Chapter 1 Review Questions

SECTION 1.1

R1. What is the difference between a host and an end system? List several different types of end
systems. Is a Web server an end system?

R2. The word protocol is often used to describe diplomatic relations. How does Wikipedia describe
diplomatic protocol?

R3. Why are standards important for protocols?

SECTION 1.2

R4. List four access technologies. Classify each one as home access, enterprise access, or wide-area
wireless access.

R5. Is HFC transmission rate dedicated or shared among users? Are collisions possible in a downstream
HFC channel? Why or why not?

R6. List the available residential access technologies in your city. For each type of access, provide the
advertised downstream rate, upstream rate, and monthly price.

R7. What is the transmission rate of Ethernet LANs?

R8. What are some of the physical media that Ethernet can run over?

R9. HFC, DSL, and FTTH are all used for residential access. For each of these access technologies,
provide a range of transmission rates and comment on whether the transmission rate is shared or
dedicated.

R10. Describe the most popular wireless Internet access technologies today. Compare and contrast
them.

SECTION 1.3

R11. Suppose there is exactly one packet switch between a sending host and a receiving host. The
transmission rates between the sending host and the switch and between the switch and the receiving
host are R1 and R2, respectively. Assuming that the switch uses store-and-forward packet switching,
what is the total end-to-end delay to send a packet of length L? (Ignore queuing, propagation delay, and
processing delay.)

R12. What advantage does a circuit-switched network have over a packet-switched network? What
advantages does TDM have over FDM in a circuit-switched network?

R13. Suppose users share a 2 Mbps link. Also suppose each user transmits continuously at 1 Mbps when
transmitting, but each user transmits only 20 percent of the time. (See the discussion of statistical
multiplexing in Section 1.3.) a. When circuit switching is used, how many users can be supported? B. For
the remainder of this problem, suppose packet switching is used. Why will there be essentially no
queuing delay before the link if two or fewer users transmit at the same time? Why will there be a
queuing delay if three users transmit at the same time? C. Find the probability that a given user is
transmitting. D. Suppose now there are three users. Find the probability that at any given time, all three
users are transmitting simultaneously. Find the fraction of time during which the queue grows.

R14. Why will two ISPs at the same level of the hierarchy often peer with each other? How does an IXP
earn money?

R15. Some content providers have created their own networks. Describe Google’s network. What
motivates content providers to create these networks?

SECTION 1.4

R16. Consider sending a packet from a source host to a destination host over a fixed route. List the
delay components in the end-to-end delay. Which of these delays are constant and which are variable?

R17. Visit the Transmission Versus Propagation Delay interactive animation at the companion Web site.
Among the rates, propagation delay, and packet sizes available, find a combination for which the sender
finishes transmitting before the first bit of the packet reaches the receiver. Find another combination for
which the first bit of the packet reaches the receiver before the sender finishes transmitting.

R18. How long does it take a packet of length 1,000 bytes to propagate over a link of distance 2,500 km,
propagation speed 2.5 # 108 m/s, and transmission rate 2 Mbps? More generally, how long does it take
a packet of length L to propagate over a link of distance d, propagation speed s, and transmission rate R
bps? Does this delay depend on packet length? Does this delay depend on transmission rate?

R19. Suppose Host A wants to send a large file to Host B. The path from Host A to Host B has three links,
of rates R1 = 500 kbps, R2 = 2 Mbps, and R3 = 1 Mbps. A. Assuming no other traffic in the network, what
is the throughput for the file transfer? B. Suppose the file is 4 million bytes. Dividing the file size by the
throughput, roughly how long will it take to transfer the file to Host B? C. Repeat (a) and (b), but now
with R2 reduced to 100 kbps.

R20. Suppose end system A wants to send a large file to end system B. At a very high level, describe
how end system A creates packets from the file. When one of these packets arrives to a router, what
information in the packet does the router use to determine the link onto which the packet is forwarded?
Why is packet switching in the Internet analogous to driving from one city to another and asking
directions along the way?

R21. Visit the Queuing and Loss interactive animation at the companion Web site. What is the
maximum emission rate and the minimum transmission rate? With those rates, what is the traffic
intensity? Run the interactive animation with these rates and determine how long it takes for packet
loss to occur. Then repeat the experiment a second time and determine again how long it takes for
packet loss to occur. Are the values different? Why or why not?

SECTION 1.5

R22. List five tasks that a layer can perform. Is it possible that one (or more) of these tasks could be
performed by two (or more) layers?

R23. What are the five layers in the Internet protocol stack? What are the principal responsibilities of
each of these layers?
R24. What is an application-layer message? A transport-layer segment? A network-layer datagram? A
link-layer frame?

R25. Which layers in the Internet protocol stack does a router process? Which layers does a link-layer
switch process? Which layers does a host process?

SECTION 1.6

R26. What is self-replicating malware?

R27. Describe how a botnet can be created and how it can be used for a DdoS attack.

