F1054

APJ ABDUL KALAM TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

SIXTH SEMESTER B.TECH DEGREE EXAMINATION, APRIL 2019
Course Code: CS306
Course Name: COMPUTER NETWORKS
Answer Key
Max. Marks: 100 Duration: 3 Hours
PART A
Answer all questions, each carries3 marks.
1 Define interface, protocol and layer in network software.

Protocol is a set of rules that a layer uses to exchange information with a

peer entity. These rules concern both the contents and the order of the
messages used.

Between each pair of adjacent layers there is an interface. The interface

defines which primitives operations and services the lower layer offers to the
upper layer adjacent to it.
In computer programming, layering is the organization of programming
into separate functional components that interact in some sequential and
hierarchical way, with each layer usually having an interface only to the layer
above it and the layer below it.

2 Point to point and broadcast networks

Point-to-point connection the link is only between two devices i.e. a sender
and a receiver. The capacity of the entire channel is reserved only for the
transmission of the packet between the sender and receiver. If the network is
made up of point-to-point connections, then the packet will have to travel
through many intermediate devices. The link between the multiple
intermediate devices may be of different length. So, in point-to-point
network finding the smallest distance to reach the receiver is most important
Broadcast is a method of sending a signal where multiple parties may hear
a single sender. The capacity of the entire channel is shared among multiple
subchannels.

3 frame formats in HDLC.-information, supervisory and

unnumbered frames
4 Pure aloha and slotted aloha
Pure ALOHA and Slotted ALOHA both are the Random-Access Protocols, that are
implemented on the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, a sublayer of Data Link Layer.
The purpose of the ALOHA protocol is to determine that which competing station must
get the next chance of accessing the multi-access channel at MAC layer

PART B
Answer any two full questions, each carries9 marks.
5 a) List the design issues of layered network software. (any three)

–Mechanism for connection establishment

–Rules for data transfer
–Error control
–Flow control
–Inability of processes to accept long messages
–Routing in the case of multiple paths

b) Explain WAN and communication subnet?

A wide area network is a telecommunications network that extends over a large
geographical area for the primary purpose of computer networking. Wide area networks
are often established with leased telecommunication circuits. Business, as well as
education and government entities use wide area networks to relay data to staff, students,
clients, buyers and suppliers from various locations across the world.
A subnetwork or subnet is a logical subdivision of an IP network. The practice of dividing
a network into two or more networks is called subnetting. Computers that belong to a
subnet are addressed with an identical most-significant bit-group in their IP addresses.
c) Compare TCP/IP Reference model and OSI Reference model.(any
three)
Similarities between OSI and TCP / IP Reference Models
•Both have layered architecture.
•Layers provide similar functionalities.
•Both are protocol stack.
•Both are reference models.
•In both cases data is divided into packets and each packet may take the individual route.
Differences between OSI and TCP / IP Reference Models
•TCP/IPisaclient-servermodel
–i.e.when the client requests for service it is provided by the server.Whereas,OSI is a
conceptual model.
•TCP/IP using standard protocol for every network including the Internet,whereas,OSI is
not a protocol.
•TCP/IP is a protocol dependent but OSI is a protocol independent.
•TCP/IP is a four layered model,whereas,OSI has seven layers.
•InTCP/IP,services,interfaces and protocols are not clearly separated..OSI model defines
services,interfaces and protocols very clearly
6 a) With neat diagram, explain OSI reference Model.

The ISO-OSI model is a seven layer architecture. It defines seven layers or

levels in a complete communication system. They are:

1. Application Layer
2. Presentation Layer
3. Session Layer
4. Transport Layer
5. Network Layer
6. Datalink Layer
7. Physical Layer

Below we have the complete representation of the OSI model, showcasing

all the layers and how they communicate with each other.
OSI Model Layer 1: The Physical Layer

1. Physical Layer is the lowest layer of the OSI Model.

2. It activates, maintains and deactivates the physical connection.
3. It is responsible for transmission and reception of the unstructured raw data over
network.

