Computer Networks

Ch.1: Computer Networks and the

Internet

Prepared By
Dr. Ibrahim Attiya
© 2023 NMU
 Ch.1: Outline
❑ Data Communications
❑ Networks
❑ Network Topology
❑ Network Types
❑ Protocol Layering
❑ TCP/IP Protocol Suite
❑ The OSI Model
❑ Internet History
 Switching
➢ In fact, an internet is a switched network in
which a switch connects at least two links
together.
➢ A switch needs to forward data from a link to
another link when required.
➢ The two most common types of switched
networks are:
▪ Circuit-switched networks.

▪ Packet-switched networks.
 Circuit-Switched Network
➢ In a circuit-switched network, a dedicated
connection, called a circuit, is always available
between the two end systems; the switch can
only make it active or inactive.
 Circuit-Switched Network
➢ In the previous figure, the four telephones at
each side are connected to a switch.
➢ The switch connects a telephone set at one side
to a telephone set at the other side.
➢ The thick line connecting two switches is a
high-capacity communication line that can
handle four voice communications at the same
time; the capacity can be shared between all
pairs of telephone sets.
 Circuit-Switched Network
➢ Each link in the following figure has four circuits,
for each link used by the end-to-end connection,
the connection gets one fourth of the link’s total
transmission capacity for the duration of the
connection.
➢ If each link between adjacent
switches has a transmission
rate of 1 Mbps, then each
end-to-end circuit-switch
connection gets 250 kbps of
dedicated transmission rate.
 Packet-Switched Network
➢ In a computer network, the communication
between the two ends is done in blocks of data
called packets.
➢ Instead of the continuous communication we
see between two telephone sets when they are
being used, we see the exchange of individual
data packets between the two computers.
➢ This allows us to make the switches function for
both storing and forwarding because a packet is
an independent entity that can be stored and
sent later.
 Packet-Switched Network

➢ A router in a packet-switched network has a

queue that can store and forward the packet.
 Packet-Switched Network
➢ Assume that the capacity of the thick line is
only twice the capacity of the data line
connecting the computers to the routers.
▪ If only two computers (one at each site) need to
communicate with each other, there is no waiting for
the packets.
▪ However, if packets arrive at one router when the
thick line is already working at its full capacity, the
packets should be stored and forwarded in the order
they arrived.
 Circuit-Switched vs. Packet-
Switched Networks
➢ A circuit-switched network is efficient only
when it is working at its full capacity; most of
the time, it is inefficient because it is working at
partial capacity.
➢ A packet-switched network is more efficient
than a circuit-witched network, but the packets
may encounter some delays.
➢ The trend in today's telecommunication
networks has been toward packet-switched
networks.
 Delay in Packet-Switched
Networks
➢ As a packet travels from one node (host or router)
to the subsequent node along a specific path, the
packet suffers from several types of delays at each
node along the path.
➢ The most important of these delays are the nodal
processing delay, queuing delay, transmission
delay, and propagation delay;
➢ These delays accumulate together to give a total
nodal delay.
 Delay in Packet-Switched
Networks
➢ Processing Delay
▪ The time required to examine the packet’s
header and determine where to direct the packet
is part of the processing delay.
▪ The time needed to check for bit-level errors in
the packet that occurred in transmitting the
packet’s bits.
▪ Processing delays < microseconds.
 Delay in Packet-Switched
Networks
➢ Queuing Delay

▪ At the queue, the packet experiences a queuing

delay as it waits to be transmitted onto the link.

▪ The length of the queuing delay of a specific

packet will depend on the number of earlier-
arriving packets that are queued and waiting for
transmission onto the link.
 Delay in Packet-Switched
Networks
➢ Transmission Delay

▪ Denote the length of the packet by L bits, and

denote the transmission rate of the link from
router A to router B by R bits/sec.

▪ The transmission delay is L/R.

▪ This is the amount of time required to push (that

is, transmit) all of the packet’s bits into the link.
 Delay in Packet-Switched
Networks
➢ Propagation Delay
▪ The time required to propagate from the
beginning of the link to router B is the
propagation delay.
▪ The propagation delay is the distance between
two routers divided by the propagation speed.
That is, the propagation delay is d/s, where d is
the distance between router A and router B and s
is the propagation speed of the link.
 Delay in Packet-Switched
Networks