R28. Suppose Alice and Bob are sending packets to each other over a computer network. Suppose Trudy
positions herself in the network so that she can capture all the packets sent by Alice and send whatever
she wants to Bob; she can also capture all the packets sent by Bob and send whatever she wants to
Alice. List some of the malicious things Trudy can do from this position

Problems

P1. Design and describe an application-level protocol to be used between an automatic teller machine
and a bank’s centralized computer. Your protocol should allow a user’s card and password to be verified,
the account balance (which is maintained at the centralized computer) to be queried, and an account
withdrawal to be made (that is, money disbursed to the user). Your protocol entities should be able to
handle the all-too-common case in which there is not enough money in the account to cover the
withdrawal. Specify your protocol by listing the messages exchanged and the action taken by the
automatic teller machine or the bank’s centralized computer on transmission and receipt of messages.
Sketch the operation of your protocol for the case of a simple withdrawal with no errors, using a
diagram similar to that in Figure 1.2. Explicitly state the assumptions made by your protocol about the
underlying end-to-end transport service.

P2. Equation 1.1 gives a formula for the end-to-end delay of sending one packet of length L over N links
of transmission rate R. Generalize this formula for sending P such packets back-to-back over the N links.

P3. Consider an application that transmits data at a steady rate (for example, the sender generates an
N-bit unit of data every k time units, where k is small and fixed). Also, when such an application starts, it
will continue running for a relatively long period of time. Answer the following questions, briefly
justifying your answer: a. Would a packet-switched network or a circuit-switched network be more
appropriate for this application? Why? B. Suppose that a packet-switched network is used and the only
traffic in this network comes from such applications as described above. Furthermore, assume that the
sum of the application data rates is less than the capacities of each and every link. Is some form of
congestion control needed? Why?

P4. Consider the circuit-switched network in Figure 1.13. Recall that there are four circuits on each link.
Label the four switches A, B, C, and D, going in the clockwise direction.

A. What is the maximum number of simultaneous connections that can be in progress at any one time in
this network?
 B. Suppose that all connections are between switches A and C. What is the maximum number of
simultaneous connections that can be in progress?

C. Suppose we want to make four connections between switches A and C, and another four connections
between switches B and D. Can we route these calls through the four links to accommodate all eight
connections?

P5. Review the car-caravan analogy in Section 1.4. Assume a propagation speed of 100 km/hour.

A. Suppose the caravan travels 175 km, beginning in front of one tollbooth, passing through a second
tollbooth, and finishing just after a third tollbooth. What is the end-to-end delay?

B. Repeat (a), now assuming that there are eight cars in the caravan instead of ten.

P6. This elementary problem begins to explore propagation delay and transmission delay, two central
concepts in data networking. Consider two hosts, A and B, connected by a single link of rate R bps.
Suppose that the two hosts are separated by m meters, and suppose the propagation speed along the
link is s meters/sec. Host A is to send a packet of size L bits to Host B.

A. Express the propagation delay, dprop, in terms of m and s.

B. Determine the transmission time of the packet, dtrans, in terms of L and R.

C. Ignoring processing and queuing delays, obtain an expression for the endto-end delay.

D. Suppose Host A begins to transmit the packet at time t = 0. At time t = dtrans, where is the last bit of
the packet?

E. Suppose dprop is greater than dtrans. At time t = dtrans, where is the first bit of the packet?

F. Suppose dprop is less than dtrans. At time t = dtrans, where is the first bit of the packet?

G. Suppose s = 2.5×10⁸, L = 1500 bytes, and R = 10 Mbps. Find the distance m so that dprop equals
dtrans.

P7. In this problem, we consider sending real-time voice from Host A to Host B over a packet-switched
network (VoIP). Host A converts analog voice to a digital 64 kbps bit stream on the fly. Host A then
groups the bits into 56-byte packets. There is one link between Hosts A and B; its transmission rate is 10
Mbps and its propagation delay is 10 msec. As soon as Host A gathers a packet, it sends it to Host B. As
soon as Host B receives an entire packet, it converts the packet’s bits to an analog signal. How much
time elapses from the time a bit is created (from the original analog signal at Host A) until the bit is
decoded (as part of the analog signal at Host B)?

P8. Suppose users share a 10 Mbps link. Also suppose each user requires 200 kbps when transmitting,
but each user transmits only 10 percent of the time. (See the discussion of packet switching versus
circuit switching in Section 1.3.)

a. When circuit switching is used, how many users can be supported?

c. Suppose there are 120 users. Find the probability that at any given time, exactly n users are
transmitting simultaneously. (Hint: Use the binomial distribution.)

d. Find the probability that there are 51 or more users transmitting simultaneously.

‫االجابة‬:
‫‪:‬االجابة‬

‫‪:‬االجابة‬

‫‪:‬االجابة‬

‫‪:‬االجابة‬
‫‪:‬االجابة‬

‫‪:‬االجابة‬

‫‪:‬االجابة‬
‫‪:‬االجابة‬