CHAPTER 2

APPLICATION LAYER
FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. NGUYEN CONG DANH
 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

OUTLINE

1. Application Architectures
2. Web & HTTP
3. DNS (Domain Name System)
4. FTP service
5. P2P applications
6. Electronic mail

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1. APPLICATION
ARCHITECTURES
Faculty of Information Technology
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh
 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

SOME NETWORK APPS

• e-mail
• web
• text messaging
• remote login
• P2P file sharing
• multi-user network games
• streaming stored video (YouTube, Hulu, Netflix)
• voice over IP (e.g., Skype)
• real-time video conferencing
• social networking
• search
• …
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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

APPLICATION PROTOCOL DEFINES…

• Types of messages exchanged • Open protocols:

- e.g., request, response o Defined in RFCs
• Message syntax: o Allows for interoperability
- what fields in messages & how fields are o e.g., HTTP, SMTP
delineated • Proprietary protocols:
• Message semantics o e.g., Skype
- meaning of information in fields
• Rules for when and how processes send &
respond to messages

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

CLIENT-SERVER ARCHITECTURE

Server:
• always-on host
• permanent IP address
• data centers for scaling
Clients:
• communicate with server
• may be intermittently connected
• may have dynamic IP addresses
• do not communicate directly with each other

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

P2P ARCHITECTURE

• No always-on server
• Arbitrary end systems directly communicate
• Peers request service from other peers, provide
service in return to other peers
o Self scalability – new peers bring new
service capacity, as well as new service
demands
• Peers are intermittently connected and change
IP addresses
o Complex management

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

PROCESSES COMMUNICATING

How the programs, running in multiple end systems, communicate with each other?

clients, servers

Process: program running within a host Client process: process that

• Within same host, two processes initiates communication
communicate using inter-process Server process: process that waits
communication (defined by OS) to be contacted
• Processes in different hosts
communicate by exchanging
messages • Aside: applications with P2P architectures
have client processes & server processes

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

SOCKETS

• Process sends/receives messages

to/from its socket
• Socket analogous to door
o Sending process shoves message
out door
o Sending process relies on
transport infrastructure on other
side of door to deliver message to
socket at receiving process

Application processes, sockets, and underlying transport protocol

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

ADDRESSING PROCESSES

• To receive messages, process must • Identifier includes both IP address and port numbers
have identifier associated with process on host.
• Host device has unique 32-bit IP • Example port numbers:
address o HTTP server: 80
• Question: does IP address of host on o Mail server: 25
which process runs suffice for
• To send HTTP message to mangmaytinh.com web
identifying the process?
server:
- Answer: no, many processes can o IP address: 128.119.245.12
be running on same host
o Port number: 80
• More shortly…

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

TRANSPORT SERVICES AVAILABLE TO

APPLICATION

Reliable Data Transfer Throughput

• some apps (e.g., file transfer, web  some apps (e.g., multimedia) require
transactions) require 100% reliable data minimum amount of throughput to be
transfer “effective” bandwidth-sensitive
applications.
• other apps (multimedia apps: e.g.,
 other apps (“elastic apps”) make use of
audio) can tolerate some loss
whatever throughput they get

Timing Security
• some apps (e.g., Internet telephony,  encryption, data integrity, …
interactive games) require low delay to
be “effective”

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

SUPPLEMENT 1 - Transport service requirements: common apps

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

SUPPLEMENT 2 - Internet transport protocols services

TCP service: UDP service:

• reliable transport between sending
and receiving process • unreliable data transfer between
• flow control: sender won’t sending and receiving process
overwhelm receiver • does not provide: reliability, flow
• congestion control: throttle sender
control, congestion control,
when network overloaded
• does not provide: timing, minimum timing, throughput guarantee,
throughput guarantee, security security, or connection setup,
• connection-oriented: setup required
between client and server
processes
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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

SUPPLEMENT 3 - Internet apps: application, transport protocols

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2. WEB & HTTP

Faculty of Information Technology

MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh
 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

