COE 475: Computer Networking

Lecture3: Transport Layer

 Lecture Objectives
• to understand the
– principles behind the transport layer service
• to learn about
– transport layer protocols in the Internet
• TCP
• UDP
 Transport Layer
• Function:
– provides a logical communication service between
• two application-layer processes running on different end systems

• Recall that
– a process sends messages into a network through a socket and
relies on a
• transport infrastructure on the other side of the socket to
deliver/receive messages
 Transport Layer - Why
• Networks (the network layer) is
– under the control of a network operator and the network service
users have no control over it
• if something goes wrong, a user can do nothing
• The transport service is
– what designers can add at the user side to improve the reliability
of the service provided by the network
 Motivating Questions
• In a packet switched network, packets
– are addressed to a host
– can be
• delayed
• Dropped
• reordered
• Questions
– how to decide which application gets which packets
– how should hosts send packets into the network?
• too fast may overwhelm the network
• too slow is not efficient (low throughput)
– how should senders avoid over-run of receivers
 Transport Layer
• Fundamental principles

1. extends the network layer’s delivery service between two end systems
to a delivery service between two application-layer processes
– multiplexing/demultiplexing
2. guarantees that two entities can communicate reliably over a medium
that may lose and corrupt data
– reliable data transfer
3. control the transmission rate of transport-layer entities
– congestion control
 Transport-Layer
• provide logical communication
between app processes running
on different hosts
• Application processes use the
– Logical communication provided
by the transport layer to
• send messages to each
other, free from the worry of
the details of the physical
infrastructure used to carry
these messages
• more than one transport protocol
available to apps
– Internet: TCP and UDP
 Transport-Layer Services
• two basic types of transport-layer services are possible
– connection-oriented service
– connectionless service
 Connection-Oriented Service

• Connection-oriented service
– requires a pair of processes to
establish connection (handshaking)
before sending data
• establish connection
• transfer data
• terminate connection
– Hides the imperfections of the network
service so that
• Processes can just assume the
existence of error-free bit stream
– reliable and provides in-order
delivery

handshake
 Connectionless Service
• Requires no establishment of connection (handshaking)
before sending data
– the sender simply starts sending packets
• unreliable
• does not deliver data in order
 Internet transport-layer protocols
• Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
– connection –oriented service
• Ensures that data is delivered from sending process to receiving
correctly and in order (reliable data transfer)
• congestion control
• flow control
– Thus converts IP’s
• Unreliable service between end-systems into a reliable data
transfer service between processes
 Internet transport-layer protocols
• User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
– Connectionless service
• Two minimal services
1. process to process data delivery
» does not guarantee that data sent by one process will arrive at
the destination
• unreliable, unordered delivery
2. error checking

• services not available by both:

– delay guarantees
– bandwidth guarantees
• Application developer must
– specify one of these two transport layer protocols
 Popular Internet Applications
• Popular Internet applications and their underlying transport protocol
 Transport layer addressing
• When an application process wishes to
– Setup a communication to a remote application process
• It must specify which process to connect to
• Define transport addresses (port numbers) to which
– processes can listen for connection request
• Each port number is a
– 16-bit number ranging from 0 to 65535
• the port numbers ranging from 0 to 1023 well-known port numbers
and are restricted or reserved for well-known application protocols
 Transport layer addressing
• Anytime a socket is created
– the transport layer automatically assigns a port number to the
socket from the range
• 1024 to 65535
– unless the application developer has chosen to bind the
application to a specific port
• For a server side implemetation of a well-known
protocol, a well-known port is chosen
– Example port numbers:
• HTTP server: 80
– Server process listens on port # 80 for connection requests
• Mail server: 25
 Multiplexing & Demultiplexing
• Extending the host-to-host delivery service provided by
the network layer to a
– process-to-process delivery service for applications running on
the hosts is called
• transport layer multiplexing and demultiplexing
• Note
– A process can have one or more sockets
 Multiplexing
• At the sender side (multiplexing)
– the transport layer has the responsibility of
• gathering data chunks from different sockets, encapsulate each data
chunk with header information to create a
– segment and pass the segments to the network layer
» this is called multiplexing
 Demultiplexing
• At the destination host (demultiplexing)
– the transport layer receives segments from the network layer
and has the responsibility of
• delivering the data in these segments to appropriate application
processes
– The transport layer in the receiving host does NOT actually
deliver data directly to the process but to an intermediary
socket
• the job of delivering the data in a transport layer segment to the
correct socket is called
– Demultiplexing
 Demultiplexing
• Transport layer demultiplexing requires that
1. sockets have unique identifier
2. each segment has fields that indicate the socket to which the
segment is to be delivered
• source and destination port number fields

TCP/UDP segment format

 Demultiplexing
• host receives IP datagram
– each datagram has the following identifiers
• source IP address
• destination IP address
• source port number
• destination port number
– each datagram carries
• 1 transport-layer segment
• The number of
– identifiers used depends on whether the socket is
• Connectionless (UDP)
• Connection-oriented (TCP)

–
 Demultiplexing
• Connectionless
– UDP socket identified by two-tuple:
• destination IP address
• destination port number
– When a host receives UDP segment:
• checks destination port number in segment
– directs UDP segment to socket with that port number
– If 2 UDP segments have different source IP addresses and/or
source port numbers but have
• the same destination IP and destination port numbers
– the 2 segments will be directed to the same socket
 Connectionless Demultiplexing

P2 P1
P1
P3

SP: 6428 SP: 6428

DP: 9157 DP: 5775

SP: 9157 SP: 5775

client DP: 6428 DP: 6428 Client
server
IP: A DestIP:C DestIP:C IP:B
IP: C

SP provides “return address”

 Connection-Oriented Demultiplexing

• TCP socket identified by • Server host may support

4-tuple: many simultaneous TCP
– source IP address sockets:
– source port number – each socket identified by its
– dest IP address own 4-tuple
– dest port number • Two arriving TCP segments
• recv host uses all four with different
values to direct segment – Source IP address or
to appropriate socket – Source port number
• will be directed to two different
sockets
Connection-Oriented Demultiplexing
 UDP checksum
Goal: detect “errors” (e.g., flipped bits) in transmitted segment

Sender: Receiver:
• treat segment contents as • compute checksum of received
sequence of 16-bit integers segment
• checksum: addition (1’s • check if computed checksum
complement sum) of equals checksum field value:
segment contents – NO - error detected
• sender puts checksum – YES - no error detected.
value into UDP checksum But maybe errors
field nonetheless? More later ….
UDP checksum
 UDP checksum
• At the receiver side
– The three 16-bit words including the checksum are added
• If no errors are introduced to the packet
– The sum at the receiver will be
• 1111111111111111