CMPE 344 Computer Networks

Spring 2024

Internetworking
Part 1
Reading: Peterson and Davie, §3.1-3.2

Sources of slides:
Peterson and Davie, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, 6th ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 2021.
Tanenbaum, Feamster, and Wetherall, Computer Networks, 6th ed., Pearson, 2021.
Kurose and Ross, Computer Networking, 8th ed., Pearson, 2021.

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 Not all networks are directly
connected
• Limit to how many hosts can be attached
– Point-to-point: Two hosts
– Ethernet: 1,024 hosts
• Limit to how large of a geographic area a single network
can serve
– Ethernet: 2,500 m
– Wireless: Limited by radio range
– Point-to-point: Long, but do not serve the area
• Our major goal: Build global networks
– Enable communication between hosts that are not
directly connected

2
 A switch provides a star topology
• Switched networks are scalable!
• It is possible for many hosts to transmit at the full link
speed (bandwidth) provided that the switch is designed
with enough aggregate capacity

3
 Switching or forwarding
• According to OSI model, switching or forwarding is the main function
of the network layer; not a perfect reflection of the real world!
• A switch’s primary job is to receive incoming packets on one of its
links and to transmit them on some other link
• Devices that interconnect links of the same type are often called
switches, or sometimes Layer 2 (L2) switches (See L3 routers later)
• A particularly important class of L2 switches in use today is those
used to interconnect Ethernet segments
• A switch looks at the header of the packet (frame) for an identifier or
an address
– e.g., 48-bit Ethernet address
• Three approaches to switching:
– Datagram or connectionless
– Virtual circuit or connection-oriented
– Source routing (less common)
4
Input-output ports of a switch

T3 T3
T3 Switch T3
STS-1 STS-1
Input Output
ports ports

Some typical leased line services:

T1 (or DS1): 1.544 Mbps (24 digital voice circuits)
T3 (or DS3): 44.736 Mbps (28 T1 links)
STS-1 (or OC-1): 51.840 Mbps
STS-3 (or OC-3): 155.250 Mbps
STS: Synchronous Transport Signal
OC: Optical Carrier
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 Types of switching fabrics
• Shared memory
– Memory bandwidth determines the throughput
• Shared bus
– Bus bandwidth determines the throughput
• Crossbar
– Fast
• Self-routing
– Fast and scalable

6
 Connectionless (datagram)
networks: Datagram switching
Destination Port
Host D

0 Switch 1 Host E
A 3
Host F

Host C
3 1
2 Switch 2
B 0
2 3 1
C 3
0

Host A D 3
E 2
Host G
1
0 Switch 3
3
Host B
F 1
Every packet contains 2 G 0
the complete destination
address
Host H H 0
Used in IP networks Forwarding (routing) table at switch 2
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 Datagram switching
• A routing algorithm builds the forwarding (routing) tables
• No connection state needs to be established before the
first packet is sent
• No way of knowing if the packet can be successfully
delivered
• Each packet is forwarded independent of previous
packets that might have been sent to the same
destination
• A switch or link failure might not have any serious effect
on communication if it is possible to find an alternate
route around the failure
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 Virtual circuit (VC) networks: VC
switching
In IF In VCI Out IF Out VCI
0
0 0 3 1 2 5 1 11
3 1 11 1
3
VC table entry at switch 1
Switch 1 Switch 2 2
2 2
5
7 0 Switch 3 In IF In VCI Out IF Out VCI
3 1
3 11 2 7
Host A 2 4 Host B
VC table entry at switch 2

In IF In VCI Out IF Out VCI

Connection-oriented approach: Requires
that a VC from source to destination 0 7 1 4
is set up before any data is sent. VC table entry at switch 3
Used in ATM, Frame Relay networks
Note that connection-oriented does NOT
imply reliable! 9
 More on virtual circuits
• Virtual circuit identifiers (VCIs) have link-local scope
– Incoming and outgoing VCIs are not necessarily the
same
• Whenever a new connection is created, a new VCI must
be assigned to it on each link it will traverse; the
assigned VCI value must not be in use
• Types of VCs
– Permanent VCs (PVC): Set up by the administrator
– Switched VCs (SVC): Dynamically set up by signaling
• If a switch or link in a connection fails, the circuit is
broken!
• It is possible to allocate resources when VC is set up
– If there are not enough resources, connection request
can be rejected
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 Source routing
• Information about network topology that is
required to switch a packet across the network is
provided by the source host in packet header
0 Switch 1
0
3 1
3 1
2 Switch 2
2 3 1
2
3 0 1 1 3 0
0

Host A

0 1 3

0 Switch 3
1 3

Host B
2

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 LAN switching
• LAN switches or bridges
– A bridge is a switch: multi-input multi-output device
– A single Ethernet segment: 10 Mbps
– Ethernet bridge with n ports: Up to 10n Mbps
– Frames with destinations on the same segment need
not be forwarded onto other ports
• L2 (Ethernet) switches connect a set of point-to-point
links A B C