WEB

First, a review…
• Web page consists of objects
• Object can be HTML file, JPEG image, Java applet, audio file,…
• Web page consists of base HTML-file which includes several
referenced objects
• Each object is addressable by a URL, e.g.,

www.someschool.edu/someDept/pic.gif
host name path name

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

HTTP OVERVIEW

HTTP: hypertext transfer protocol

• Web’s application layer protocol
• Client/Server model
- client: browser that requests, receives,
(using HTTP protocol) and “displays”
Web objects
- server: Web server sends (using HTTP
protocol) objects in response to requests

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

HTTP OVERVIEW

Uses TCP: HTTP is “stateless”

• server maintains no information
• Client initiates TCP connection (creates about past client requests
socket) to server, port 80
aside
• Server accepts TCP connection from client
Protocols that maintain “state”
• HTTP messages (application-layer protocol are complex!
messages) exchanged between browser  past history (state) must be
(HTTP client) and Web server (HTTP server) maintained
 if server/client crashes, their
• TCP connection closed
views of “state” may be
inconsistent, must be reconciled

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

HTTP OVERVIEW
Persistent HTTP
Non-persistent HTTP • Multiple objects can be sent
• At most one object sent over single TCP connection
over TCP connection between client, server
o Connection then closed • Server leaves connection
• Downloading multiple open after sending response

objects required multiple • Subsequent HTTP messages

connections between same client/server

• Requires 2 RTTs per object sent over open connection

• OS overhead for each TCP • Slient sends requests as

connection soon as it encounters a
referenced object
• Browsers often open
parallel TCP connections to • As little as one RTT for all
fetch referenced objects the referenced objects
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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

NON-PERSISTENT HTTP
(contains text,
suppose user enters URL: references to 10
www.someSchool.edu/someDepartment/home.index jpeg images)
1a. HTTP client initiates TCP
connection to HTTP server
1b. HTTP server at host
(process) at www.someSchool.edu
www.someSchool.edu on port 80 waiting for TCP connection
at port 80. “accepts”
2. HTTP client sends HTTP connection, notifying client
request message (containing
URL) into TCP connection 3. HTTP server receives
socket. Message indicates request message, forms
that client wants object response message
someDepartment/home.inde containing requested object,
x and sends message into its
time socket
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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

NON-PERSISTENT HTTP 4. HTTP server closes TCP

connection.
5. HTTP client receives response
message containing html file,
displays html. Parsing html file,
finds 10 referenced jpeg objects

6. Steps 1-5 repeated for each

of 10 jpeg objects
time

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

HTTP REQUEST MESSAGE

• Two types of HTTP messages: request, response

• HTTP request message:
- ASCII (human-readable format) carriage return character
request line line-feed character
(GET, POST, GET /index.html HTTP/1.1\r\n
HEAD commands) Host: www-net.cs.umass.edu\r\n
User-Agent: Firefox/3.6.10\r\n
headerAccept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml\r\n
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5\r\n
linesAccept-Encoding: gzip,deflate\r\n
carriage return, \r\n
line feed at start
of line indicates
end of header lines

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

EXAMPLE

Suppose the client-to-server HTTP GET message

is the following:

GET
/kurose_ross_sandbox/interactive/quotation8.htm
HTTP/1.0
Host: gaia.cs.umass.edu
QUESTION LIST
If-Modified-Since: Mon, 27 Jul 2020 16:21:57 -0700

1. What is the name of the file that is being retrieved in this GET
message?
2. What version of HTTP is the client running?
3. True or False: The client already has a cached copy of the file

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

HTTP RESPONSE MESSAGE

status code status phrase
status line
(protocol)
HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 20:09:20 GMT\r\n
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS)\r\n
Last-Modified: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:00:02
GMT\r\n
header ETag: "17dc6-a5c-bf716880"\r\n
Accept-Ranges: bytes\r\n
lines Content-Length: 2652\r\n
Keep-Alive: timeout=10, max=100\r\n
Connection: Keep-Alive\r\n
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\
r\n
data, e.g., \r\n
requested data data data data data ...
HTML file