OSI Model Layer 2: Data Link Layer

1. Data link layer synchronizes the information which is to be transmitted over the
physical layer.
2. The main function of this layer is to make sure data transfer is error free from one
node to another, over the physical layer.

OSI Model Layer 3: The Network Layer

1. Network Layer routes the signal through different channels from one node to other.
2. It acts as a network controller. It manages the Subnet traffic.

OSI Model Layer 4: Transport Layer

1. Transport Layer decides if data transmission should be on parallel path or single

path.
2. Functions such as Multiplexing, Segmenting or Splitting on the data are done by
this layer.

OSI Model Layer 5: The Session Layer

1. Session Layer manages and synchronizes the conversation between two different
applications.
2. Transfer of data from source to destination session layer streams of data are
marked and are resynchronized properly, so that the ends of the messages are not cut
prematurely and data loss is avoided.

OSI Model Layer 6: The Presentation Layer

1. Presentation Layer takes care that the data is sent in such a way that the receiver
will understand the information (data) and will be able to use the data.
2. While receiving the data, presentation layer transforms the data to be ready for the
application layer.
 OSI Model Layer 7: Application Layer

1. Application Layer is the topmost layer.

2. Transferring of files disturbing the results to the user is also done in this layer.
Mail services, directory services, network resource etc are services provided by
application layer
b) The working of CSMA/CD

It is a set of rules determining how network devices respond when two devices attempt to
use a data channel simultaneously (called a collision). Standard Ethernet networks use
CSMA/CD to physically monitor the traffic on the line at participating stations. If no
transmission is taking place at the time, the particular station can transmit. If two stations
attempt to transmit simultaneously, this causes a collision, which is detected by all
participating stations. After a random time interval, the stations that collided attempt to
transmit again. If another collision occurs, the time intervals from which the random
waiting time is selected are increased step by step. This is known as exponential back off.
7 a) Token management is done in IEEE 802.5.priority bits and
reservation bits management
Token ring is the IEEE 802.5 standard for a token-passing ring in Communication
networks. A ring consists of a collection of ring interfaces connected by point-to-
point lines i.e. ring interface of one station is connected to the ring interfaces of its left
station as well as right station. Internally, signals travel around the Communication
network from one station to the next in a ring.
These point-to-point links can be created with twisted pair, coaxial cable or fiber optics.
Each bit arriving at an interface is copied into a 1-bit buffer. In this buffer the bit is checked
and may be modified and is then copied out to the ring again. This copying of bit in the
buffer introduces a 1- bit delay at each interface.
Token Ring is a LAN protocol defined in the IEEE 802.5 where all stations are connected
in a ring and each station can directly hear transmissions only from its immediate neighbor.
Permission to transmit is granted by a message (token) that circulates around the ring. A
token is a special bit pattern (3 bytes long). There is only one token in the network.

b) Distinguish switches and bridges. (any three)

 c) the features of Gigabit Ethernet. (any three)
Gigabit Ethernet is the various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a
gigabit per second.
1. provides a data rate of 1 billion bits per second (one gigabit).
2. Gigabit Ethernet is defined in the IEEE 802.3 standard and is currently being used as
the backbone in many enterprise networks
3. Gigabit Ethernet is carried primarily on optical fiber
PART C
Answer all questions, each carries3 marks.
8 List the network layer functions. (any three)

1. It translates logical network address into physical address. Concerned with circuit,
message or packet switching.
2. Routers and gateways operate in the network layer. Mechanism is provided by
Network Layer for routing the packets to final destination.
3. Connection services are provided including network layer flow control, network layer
error control and packet sequence control.
4. Breaks larger packets into small packets.

