UNIT-I

Data communication, Data networking and the Internet

A Communication Model

The fundamental purpose of a communication system is the exchange of data between

two parties as shown in the figure below.

The key elements of this model are:

 Source - generates data to be transmitted
 Transmitter - converts data into transmittable signals
 Transmission System - carries data from source to destination
 Receiver - converts received signal into data
 Destination - takes incoming data

This simple narrative conceals a wealth of technical complexity. Table below lists
a selection of the key tasks that must be performed in a data communication system.
 Communication Tasks

 Transmission system utilization - need to make efficient use of transmission

facilities typically shared among a number of communicating devices.

 A device must interface with the transmission system.

 Once an interface is established, signal generation is required for

communication.

 There must be synchronization between transmitter and receiver, to

determine when a signal begins to arrive and when it ends.

There is a variety of requirements for communication between two parties that

might be collected under the term exchange management.

 Error detection and correction are required in circumstances where errors

cannot be tolerated.

 Flow control is required to assure that the source does not overwhelm the
destination by sending data faster than they can be processed and absorbed.

 Addressing and routing, so a source system can indicate the identity of the
intended destination, and can choose a specific route through this network .

 Recovery allows an interrupted transaction to resume activity at the point of

interruption or to condition prior to the beginning of the exchange.

 Message formatting has to do with an agreement between two parties as to

the form of the data to be exchanged or transmitted.

 Frequently need to provide some measure of security in a data communication

system.

 Network management capabilities are needed to configure the system,

monitor its status, react to failures and overloads, and plan intelligently for
future growth.

Data Communication deals with the most fundamental aspects of the

communication function, focusing on the transmission of signals in a reliable and
efficient manner.
 Figure below provides a new perspective on the communication model discussed
earlier.

Assume a PC user wants to send an email message ‘m’ to another user.

The process is modeled as follows:
 User keys in message ‘m’ comprising bits ‘g’ buffered in source PC memory.
 Input data is transferred to I/O device (transmitter) as sequence of bits g(t) using
voltage shifts.
 Transmitter converts these into a signal s(t) suitable for transmission media being
used.
 Transmitted signal s(t) presented to the medium is subject to a number of
impairments, so received signal r(t) may differ from s(t).
 Receiver decodes signal recovering g’(t) as estimate of original g(t).
 Decoded bits is buffered in destination PC memory as bits g’ being the received
message m’.

The Transmission of Information

The basic building block of any communication facility is the transmission line.
One of the basic choices facing a business user is the transmission medium. For use
within the business premises, this choice is generally completely up to the business. For
long-distance communication, the choice is generally but not always made by the long-
distance carrier.
In either case, changes in technology are rapidly changing the mix of media used.
The ever-increasing capacity of fiber optic channels is making channel capacity a
virtually free resource. However, switching is now becoming the bottleneck. The
growing use of wireless transmission is a result of the trend toward universal personal
telecommunication and universal access to communication.
Despite the growth in the capacity and the drop in cost of transmission facilities,
transmission services remain the most costly component of a communication budget for
most businesses. Thus, the manager needs to be aware of techniques that increase the
efficiency of the use of these facilities, such as multiplexing and compression.
.
Multiplexing refers to the ability of a number of devices to share a transmission
facility.

Compression involves squeezing the data down so that a lower-capacity, cheaper

transmission facility can be used to meet a given demand.

The transmission of information across a transmission medium involves more

than simply inserting a signal on the medium. The technique used to encode the
information into an electromagnetic signal must be determined. There are various ways
in which the encoding can be done, and the choice affects performance and reliability.

Types of Connections
A network is two or more devices connected through links. A link is a
communications pathway that transfers data from one device to another. For
communication to occur, two devices must be connected in some way to the same link
at the same time.
There are two possible types of connections: point-to-point and multipoint.

Point-to-Point: A point-to-point connection provides a dedicated link between two

devices. The entire capacity of the link is reserved for transmission between those two
devices.
Multipoint: A multipoint (also called multidrop) connection is one in which more than
two specific devices share a single link. In a multipoint environment, the capacity of the
channel is shared, either spatially or temporally.
If several devices can use the link simultaneously, it is a spatially shared
connection. If users must take turns, it is a timeshared connection.

