CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

Chapter-5: The Transport and Application Layer

The main objectives of the Transport layer are;
➢ To provide reliable, cost-effective data transfer from source to destination.
➢ This layer deals with end-to-end transfer of data.
➢ The transport entity deals with other host’s transport entity.
➢ It deals with processes running on the host.

The services provided by the Transport layer are;

• End-to-end delivery
• Addressing
• Reliable delivery
• Flow control
• Multiplexing
• End-to-end delivery:
The transport layer transmits the entire message to the destination. Therefore, it
ensures the end-to-end delivery of an entire message from a source to the destination.
• Reliable delivery:
The transport layer provides reliability services by retransmitting the lost and damaged
packets.
The reliable delivery has four aspects:
➢ Error control: The primary role of reliability is Error Control. In reality, no transmission
will be 100 percent error-free delivery. Therefore, transport layer protocols are
designed to provide error-free transmission.
➢ Sequence control: On the sending end, the transport layer is responsible for ensuring
that the packets received from the upper layers can be used by the lower layers.
On the receiving end, it ensures that the various segments of a transmission can be
correctly reassembled.
➢ Loss control: The transport layer ensures that all the fragments of a transmission
arrive at the destination, which is done using sequence numbers at source and
destination.
➢ Duplication control: The transport layer guarantees that no duplicate data arrive at
the destination. This is done by using sequence number comparison.

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CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

• Flow Control:
Flow control is used to prevent the sender from overloading at the receiver. If the receiver
is overloaded with too much data, then the receiver discards the packets and asking for
the retransmission of packets. This increases network congestion and thus, reducing the
system performance. The transport layer uses the sliding window protocol that makes
the data transmission more efficient and flow control of data so that the receiver does
not become overloaded.
• Addressing:
The transport layer provides the user address which is specified as a statio n or port. The
port variable represents a particular Transport Service user of a specified station known
as a Transport Service access point (TSAP). Each station has only one transport entity.
The transport layer protocols need to know which upper-layer protocols are
communicating.

Transport Layer protocols

• The transport layer is represented by two protocols: TCP and UDP.
• The IP protocol in the network layer delivers a datagram from a source host to the
destination host.
• When a host sends a message to other host means that source process is sending
a process to a destination process. The transport layer protocols define some
connections to individual ports known as protocol ports.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 2

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

• An IP protocol is a host-to-host protocol used to deliver a packet from source

host to the destination host.
• While transport layer protocols are port-to-port protocols that work on the top of
the IP protocols to deliver the packet from the originating port to the IP services,
and from IP services to the destination port.
• Each port is defined by a positive integer address, and it is of 16 bits.

UDP (User Datagram Protocol.)

• UDP is a simple protocol and it provides non-sequenced transport functionality.
• UDP is a connectionless protocol.
• This type of protocol is used when reliability and security are less important than
speed and size.
• UDP is an end-to-end transport level protocol that adds transport-level
addresses, checksum error control, and length information to the data from the
upper layer.
• The packet produced by the UDP protocol is known as a user datagram.

User Datagram Format.

• The user datagram has a 16-byte header which is shown below:

Where,
Source port address: It defines the address of the application process that has delivered
a message. The source port address is of 16 bits address.
Destination port address: It defines the address of the application process that will
receive the message. The destination port address is of a 16-bit address.
Total length: It defines the total length of the user datagram in bytes. It is a 16-bit field.
Checksum: The checksum is a 16-bit field which is used in error detection.

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CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

Disadvantages of UDP protocol

• UDP provides basic functions needed for the end-to-end delivery of a transmission.
• It does not provide any sequencing or reordering functions and does not specify
the damaged packet when reporting an error.
• UDP can discover that an error has occurred, but it does not specify which packet
has been lost as it does not contain an ID or sequencing number of a particular
data segment

TCP
TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol. It provides full transport layer services to
applications. It is a connection-oriented protocol means the connection established
between both the ends of the transmission. For creating the connection, TCP generates
a virtual circuit between sender and receiver for the duration of a transmission.