An extended LAN with

Port 1 One broadcast domain
Bridge Two collision domains
Port 2

X Y Z 12
 Learning bridges
• Bridges can build forwarding tables themselves
– Inspect the source (MAC) address in the
frames received and record the port received
– Each entry has an associated timeout
Host Port
A B C
A 1
B 1
Port 1

Bridge C 1
Port 2
X 2
Y 2
X Y Z
Z 2
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 Loops in the topology
• Suppose destination address is not yet in any forwarding table so
that Frame F has unknown destination: Use flooding
• On seeing F2, Bridge 1 copies it onto LAN 1
• Similarly, Bridge 2 copies F1 to LAN 1
• Now, these copies are forwarded to LAN 2. This cycle goes forever

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 Spanning tree bridges
• Extended LAN with loops and the corresponding
spanning tree
A A

B B
B3 B3
C B5 C B5

D B7 D B7
B2 K B2 K

E F E F

B1 B1

G H G H

B6 B6
B4 B4
I I
J J

Frames can loop in LAN forever! No cycles 15

 Spanning tree algorithm
• Bridges choose one bridge as the root
– This choice is made after each bridge
broadcasts its (unique) serial number
– The bridge with the lowest serial number
becomes the root
• Tree of shortest paths from the root to every
bridge and LAN is constructed
• If a bridge or LAN fails, a new tree is constructed
(algorithm continues to run)
• The distributed algorithm is standardized in IEEE
802.1D
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 “Translating” bridges
• Devices that translate between two LAN
technologies: e.g., 802.x to 802.y

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 L2 Switching
• Limitation of networks built by interconnecting L2
switches: lack of support for heterogeneity
• Switches are limited in the kinds of networks they can
interconnect
• In particular, switches make use of the network’s frame
header and so can support only networks that have
exactly the same format for addresses
– For example, switches can be used to connect
Ethernet- and 802.11-based networks to another,
since they share a common header format
– Switches do not readily generalize to other kinds of
networks with different addressing formats, such as
ATM, SONET, PON, or the cellular network 18
 Virtual LANs
• Single extended LAN partitioned into several
seemingly separate LANs
• Each VLAN has an id (or color)

W X

VLAN 100 VLAN 100

B1 B2
VLAN 200 VLAN 200

Y Z
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 More on VLANs
• In absence of VLANs, any broadcast packet will reach all
hosts (one broadcast domain)
• Let’s suppose W and X are in VLAN 100; Y and Z in
VLAN 200
– VLAN IDs on each port of bridges B1 and B2 are
configured (Link B1-B2 in both VLANs)

W X
A broadcast packet
VLAN 100 VLAN 100 sent by X will
B1 B2 be forwarded by B2 to
VLAN 200 VLAN 200 B1, but not to Z.
B1 will forward to W,
Y Z
but not to Y
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 Cell switching and ATM networks
• ATM (Asynchronous transfer mode)
– Connection-oriented, packet-switched
technology
– Uses virtual circuits
– Signaling or connection setup phase:
Resources are allocated at the switches along
the circuit to ensure a particular QoS
– Fixed-length packets called cells (48 bytes
payload + 5 bytes header = 53 bytes)

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 ATM cell format

– User-Network Interface (UNI)

• Host-to-switch format
• GFC: Generic Flow Control
• VPI: Virtual Path Identifier
• VCI: Virtual Circuit Identifier
• Type: management, congestion control
• CLP: Cell Loss Priority
• HEC: Header Error Check (CRC-8)
– Network-Network Interface (NNI)
• Switch-to-switch format
• GFC becomes part of VPI field
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 ATM cells
• Advantages of cells
– facilitate the implementation of hardware
switches
– enable parallelism
• Disadvantage of cells
– Header overhead: 48/53 = 90.6% efficient
• Performance advantage:
– Queues of cells tend to be a little shorter
– Shorter queues mean less delay for all traffic
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 Virtual paths
• 24-bit identifier split into two parts
– 8-bit virtual path identifier (VPI)
– 16-bit virtual circuit identifier (VCI)
Public network

Network A Network B

Much less connection-state information stored in the switches,

avoiding the need for big, expensive tables of per VCI information
in the public network 24
 Comparison of datagram and VC
networks
Issue Datagram nets VC nets

Connection setup Not needed Required

Addressing Each packet contains full Each packet contains a short

source-destination addresses VCI
State information Switches do not keep Switches must keep
connection state info connection state of each VC
Forwarding Each packet is forwarded All packets follow the route
independently chosen when VC is set up
Effect of switch failures None (except for a few packet All VCs passing through
losses at point of failure) must be terminated
QoS Difficult Easy (if enough resources
can be allocated in advance)

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