Physical Topology

Physical topology refers to the way in which a network is laid out physically.
Two or more devices connect to a link; two or more links form a topology.
The topology of a network is the geometric representation of the relationship of
all the links and linking devices to one another. There are four basic topologies possible:

Point to point: Mesh and Star Multipoint: Bus and Ring

Mesh Topology
In a mesh topology, every device has a dedicated point-to-point link to every
other device. The term dedicated means that the link carries traffic only between the two
devices it connects.
In a fully connected mesh network, we need n(n -1) /2 duplex-mode physical
links, where ‘n’ is number of nodes of the network.

Star Topology
In a star topology, each device has a dedicated point-to-point link only to a
central controller, usually called a hub. The devices are not directly linked to one
another.

The controller acts as an exchange: If one device wants to send data to another, it sends
the data to the controller, which then relays the data to the other connected device.
Bus Topology
A bus topology is multipoint. One long cable acts as a backbone to link all the
devices in a network. Nodes are connected to the bus cable by drop lines and taps.
A drop line is a connection running between the device and the main cable. A tap
is a connector that either splices into the main cable or punctures the sheathing of a
cable to create a contact with the metallic core.

Ring Topology
In a ring topology, each device has a dedicated point-to-point connection with
only the two devices on either side of it. A signal is passed along the ring in one
direction, from device to device, until it reaches its destination.
Each device in the ring incorporates a repeater. When a device receives a signal
intended for another device, its repeater regenerates the bits and passes them along.

Hybrid Topology
A network can be hybrid. For example, we can have a main star topology with
each branch connecting several stations in a bus topology as shown in Figure below: a
star backbone with three bus networks.
NETWORKS
The number of computers in use worldwide is in the hundreds of millions, with
pressure from users of these systems for ways to communicate among all these
machines being irresistible. Advances in technology have led to greatly increased
capacity and the concept of integration, allowing equipment and networks to deal
simultaneously with voice, data, image, and even video.
Have two broad categories of networks: Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area
Networks (WAN).

Local Area Networks (LAN)

A LAN is a communication network that interconnects a variety of devices and
provides a means for information exchange among those devices.
 The scope of the LAN is small, typically a single building or a cluster of
buildings.
 The LAN is owned by the same organization that owns the attached devices.
 The internal data rates of LANs are typically much greater than other networks.

Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)

 Collection of LANs with the same geographical area, for instance a city.
 A network of computers located at different sites within a large physical area,
such as a city.
 MAN often acts as a high speed network (although not as fast as LAN) to allow
sharing of regional resources.
Wide Area Networks (WAN)
 Wide area networks generally cover a large geographical area, require the
crossing of public right-of-ways, and rely at least in part on circuits provided by a
common carrier.
 It consists of a number of interconnected switching nodes. A transmission from
any one device is routed through these internal nodes to the specified destination
device.
 WANs have been implemented using one of two technologies: Circuit switching
and Packet switching. More recently, frame relay and ATM networks have
assumed major roles.

WANs have been implemented using the following technologies:

 Circuit switching
 Packet switching
 Frame relays
 Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
Circuit switching
In a circuit-switching network, a dedicated communication path is established
between two stations through the nodes of the network. Path should be reserved in
advance. That path is a connected sequence of physical links between nodes, with a
logical channel dedicated to the connection. Data generated by the source station are
transmitted along the dedicated path as rapidly as possible. The most common example
of circuit switching is the telephone network.