Features Of TCP protocol

Stream data transfer: TCP protocol transfers the data in the form of contiguous stream
of bytes. TCP itself segments the data in the form of TCP segments and then passed it
to the IP layer for transmission to the destination.
Reliability: TCP assigns a sequence number to each byte transmitted and expects a
positive acknowledgement from the receiving TCP .
If ACK is not received within a timeout interval, then the data is retransmitted to the
destination.
The receiving TCP uses the sequence number to reassemble the segments if they arrive
out of order or to eliminate the duplicate segments.
Flow Control: When receiving TCP sends an acknowledgement back to the sender
indicating the number the bytes it can receive without overflowing its internal buffer.
The number of bytes is sent in ACK in the form of the highest sequence number that it
can receive without any problem. This mechanism is also referred to as a window
mechanism.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 4

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

Features Of TCP protocol

Multiplexing : Multiplexing is a process of accepting the data from different applications
and forwarding to the different applications on different computers.
At the receiving end, the data is forwarded to the correct application. This process is
known as demultiplexing. TCP transmits the packet to the correct application by using
the logical channels known as ports.
Logical Connections: The combination of sockets, sequence numbers, and window sizes,
is called a logical connection.
Each connection is identified by the pair of sockets used by sending and receiving
processes.
Full Duplex: TCP provides Full Duplex service, i.e., the data flow in both the directions at
the same time. To achieve Full Duplex service, each TCP should have sending and
receiving buffers so that the segments can flow in both the directions.
TCP is a connection-oriented protocol . Suppose the process A wants to send and receive
the data from process B.
The following steps occur:
• Establish a connection between two TCPs.
• Data is exchanged in both the directions.
• The Connection is terminated.

TCP Segment Format:

Where,
Source port address: It is used to define the address of the application program in a
source computer. It is a 16-bit field.
Destination port address: It is used to define the address of the application program in a
destination computer. It is a 16-bit field.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 5

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

Sequence number: A stream of data is divided into two or more TCP segments. The 32-
bit sequence number field represents the position of the data in an original data stream.
Acknowledgement number: A 32-field acknowledgement number acknowledge the data
from other communicating devices. If ACK field is set to 1 , then it specifies the sequence
number that the receiver is expecting to receive.
Header Length (HLEN): It specifies the size of the TCP header. The minimum size of the
header is 5 words, and the maximum size of the header is 15 words . Therefore, the
maximum size of the TCP header is 60 bytes , and the minimum size of the TCP header is
20 bytes.
Reserved: It is a six-bit field which is reserved for future use.
Control bits: Each bit of a control field functions individually and independently. A control
bit defines the use of a segment or serves as a validity check for other fields

TCP Segment Format:

There are total six types of flags in control field:

• URG: The URG field indicates that the data in a segment is urgent.
• ACK: When ACK field is set, then it validates the acknowledgement number.
• PSH: The PSH field is used to inform the sender that higher throughput is needed so
if possible, data must be pushed with higher throughput.
• RST: The reset bit is used to reset the TCP connection when there is any confusion
occurs in the sequence numbers.
• SYN: The SYN field is used to synchronize the sequence numbers in three types of
segments: connection request, connection confirmation ( with the ACK bit set ), and
confirmation acknowledgement.
• FIN: The FIN field is used to inform the receiving TCP module that the sender has
finished sending data.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 6

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

It is used in connection termination in three types of segments: termination request,

termination confirmation, and acknowledgement of termination confirmation.
• Window Size: The window is a 16-bit field that defines the size of the window.
• Checksum: The checksum is a 16-bit field used in error detection.
• Urgent pointer: If URG flag is set to 1, then this 16-bit field is an offset from the
sequence number indicating that it is a last urgent data byte.
• Options and padding: It define the optional fields that convey the additional
information to the receiver.

Basis
TCP UDP
for Comparison

UDP transmits the data directly to

TCP establishes a virtual circuit the destination computer without
Definition
before transmitting the data. verifying whether the receiver is
ready to receive or not.

It is a Connection-Oriented
Connection Type It is a Connectionless protocol
protocol

Speed slow high

Reliability It is a reliable protocol. It is an unreliable protocol.

Header size 20 bytes 8 bytes

It waits for the acknowledgement It neither takes the

Acknowledgement of data and has the ability to acknowledgement, nor it
resend the lost packets. retransmits the damaged frame.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 7

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

DNS- (Domain Name System):

An application layer protocol defines how the application processes running on different
systems, pass the messages to each other.

• DNS is a directory service that provides a mapping between the name of a host on
the network and its numerical address.
• DNS is required for the functioning of the internet.
• Each node in a tree has a domain name, and a full domain name is a sequence of
symbols specified by dots.
• DNS is a service that translates the domain name into IP addresses. This allows
the users of networks to utilize user-friendly names when looking for other hosts
instead of remembering the IP addresses.
• For example, suppose the FTP site at EduSoft had an IP address of
132.147.165.50, most people would reach this site by specifying ftp.EduSoft.com.
Therefore, the domain name is more reliable than IP address.