9 Flooding and broadcasting

Flooding is the forwarding by a router of a packet from any node to every

other node attached to the router except the node from which the packet
arrived. Flooding is a way to distribute routing information updates quickly
to every node in a large network. It is also sometimes used in multicast
packets (from one source node to many specific nodes in a real or virtual
network).
Broadcasting means to communicate or transmit (a signal, a message, or
content, such as audio or video programming) to numerous recipients
simultaneously over a communication network: a radio station that
broadcasts news; an agency broadcasting an appeal for donations over the
internet.

10 Token bucket algorithm for congestion control

 The leaky bucket is an algorithm based on an analogy of how a bucket with a leak will
overflow if either the average rate at which water is poured in exceeds the rate at which the
bucket leaks or if more water than the capacity of the bucket is poured in all at once, and
how the water leaks from the bucket at an (almost) constant rate.
it is used in packet switched computer networks and telecommunications networks in both
the traffic policing and traffic shaping of data transmissions, in the form of packets to
define limits on bandwidth and burstiness.

11 List the private IP address ranges of class A, B and C? A - 10.0.0.0 to

10.255.255.255
B – 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
C – 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255
PART D
Answer any two full questions, each carries9 marks.
12 a) Explanation of link state algorithm.

Link State Routing is a dynamic routing. Each router must do the following:
1. Discover its neighbors, learn their network address.
2. Measure the delay or cost to each of its neighbors.
3. Construct a packet telling all it has just learned.
4. Send this packet to all other routers.
5. Compute the shortest path to every other router.

Learning about the neighbors:

When a router is booted, it first learns its immediate neighbors. – Send a HELLO packet
on each point-to-point line. The router on the other end will send a reply telling who it is.
– Each router has a global unique name. – If two or more routers are connected by a LAN,
we can model the LAN as a node.
Measuring Line Cost:
Send an ECHO packet, measure the round-trip delay, and divide it by two. • Repeat it
several items to have a better estimation. – Whether to take the load into the account? •
Consider the load: start measuring delay when ECHO is queued. Choosing unloaded line
results in better performance. But the load might oscillate. • Ignore the load: start measuring
delay when the ECHO packet reaches the front of the queue
Build the link state packet containing:
node ID, sequence number, age, a list of neighbors and the delay to the neighbor. • Packets
can be build Periodically or event-driven based
Distributing the Link State Packets:
Use flooding to distribute the link state packets. – To keep the flood in check, each packet
contains a sequence number that is increased by one for each new packet. – When the link
state packet arrives, the router check if it is new. • Yes forward it to all outgoing lines
except the one it arrived. • No (duplicated or with low sequence number) discard it
Potential problems: – The sequence number wrap around • use the 32-bit sequence
number. It takes 137 years to wrap around. – When a router crashes. Its sequence number
starts again from 0, it is rejected. – The sequence number is corrupt (e.g., 65540 is received
instead of 4, then packets from 5 to 65540 will be rejected.) • Use “age” to solve the
problems: – The age decreases by one per second. The packet is discarded when age = 0.
 Each router uses a table to maintain the link state packets. • Each row is a recently received
but not processed packet. • Each entry includes the source address, sequence number, age,
and send/ACK flags for each of B's three lines (to A, C, and F )
Computing Routes
• Once a router has accumulated a full set of link state packets, it knows all nodes and links,
thus can construct the subnet graph. • Run Dijkstra algorithm to find the shortest paths from
the source to all other nodes. • For a network with n routers, each with k neighbors, the
memory required to store the input data is proportional to kn. – Memory and computational
time may be a problem for large subnets. – But it works fine for many practical situations.
• The OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) protocol is used in the Internet. • IS-IS (Intermediate
System-Intermediate System) is used in some the Internet backbone (NSFNET).
b) Relevance of age filed in LS packet
Each link state advertisement has an LS age field. The LS age is expressed in seconds. An
advertisement's LS age field is incremented while it is contained in a router's database. An
advertisement's LS age is never incremented past the value MaxAge. Advertisements
having age MaxAge are not used in the routing table calculation. A MaxAge advertisement
must be removed immediately from the router's link state database as soon as both a) it is
no longer contained on any neighbor Link state retransmission lists and b) none of the
router's neighbors are in states Exchange or Loading.
13 a) Any two congestion control algorithms