Packet switching
A packet-switching network uses a quite different approach, without need to
dedicate transmission capacity along a path through the network. Rather, data is sent in
a sequence of small chunks, called packets. Each packet is passed through the network
from node to node along some path leading from source to destination. At each node,
the entire packet is received, stored briefly, and then transmitted to the next node.
Packet-switching networks are commonly used for terminal-to-computer and computer-
to-computer communication.
Frame relay
Packet switching was developed at a time when digital long distance transmission
facilities exhibited a relatively high error rate compared to today’s facilities. As a result,
there is a considerable amount of overhead built into packet-switching schemes to
compensate for errors.
With modern high-speed telecommunication systems, the rate of errors has been
dramatically lowered and any remaining errors can easily be caught in the end systems
by logic that operates above the level of the packet-switching logic.
Frame relay was developed to take advantage of high data rates and low error
rates on modern WAN links. The key to achieving these high data rates is to strip out
most of the overhead involved with error control.

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), is a culmination of developments in circuit
switching and packet switching. ATM can be viewed as an evolution from frame relay.
ATM uses fixed-length packets, called cells. As with frame relay, ATM provides little
overhead for error control, depending on the inherent reliability of the transmission
system and on higher layers of logic in the end systems to catch and correct errors.
By using a fixed packet length, the processing overhead is reduced even further
for ATM compared to frame relay. The result is that ATM is designed to work in the
range of 10s and 100s of Mbps, and in the Gbps range. ATM allows the definition of
multiple virtual channels with data rates that are dynamically defined at the time the
virtual channel is created.
THE INTERNET
The Internet evolved from the ARPANET, developed in 1969 by the Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. It was the first
operational packet-switching network. ARPANET began operations in four locations.
Today the number of hosts is in the hundreds of millions and the number of users in the
billions.
ARPA started to develop methods and protocols for internetworking-communicating
across arbitrary, multiple, packet-switched networks, eventually leading to the TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol) protocols, which, in turn,
formed the basis for the TCP/IP protocol suite.

Key Elements
The purpose of Internet, is to interconnect end systems, called hosts- these
include PCs, workstations, servers, mainframes. Hosts are connected to a network, such
as a LAN or a WAN. Networks are in turn connected by routers (Each router is
attached to two or more networks).

The Internet operates as follows:

 A host may send data to another host anywhere on the Internet.
 The source host breaks the data to be sent into a sequence of packets, called IP
datagrams or IP packets.

 Each packet includes a unique numeric address of the destination host. This
address is referred to as an IP address, because the address is carried in an IP
packet.
 Based on this destination address, each packet travels through a series of routers
and networks from source to destination.
 Each router, as it receives a packet, makes a routing decision and forwards the
packet along its way to the destination.
Internet Architecture
The Internet today is made up of thousands of overlapping networks. A key
element of the Internet is the set of hosts attached to it. Hosts are sometimes grouped
together in a LAN.
Individual hosts and LANs are connected to an Internet service provider (ISP)
through a point of presence (POP). The connection is made in a series of steps starting
with the customer premises equipment (CPE). ISPs can be classified as regional or
backbone, with peering links between.

Internet Terminology

Central Office (CO)

The place where telephone companies terminate customer lines and locate switching
equipment to interconnect those lines with other networks.

Customer Premises Equipment (CPE)

Equipment placed at the customer’s end of the telephone line and usually owned by the
telephone company.

Internet Service Provider (ISP)

A company that provides other companies or individuals with access to, or presence on,
the Internet.

Network Access Point (NAP)

A physical facility that provides the infrastructure to move data between connected
networks.
One of several major Internet interconnection points that serve to tie all the ISPs
together.

Network Service Provider (NSP)

A company that provides backbone services to an Internet service provider (ISP).

An ISP connects at a point called an Internet exchange (IX) to a regional ISP that in turn
connects to an NSP backbone

Point of Presence (POP)

A site that has a collection of telecommunication equipment. An ISP POP is the edge of
the ISP’s network; connections from users are accepted and authenticated here

EXAMPLE CONFIGURATION
Figure below illustrates some of the typical communication and network elements
in use today.

In the upper-left-hand portion of the figure, there is an individual residential user

connected to an Internet service provider (ISP) through some sort of subscriber
connection. The Internet consists of a number of interconnected routers that span the
globe. The routers forward packets of data from source to destination through the
Internet. The lower portion shows a LAN implemented using a single Ethernet switch.
This is a common configuration at a small business or other small organization.

**** End of Chapter 1 ****