DNS is a TCP/IP protocol used on different platforms.

• The domain name space is divided into three different sections: generic
domains, country domains, and inverse domain.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 8

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

Generic Domains
• It defines the registered hosts according to their generic behavior.
• Each node in a tree defines the domain name, which is an index to the DNS
database.
It uses three-character labels, and these labels describe the organization type.

Label Description

aero Airlines and aerospace companies

biz Businesses or firms

com Commercial Organizations

coop Cooperative business Organizations

edu Educational institutions

gov Government institutions

info Information service providers

int International Organizations

mil Military groups

museum Museum & other nonprofit organizations

name Personal names

net Network Support centers

org Nonprofit Organizations

pro Professional individual Organizations

Country Domain
The format of country domain is same as a generic domain, but it uses two -character
country abbreviations (e.g., us for the United States) in place of three character
organizational abbreviations.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 9

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

Inverse Domain
The inverse domain is used for mapping an address to a name.
When the server has received a request from the client, and the server contains the
files of only authorized clients.
To determine whether the client is on the authorized list or not, it sends a query to
the DNS server and ask for mapping an address to the name.
Working of DNS
• DNS is a client/server network communication protocol. DNS clients send
requests to the server while DNS servers send responses to the client.
• Client requests contain a name which is converted into an IP address known as a
forward DNS lookup while requests containing an IP address which is converted
into a name known as reverse DNS lookups.
• DNS implements a distributed database to store the name of all the hosts
available on the internet.
• If a client like a web browser sends a request containing a hostname, then a piece
of software such as DNS resolver sends a request to the DNS server to obtain the
IP address of a hostname. If DNS server does not contain the IP address
associated with a hostname, then it forwards the request to another DNS server.
If IP address has arrived at the resolver, which in turn completes the request over
the internet protocol.

Electronic mail:
Electronic mail, commonly known as email, is a method of exchanging messages over
the internet.
Basics of email:
An email address: This is a unique identifier for each user, typically in the format of
name@domain.com.
An email client: This is a software program used to send, receive and manage emails,
such as Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail.
An email server: This is a computer system responsible for storing and forwarding emails
to their intended recipients.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 10

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

To send an email:
• Compose a new message in your email client.
• Enter the recipient’s email address in the “To” field.
• Add a subject line to summarize the content of the message.
• Write the body of the message.
• Attach any relevant files if needed.
• Click “Send” to deliver the message to the recipient’s email server.
• Emails can also include features such as cc (carbon copy) and bcc (blind carbon
copy) to send copies of the message to multiple recipients, and reply, reply all, and
forward options to manage the conversation.
Components of E-Mail System :
1. User Agent (UA),
2. Message Transfer Agent (MTA),
3. Mail Box
4. Spool file.
User Agent (UA) :
• The UA is normally a program which is used to send and receive mail.
• Sometimes, it is called as mail reader.
• It accepts variety of commands for composing, receiving and replying to
messages as well as for manipulation of the mailboxes.
Message Transfer Agent (MTA) :
• MTA is actually responsible for transfer of mail from one system to another.
• To send a mail, a system must have client MTA and system MTA.
• It transfers mail to mailboxes of recipients if they are connected in the same
machine.
• It delivers mail to peer MTA if destination mailbox is in another machine.
• The delivery from one MTA to another MTA is done by Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol.
Mailbox :
• It is a file on local hard drive to collect mails.
• Delivered mails are present in this file.
• The user can read it delete it according to his/her requirement.
• To use e-mail system each user must have a mailbox .
• Access to mailbox is only to owner of mailbox.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 11

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

Spool file :
• This file contains mails that are to be sent.
• User agent appends outgoing mails in this file using SMTP.
• MTA extracts pending mail from spool file for their delivery.

Services provided by E-mail system :

• Composition – The composition refer to process that creates messages and
answers. For composition any kind of text editor can be used.
• Transfer – Transfer means sending procedure of mail i.e. from the sender to
recipient.
• Reporting – Reporting refers to confirmation for delivery of mail. It help user to
check whether their mail is delivered, lost or rejected.
• Displaying – It refers to present mail in form that is understand by the user.
• Disposition – This step concern with recipient that what will recipient do after
receiving mail i.e save mail, delete before reading or delete after reading.
Advantages of email:
• Convenient and fast communication with individuals or groups globally.
• Easy to store and search for past messages.
• Ability to send and receive attachments such as documents, images, and videos.
• Cost-effective compared to traditional mail and fax.
• Available 24/7.
Disadvantages of email:
• Risk of spam and phishing attacks.
• Overwhelming amount of emails can lead to information overload.
• Can lead to decreased face-to-face communication and loss of personal touch.
• Potential for miscommunication due to lack of tone and body language in written
messages.
• Technical issues, such as server outages, can disrupt email service.
• It is important to use email responsibly and effectively, for example, by keeping
the subject line clear and concise, using proper etiquette, and protecting against
security threats