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

HTTP RESPONSE STATUS CODES

• Status code appears in 1st line in server-to-client
response message.
• Some sample codes:
o 200 OK
- Rrequest succeeded, requested object later in
this msg
o 301 Moved Permanently
- Requested object moved, new location specified
later in this msg (Location:)
o 400 Bad Request
- Request msg not understood by server
o 404 Not Found
- Requested document not found on this server
o 505 HTTP Version Not Supported

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

EXAMPLE

Suppose the server-to-client HTTP RESPONSE message

is the following:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2020 23:12:22 +0000
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)
Last-Modified: Mon, 27 Jul 2020 23:15:22 +0000 QUESTION LIST
ETag:17dc6-a5c-bf716880.
Content-Length: 51389 1. Is the response message using HTTP 1.0 or HTTP 1.1?
Keep-Alive: timeout=33, max=79 2. Was the server able to send the document successfully? Yes
Connection: Keep-alive or No
Content-type: image/html 3. How big is the document in bytes?
4. Is the connection persistent or nonpersistent?
5. What is the type of file being sent by the server in response?
6. What is the name of the server and its version? Write your
answer as server/x.y.z
7. Will the ETag change if the resource content at this particular
resource location changes? Yes or No
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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

ASSIGNMENT 1

1. What are the cookies (user-server state)?

2. Web caches (Proxy server)?

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3. DNS (DOMAIN
NAME SYSTEM)
Faculty of Information Technology
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh
 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

DNS: DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM

DNS services
• People: many identifiers: • Hostname to IP address translation
- SSN, name, passport # • Host aliasing
• Internet hosts, routers: - canonical, alias names
- IP address (32 bit) - used for addressing • Mail server aliasing
datagrams
• Load distribution
- “name”, e.g., www.yahoo.com - used by
- replicated Web servers: many IP
humans
addresses correspond to one name
Question: how to map between IP address
• DNS generally uses UDP, in some cases
and name, and vice versa ?
such as, zone transfer it uses TCP
• Port: 53
 Domain Name System (= Distributer
Database) with many name servers.
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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

DNS: A DISTRIBUTED, HIERARCHICAL

DATABASE

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

TOP-LEVEL DOMAIN (TLD) & AUTHORITATIVE

SERVERS
• Top-level domain (TLD) servers:
- Responsible for com, org, net, edu, aero, jobs, museums, and all top-level country domains, e.g.: uk, fr, ca, jp
- Network Solutions maintains servers for .com TLD
- Educause for .edu TLD
• Authoritative DNS servers:
- Organization’s own DNS server(s), providing authoritative hostname to IP mappings for organization’s named
hosts
- Can be maintained by organization or service provider
• Local DNS server
o Does not strictly belong to hierarchy
o Each ISP (residential ISP, company, university) has one, also called “default name server”
o When host makes DNS query, query is sent to its local DNS server
- Has local cache of recent name-to-address translation pairs (but may be out of date!)
- Acts as proxy, forwards query into hierarchy
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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

EXAMPLE

• Host at cse.nyu.edu wants IP

address for gaia.cs.umass.edu

Iterated query:

• Contacted server replies with

name of server to contact

• “I don’t know this name, but ask

this server”

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

EXAMPLE

• Host at cse.nyu.edu wants IP address for

gaia.cs.umass.edu

Recursive query:

• Puts burden of name resolution on

contacted name server

• Heavy load at upper levels of hierarchy?

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

DNS RECORDS

• A resource record, commonly referred to as an RR, is the unit of information entry in DNS
database
• RRs are used to resolve all DNS queries
• Including:
o Start of Authority (SOA)
o Name Server (NS)
o Host (A)
o Host (AAAA)
o Canonical Name (CNAME)
o Mail Exchanger (MX)
o Pointer (PTR)
o Service Record (SRV)
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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

DNS MESSAGE FORMAT

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4. FTP SERVICE

Faculty of Information Technology

MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh
 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL (FTP)

• FTP is used for the transfer of computer files
between a client and server on a computer
network
• FTP is built on a client-server model
architecture using separate control (port 21)
and data (port 20) connections between the
client and the server.
• FTP provides the sharing of files.
• It uses TCP protocol.
• It transfers the data more reliably and
efficiently.

