The Transport Layer

Chapter 6
 Transport Layer
• It is the heart of the whole protocol hierarchy.
• Its task is to provide reliable, cost-effective data transport from the
source machine to the destination machine, independently of the
physical network or networks currently in use.
• It provides service to the application layer.
• Transport layer makes use of the services provided by the network
layer.
• The hardware and/or software within the transport layer that does
the work is called the transport entity.
• It provides both connectionless and connection oriented service.
• Connections have three phases: establishment, data transfer, and
release.
Services Provided to the Upper
Layers

The relationship of network, transport, and

application layers
 Transport Service Primitives

The primitives for a simple transport service

 Transport Service Primitives
• To see how these primitives might be used, consider an application with a
server and a number of remote clients. To start with, the server executes a
LISTEN primitive, typically by calling a library procedure that makes a
system call to block the server until a client turns up. When a client wants
to talk to the server, it executes a CONNECT primitive. The transport entity
carries out this primitive by blocking the caller and sending a packet to the
server. Encapsulated in the payload of this packet is a transport layer
message for the server's transport entity.
Transport Service Primitives

Nesting of TPDUs, packets, and frames.

Elements of Transport Protocols

• Addressing
• Connection establishment
• Connection release
• Error control and flow control
• Multiplexing
• Crash recovery
 Addressing

How a user process in host 1 establishes a connection

with a mail server in host 2 via a process server.
 Connection Establishment

Techniques for restricting packet lifetime

• Restricted network design.
• Putting a hop counter in each packet.
• Timestamping each packet.
 Connection Establishment

Three protocol scenarios for establishing a connection using a

three-way handshake. CR denotes CONNECTION REQUEST. Normal operation.
 Connection Establishment

Three protocol scenarios for establishing a connection using a

three-way handshake. CR denotes CONNECTION REQUEST. Old duplicate CONNECTION
REQUEST appearing out of nowhere.
 Connection Establishment

Three protocol scenarios for establishing a connection using a

three-way handshake. CR denotes CONNECTION REQUEST. Duplicate CONNECTION
REQUEST and duplicate ACK
 Connection Release

Abrupt disconnection with loss of data

 Connection Release

Four protocol scenarios for releasing a connection.

(a) Normal case of three-way handshake
 Connection Release

Four protocol scenarios for releasing a connection.

(b) Final ACK lost.
 Connection Release

Four protocol scenarios for releasing a connection.

(c) Response lost
 Regulating the Sending Rate

A fast network feeding a low-capacity receiver

 Regulating the Sending Rate

A slow network feeding a high-capacity receiver

 Introduction to UDP
• The Internet protocol suite supports a connectionless
transport protocol, UDP (User Datagram Protocol).
• UDP provides a way for applications to send IP
datagrams without having to establish a connection.
• UDP transmits segments consisting of an 8-byte header
followed by the payload.
• The UDP length field includes the 8-byte header and the
data. The UDP checksum is optional and stored as 0 if
not computed.
Introduction to UDP

The UDP header.

 Introduction to UDP

The IPv4 pseudoheader included in the UDP

checksum.
The Internet Transport Protocols: TCP
• Introduction to TCP
• The TCP service model
• The TCP protocol
• The TCP segment header
• TCP connection establishment
• TCP connection release
 Introduction to TCP
• TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) was specifically designed to
provide a reliable end-to-end byte stream over an unreliable
internetwork.
• An internetwork differs in terms of different topologies,
bandwidths, delays, packet sizes, and other parameters.
• Each machine supporting TCP has a TCP transport entity, either a
library procedure, a user process, or part of the kernel.
• TCP service is obtained by both the sender and receiver creating
end points, called sockets. Each socket has a socket number
(address) consisting of the IP address of the host and a 16-bit
number local to that host, called a port.
• Port numbers below 1024 are called well-known ports and are
reserved for standard services.
The TCP Service Model

Some assigned ports

 The TCP Service Model

(a)Four 512-byte segments sent as separate IP diagrams

(b)The 2048 bytes of data delivered to the application in a
single READ call
The TCP Segment Header

The TCP header.

 The TCP Segment Header
• TCP connection has its own 32-bit sequence number.
• Separate 32-bit sequence numbers are used for acknowledgements.
• The sending and receiving TCP entities exchange data in the form of
segments.
• A TCP segment consists of a fixed 20-byte header (plus an optional part)
followed by zero or more data bytes.
• The TCP software decides how big segments should be.
• Two limits restrict the segment size.
• First, each segment, including the TCP header, must fit in the 65,515-byte
IP payload.
• Second, each network has a maximum transfer unit, or MTU. In practice,
the MTU is generally 1500 bytes and thus defines the upper bound on
segment size.
 TCP Working
• The basic protocol used by TCP entities is the sliding window
protocol.
• When a sender transmits a segment, it also starts a timer.
• When the segment arrives at the destination, the receiving
TCP entity sends back a segment (with data if any exist,
otherwise without data) bearing an acknowledgement
number equal to the next sequence number it expects to
receive.
• If the sender's timer goes off before the acknowledgement is
received, the sender transmits the segment again.
 TCP Connection Establishment

(a)TCP connection establishment in the normal case.

(b) Simultaneous connection establishment on both sides.
 TCP Connection Release

• To release a connection, either party can send a TCP segment

with the FIN bit set, which means that it has no more data to
transmit.
• When the FIN is acknowledged, that direction is shut down
for new data.
• Data may continue to flow indefinitely in the other direction,
however. When both directions have been shut down, the
connection is released.
 End

Chapter 6