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 12

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web or Web is basically a collection of information that is linked
together from points all over the world. It is also abbreviated as WWW.
• World wide web provides flexibility, portability, and user-friendly features.
• It mainly consists of a worldwide collection of electronic documents (i.e, Web
Pages).
• It is basically a way of exchanging information between computers on the
Internet.
• The WWW is mainly the network of pages consists of images, text, and sounds
on the Internet which can be simply viewed on the browser by using the browser
software.
• It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee.

Architecture of WWW
The WWW is mainly a distributed client/server service where a client using the browser
can access the service using a server. The Service that is provided is distributed over
many different locations commonly known as sites/websites.
Each website holds one or more documents that are generally referred to as web pages.
Where each web page contains a link to other pages on the same site or at other sites.
These pages can be retrieved and viewed by using browsers.

• In the above case, the client sends some information that belongs to site A.
• It generally sends a request through its browser (It is a program that is used to fetch
the documents on the web) and also the request generally contains other information
like the address of the site, web page(URL).

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 13

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

• The server at site A finds the document then sends it to the client.
• After that when the user or say the client finds the reference to another document
that includes the web page at site B.
• The reference generally contains the URL of site B.
• And the client is interested to take a look at this document too.
• Then after the client sends the request to the new site and then the new page is
retrieved.

Components of WWW

Client/Browser
The Client/Web browser is basically a program that is used to communicate with the
webserver on the Internet.
• Each browser mainly comprises of three components and these are:
• Controller
• Interpreter
• Client Protocols
• The Controller mainly receives the input from the input device, after that it uses
the client programs in order to access the documents.
• After accessing the document, the controller makes use of an interpreter in order
to display the document on the screen.
• An interpreter can be Java, HTML, javascript mainly depending upon the type of
the document.
• The Client protocol can be FTP, HTTP, TELNET.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 14

CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

Server
The Computer that is mainly available for the network resources and in order to provide
services to the other computer upon request is generally known as the server.
The Web pages are mainly stored on the server.
Whenever the request of the client arrives then the corresponding document is sent to
the client.
The connection between the client and the server is TCP.
It can become more efficient through multithreading or multiprocessing. Because in this
case, the server can answer more than one request at a time.
URL
• URL is an abbreviation of the Uniform resource locator.
• It is basically a standard used for specifying any kind of information on the
Internet.
• In order to access any page, the client generally needs an address.
• To facilitate the access of the documents throughout the world HTTP generally
makes use of Locators.
URL mainly defines the four things:

• Protocol- It is a client/server program that is mainly used to retrieve the document.

A commonly used protocol is HTTP.
• Host Computer- It is the computer on which the information is located. It is not
mandatory because it is the name given to any computer that hosts the web page.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 15

 CCN-Chapter-5-The Transport and Application Layer BCA-NEP-Sem-3

• Port -The URL can optionally contain the port number of the server. If the port
number is included then it is generally inserted in between the host and path and is
generally separated from the host by the colon.
• Path- It indicates the pathname of the file where the information is located.
HTML
• HTML is an abbreviation of Hypertext Markup Language.
• It is generally used for creating web pages.
• It is mainly used to define the contents, structure, and organization of the web page.
XML
• XML is an abbreviation of Extensible Markup Language.
• It mainly helps in order to define the common syntax in the semantic web.
Features of WWW
• Provides a system for Hypertext information
• Open standards and Open source
• Distributed.
• Mainly makes the use of Web Browser in order to provide a single interface for many
services.
• Dynamic
• Interactive
• Cross-Platform
Advantages of WWW
• It mainly provides all the information for Free.
• Provides rapid Interactive way of Communication.
• It is accessible from anywhere.
• It has become the Global source of media.
• It mainly facilitates the exchange of a huge volume of data.
Disadvantages of WWW
• It is difficult to prioritize and filter some information.
• There is no guarantee of finding what one person is looking for.
• There occurs some danger in case of overload of Information.
• There is no quality control over the available data.
• There is no regulation.

-Manjunatha G L.., Asst. Prof., Department of BCA, Seshadripuram College, Tumkur 16