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

ACTIVE FTP MODE

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

PASSIVE FTP MODE

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

FTP COMMANDS, RESPONSES

Sample commands: Sample return codes

• sent as ASCII text over control channel • status code and phrase (as in HTTP)
• USER username • 331 Username OK, password required
• PASS password • 125 data connection already open; transfer starting
• LIST return list of file in current directory • 425 Can’t open data connection
• RETR filename retrieves (gets) file • 452 Error writing file
• STOR filename stores (puts) file onto
remote host

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5. P2P APPLICATIONS

Faculty of Information Technology

MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh
 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

PEER-2-PEER (P2P) ARCHITECTURE

• No always-on server, all nodes are both clients
and servers
o Provide and consume data
o Any node can initiate a connection
• No centralized data source
o The information is not located in a central
location but is distributed among all peers
• Arbitrary end systems directly communicate
• Peers are intermittently connected and change
IP addresses
• Network is dynamic: nodes enter and leave the
network “frequently”
Examples:
- File distribution (BitTorrent)
- Streaming (KanKan)
- VoIP (Skype) 42
 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

P2P FILE DISTRIBUTION: BIT TORRENT

• File divided into 256KB chunks
• Peers in torrent send/receive file chunks

tracker: tracks peers torrent: group of peers

participating in torrent exchanging chunks of a file

Alice arrives …
… obtains list
of peers from tracker
… and begins exchanging
file chunks with peers in torrent

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

P2P FILE DISTRIBUTION: BIT TORRENT

• Peer joining torrent:

o Has no chunks, but will accumulate them over time
from other peers
o Registers with tracker to get list of peers, connects
to subset of peers (“neighbors”)

• While downloading, peer uploads chunks to other peers

• Peer may change peers with whom it exchanges chunks
• Churn: peers may come and go
• Once peer has entire file, it may (selfishly) leave or
(altruistically) remain in torrent

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6. ELECTRONIC MAIL

Faculty of Information Technology

MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh
 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

ELECTRONIC MAIL

Three major components:

• User agents
• Mail servers
• Simple mail transfer protocol: SMTP

A. User Agent
• a.k.a. “mail reader”
• composing, editing, reading mail messages
• e.g., Outlook, Thunderbird, iPhone mail client
• outgoing, incoming messages stored on server

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

ELECTRONIC MAIL

B. Mail Server
• Mailbox contains incoming messages for user
• Message queue of outgoing (to be sent) mail
messages
• SMTP protocol between mail servers to send
email messages
o client: sending mail server
o “server”: receiving mail server

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

ELECTRONIC MAIL

C. SMTP Protocol
• Uses TCP to reliably transfer email message from
client to server, port 25
• Direct transfer: sending server to receiving server
• Three phases of transfer
o handshaking (greeting)
o transfer of messages
o closure

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

SCENARIO: ALICE SENDS MESSAGE TO BOB

1) Alice uses UA to compose message “to” 4) SMTP client sends Alice’s message over the TCP
bob@someschool.edu connection
2) Alice’s UA sends message to her mail server; 5) Bob’s mail server places the message in Bob’s mailbox
message placed in message queue 6) Bob invokes his user agent to read message
3) client side of SMTP opens TCP connection
with Bob’s mail server

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 FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MSc. Nguyen Cong Danh

MAIL ACCESS PROTOCOLS

• SMTP: delivery/storage to receiver’s server

• Mail access protocol: retrieval from server
- POP3: Post Office Protocol – Version 3 [RFC 1939]: authorization, download (Port: 110).
- IMAP: Internet Mail Access Protocol [RFC 3501]: more features, including manipulation of stored
messages on server
- HTTP: gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc.

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