➢ If we let dproc, dqueue, dtrans, and dprop denote the

processing, queuing, transmission, and propagation
delays, then the total nodal delay is given by:
dnodal = dproc + dqueue + dtrans + dprop
 Packet loss
➢ In reality a queue preceding a link has finite
capacity, although the queuing capacity greatly
depends on the router design and cost.
➢ A packet can arrive to find a full queue. With no
place to store such a packet, a router will drop that
packet; that is, the packet will be lost.
➢ A lost packet may be retransmitted by previous
node, by source end system, or not at all.
➢ The fraction of lost packets increases as the traffic
intensity increases.
 The Internet
➢ The Internet is a global interconnected network
comprising millions of networks.
➢ The Internet is a computer network that
interconnects billions of computing devices
throughout the world.
➢ End systems access the Internet through
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), including
residential ISPs; corporate ISPs; university
ISPs; ISPs that provide Wi-Fi access in airports,
hotels, coffee shops, etc.
The Internet

The Internet today

 Accessing the Internet
➢ The Internet today is an internetwork that
allows any user to become part of it.
➢ The user, however, needs to be physically
connected to an ISP.
➢ The physical connection is normally done
through a point-to-point WAN.
▪ Using Telephone Networks
▪ Using Cable Networks
▪ Using Wireless Networks
▪ Using Direct Connection
 Accessing the Internet
➢ Using Telephone Networks.
▪ Today most residences and small businesses have
telephone service, which means they are connected
to a telephone network.
▪ Since most telephone networks have already
connected themselves to the Internet, one option for
residences and small businesses to connect to the
Internet is to change the voice line between the
residence or business and the telephone center to a
point-to-point WAN.
 Accessing the Internet
➢ The previous can be done in two ways:
➢Dial-up service. The first solution is to add to the
telephone line a modem that converts data to voice.
The software installed on the computer dials the ISP
and imitates making a telephone connection.
➢DSL Service. Telephone companies have upgraded
their telephone lines to provide higher speed Internet
services to residences or small businesses. The DSL
service also allows the line to be used
simultaneously for voice and data communication.
 Accessing the Internet
➢ Using Cable Networks.
▪ Cable networks have been upgraded to provide a
higher speed connection, but the speed varies
depending on the number of neighbors that use the
same cable.
▪ A residence or a small business can be connected to
the Internet by using cable networks.
▪ Examples of cable networks include twisted-pair
copper cable, coaxial cable, and fiber optic cable.
 Accessing the Internet
Twisted Pair (TP) Cable
➢ The least expensive and most commonly used
transmission medium is twisted-pair copper wire.
➢ A TP cable consists of two insulated copper wires,
arranged in a regular spiral pattern.
➢ The wires are twisted together to reduce the
electrical interference from similar pairs close by.
▪ Category 5: 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps Ethernet
▪ Category 6: 10Gbps Ethernet
 Accessing the Internet
Coaxial Cable
➢ Like twisted pair, coaxial cable consists of two
copper conductors, but the two conductors are
concentric rather than parallel.
➢ Coaxial cable is quite common in cable television
systems.
➢ Broadband:
▪ Multiple frequency channels on cable
▪ 100’s Mbps per channel
 Accessing the Internet
Fiber Optics Cable:
➢ An optical fiber is a thin, flexible medium that
conducts pulses of light, with each pulse
representing a bit.
➢ A single optical fiber can support tremendous bit
rates, up to tens or even hundreds of gigabits per
second.
➢ high-speed operation:
▪ High-speed point-to-point transmission
(10’s-100’s Gbps).
 Accessing the Internet
➢ Using Wireless Networks.
▪ Wireless connectivity has recently become
increasingly popular.
▪ Radio channels carry signals in the electromagnetic
spectrum.
▪ They are an attractive medium because they require
no physical wire to be installed, can penetrate walls,
provide connectivity to a mobile user, and can
potentially carry a signal for long distances.
 Accessing the Internet
Terrestrial Radio Channels
➢ Terrestrial radio channels can be broadly classified
into three groups:
❑ Terrestrial microwave: (spanning from one to a few
meters)
▪ Up to 45 Mbps channels
❑ Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi): (spanning from ten to a few
hundred meters)
▪ Up to 100’s Mbps
❑ Wide-area (e.g., cellular): (spanning tens of kilometers)
▪ 4G cellular: ~ 10’s Mbps
 Accessing the Internet
Satellite Radio Channels
➢ A communication satellite links two or more Earth-
based microwave transmitter/ receivers, known as
ground stations.
➢ The satellite receives transmissions on one
frequency band, regenerates the signal using a
repeater, and transmits the signal on another
frequency.
➢ Satellite:
▪ Up to 45 Mbps per channel.
▪ 280 msec end-end delay.
 Accessing the Internet
➢ Using Direct Connection.
➢A large organization or a large corporation can itself
become a local ISP and be connected to the Internet.
➢This can be done if the organization or the
corporation leases a high-speed WAN from a carrier
provider and connects itself to a regional ISP.
➢For example, a large university with several
campuses can create an internetwork and then
connect the internetwork to the Internet.
Any Questions?