecture does not
become unwieldy.
•
Physical Layer
The main task of the physical layer is to transmit raw bits over a
communication channel.
Typical questions here are:
-how many volts should be used to represent 1 and 0,
-how many microseconds a bit lasts,
- whether the transmission may proceed simultaneously
in both directions,
- how the initial connection is established and how it is
turn down,
- how many pins the network connector has and what
each pin is used for.
• The design issues deal with mechanical, electrical, and procedural
interfaces, and the physical transmission medium, which lies below
the physical layer.
• The user of the physical layer may be sure that the given stream of bits was
encoded and transmitted. He cannot be sure that the data came to the
destination without error. This issue is solved in higher layers.
DataLink Layer
• The main task of the data link layer is to take a raw
transmission facility and transform it into a line that
appears free of undetected transmission errors to the
network layer.

• To accomplish this, the sender breaks the input data into data
frames (typically a few hundred or a few thousand
bytes),transmits the frames sequentially, and processes the
acknowledgment frames sent back by the receiver.
Data link Layer
The issues that the layer has to solve:
 To create and to recognize frame boundaries ,typically by
attaching special bit patterns to the beginning and end of the
frame
 To solve the problem caused by damaged, lost or duplicate
frames
 To keep a fast transmitter from drowning a slow receiver.
 If the line is bi-directional, the acknowledgment frames
compete for the use of the line with data frames.
 Broadcast networks have an additional issue in the data
link layer: how to control access to the shared channel.
A special sub layer of the data link layer
(medium access sublayer- MAC ) deals with the
problem.
The Network Layer
• The main task of the network layer is to
determine how data can be delivered from
source to destination.

• That is, the network layer is concerned with

controlling the operation of the subnet.
The Network Layer
The issues that the layer has to solve:
· To implement the routing mechanism,
· To control congestions,
· To do accounting,
· To allow interconnection of heterogeneous networks.
 In broadcast networks, the routing problem is simple,
so the network layer is often thin or even nonexistent.
The user of the network layer may be sure that his packet was delivered to
the given destination. However, the delivery of the packets needs not to be
in the order in which they were transmitted.
The Transport Layer
 The basic function of the transport layer is to
accept data from the session layer, split it up
into smaller units if need be, pass them to the
network layer, and ensure that the pieces all
arrive correctly at the other end.
 All this must be done in a way that isolates the
upper layers from the inevitable changes in
the hardware technology.
The Transport Layer
The issues that the transport layer has to solve:

to provide different type of services for the session layer,to

implement a kind of flow control.
The transport layer is a true end-to-end layer, from source to
destination. In other words, a program on the source machine carries
on a conversation with a similar program on the destination machine.
In lower layers, the protocols are between each machine and its
immediate neighbors. The user of the transport layer may be sure that
his message will be delivered to the destination regardless of the state
of the network. He need not worry about the technical features of the
network.
The Session Layer
The session layer allows users on different machines to establish sessions
between them. A session allows ordinary data transport, as does the transport
layer, but it also provides enhanced services useful in some applications.
Some of these services are:
 Dialog control - session can allow traffic to go in both directions at the same
time, or in only one direction at a time. If traffic can go only in one way at a
time, the session layer can help to keep track of whose turn it is.
 Token management - for some protocols it is essential that both sides do
not attempt the same operation at the same time. The session layer
provides tokens that can be exchanged.Only the side holding the token may
perform the critical action.
 Synchronization - by inserting checkpoints into the data stream the layer
eliminates problems with potential crashes at long operations. After a crash,
only the data transferred after the last checkpoint have to be repeated.
The user of the session layer is in similar position as the user of the transport
layer but having larger possibilities.
The Presentation Layer
 This layer is, unlike all the lower layers, concerned with the
syntax and semantics of the information transmitted.

 A typical example of a presentation service is encoding data

in a standard agreed upon way. Different computers may use
different ways of internal coding of characters or numbers. In
order to make it possible for computers with different
representations to communicate, the data structures to be
exchanged can be defined in an abstract way, along with a
standard encoding to be used "on the wire".
The presentation layer manages these abstract data structures
and converts from the representation used inside the computer
to the network standard representation and back.
The Application Layer
The application layer contains a variety of
protocols that are commonly needed by users.
 One widely used application protocol is HTTP
(Hyper TextTransfer Protocol), which is the basis
for the World Wide Web.
 When a browser wants a Web page, it sends the name of
the page it wants to the server hosting the page using
HTTP. The server then sends the page back. Other
application protocols are used for file transfer, electronic
mail, and network news.