Congestion is a problem when too many packets are present in the subnet, performance
degrades • Congestions can be brought on by several factors: – All of a sudden, streams of
packets arrive on multiple input lines and all of them need the same output line, a queue is
built up. Allocating more memory may help to a point but with infinite memory, congestion
gets worse because packets are timed out. – Slow processors make queue to be built up
even though there are enough bandwidth. – Low-bandwidth also causes congestion.
Leaky bucket algorithm
Token bucket algorithm

b) Routing for mobile hosts

Create multi-hop connectivity among set of wireless, possibly moving, nodes.
Mobile, wireless hosts act as forwarding nodes as well as end systems.
Need routing protocol to find multi-hop paths.
Needs to be dynamic to adapt to new routes, movement.
14 a) What is QoS. Explain any two methods to ensure QoS?

QoS (Quality of Service) is characterized by four primary parameters: reliability, delay,

jitter, and bandwidth
To achieve high reliability: – The checksum is used to verify the packet at the
destination. – If a packet is damaged in transit, it is not acknowledged and will be
retransmitted eventually.
b) Subnet the Class C IP Address 206.16.2.0 so that you have 30 subnets.
What is the subnet mask for the maximum number of hosts? How many hosts can
each subnet have?
Ans: Current mask= 255.255.255.0
Bits needs for 30 subnets =5 =25 =32 possible subnets
Bits left for hosts = 3 = 23 -2 = 8-2=6 possible hosts. So our mask in binary
=11111000= 248 decimal
Final Mask =255.255.255.248
 PART E
Answer any four full questions, each carries10 marks.
15 a) How does BGP avoid count to infinity problem?
BGP keeps track on path in addition to cost
 b) Draw the IPv6 fixed header format.

c) Explain the role of ICMP in Internet

ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) is an error-reporting protocol. Network devices
like routers use to generate error messages to the source IP address when network problems
prevent delivery of IP packets. ICMP creates and sends messages to the source IP address
indicating that a gateway to the Internet that a router, service or host cannot be reached for
packet delivery. Any IP network device has the capability to send, receive or process ICMP
messages.
ICMP is not a transport protocol that sends data between systems. While ICMP is not used
regularly in end-user applications, it is used by network administrators to troubleshoot
Internet connections in diagnostic utilities including ping and traceroute.
16 a) Define address resolution problem. Explain about RARP
Packets can only be sent to a physical location. It Must use the physical address for a device
and the IP address must be translated into a physical address. Suppose a packet arrives to
a router from outside of a network destined for a host inside the network but the packet
only has the IP address. The router can only send it to that other machine on the same
network if it knows the physical address this is the address resolution problem.

Reverse ARP is a networking protocol used by a client machine in a local area network to
request its Internet Protocol address (IPv4) from the gateway-router’s ARP table. The
network administrator creates a table in gateway-router, which is used to map the MAC
address to corresponding IP address.
When a new machine is setup or any machine which don’t have memory to store IP
address, needs an IP address for its own use. So the machine sends a RARP broadcast
packet which contains its own MAC address in both sender and receiver hardware address
field.
A special host configured inside the local area network, called as RARP-server is
responsible to reply for these kind of broadcast packets. Now the RARP server attempt to
find out the entry in IP to MAC address mapping table. If any entry matches in table, RARP
server send the response packet to the requesting device along with IP address

b) Give the importance of BOOTP.

The Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) is a computer networking protocol used in Internet
Protocol networks to automatically assign an IP address to network devices from a
configuration server. When a computer that is connected to a network is powered up and
boots its operating system, the system software broadcasts BOOTP messages onto the
network to request an IP address assignment. A BOOTP configuration server assigns an IP
address based on the request from a pool of addresses configured by an administrator.
BOOTP is implemented using the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as transport protocol.