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4 Framing Notesl4 - 103314

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7 views

4 Framing Notesl4 - 103314

Uploaded by

Ali kombo hassan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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NETWORK TECHNOLOGY

FRAMING TECHNIQUE

LECTURE No.4

INTRODUCTION
The Data Link Layer is the second layer in the OSI model, above the Physical
Layer, which ensures that the error free data is transferred between the
adjacent nodes in the network. It breaks the datagram passed down by
above layers and converts them into frames ready for transfer. The function
of Data Link layer is to provide

 Framing
 Flow Control
 Error control
 Performing addressing
 Access control

A frame is a digital data transmission unit in computer networking and


telecommunication. In packet switched systems, a frame is a simple
container for a single network packet. In other telecommunications systems,
a frame is a repeating structure supporting time-division multiplexing.

Framing is the process of dividing bit stream of information into logical


groups of equal size. Framing is done both with asynchronous
communication and synchronous communication
Framing is a point-to-point connection between two computers or devices in
which data is transmitted as a stream of bits. However, these bits must be
framed into noticeable blocks of information. Framing is a function of the
data link layer. It provides a way for a sender to transmit a set of bits that
are meaningful to the receiver. Ethernet, token ring, frame relay, and other
data link layer technologies have their own frame structures. Frames have
headers that contain information such as error-checking codes.
At data link layer, it extracts message from sender and provide it to receiver
by providing sender’s and receiver’s address. The advantage of using frames
is that data is broken up into recoverable chunks that can easily be checked
for corruption

Since the physical layer accepts and transmits a stream of bits without any
regard to meaning or structure, it is up to the data link layer to create and
recognize frame boundaries. This can be accomplished by attaching special
bit patterns to the beginning and end of the frame. If these bit patterns can
accidentally occur in data, special care must be taken to make sure these
patterns are not incorrectly interpreted as frame delimiters. The four framing
methods that are widely used are

 Character count
 Starting and ending characters, with character stuffing
 Bit stuffing
 Physical layer coding violations

Character Count

This method uses a field in the header to specify the number of characters in
the frame. When the data link layer at the destination sees the character
count, it knows how many characters follow, and hence where the end of the
frame is. The disadvantage is that if the count is distorted by a transmission
error, the destination will lose synchronization and will be unable to locate
the start of the next frame. So, this method is rarely used.

Starting and ending characters, with character stuffing

In this second method, each frame starts with the ASCII character sequence
DLE STX and ends with the sequence DLE ETX.(where DLE is Data Link
Escape, STX is Start of TeXt and ETX is End of TeXt.) This method overcomes
the drawbacks of the character count method. If the destination ever loses
synchronization, it only has to look for DLE STX and DLE ETX characters. If
however, binary data is being transmitted then there exists a possibility of
the characters DLE STX and DLE ETX occurring in the data. Since this can
interfere with the framing, a technique called character stuffing is used.
The sender's data link layer inserts an ASCII DLE character just before the
DLE character in the data. The receiver's data link layer removes this DLE
before this data is given to the network layer.

Bit stuffing

The third method allows data frames to contain an arbitrary number of bits
and allows character codes with an arbitrary number of bits per character. At
the start and end of each frame is a flag byte consisting of the special bit
pattern. Whenever the sender's data link layer encounters five consecutive
1s in the data, it automatically stuffs a zero bit into the outgoing bit stream.
This technique is called bit stuffing. When the receiver sees five consecutive
1s in the incoming data stream, followed by a zero bit, it automatically
destuffs the 0 bit. The boundary between two frames can be determined by
locating the flag pattern.

Physical layer coding violations

The final framing method is physical layer coding violations and is applicable
to networks in which the encoding on the physical medium contains some
redundancy. In such cases normally, a 1 bit is a high-low pair and a 0 bit is a
low-high pair. The combinations of low-low and high-high which are not used
for data may be used for marking frame boundaries.

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