212CSE3302 – Computer Networks

Unit I

Introduction
 DATA COMMUNICATIONS
The term telecommunication means communication at a
distance. The word data refers to information presented
in whatever form is agreed upon by the parties creating
and using the data. Data communications are the
exchange of data between two devices via some form of
transmission medium such as a wire cable.
Effectiveness of data communication depends on
4 fundamental characteristics
1.Delivery
 2.Accuracy
3.Timeliness
4.Jitter
Figure 1.1 Components of a data communication system

1. Message (Information or Data)

2. Sender
3. Receiver
4. Transmission Media
5. Protocol
Figure 1.2 Data flow (simplex, half-duplex, and full-duplex)
Simplex
•The communication is unidirectional.
•Only one of the two devices on a link can transmit; the other can
only receive.
•Use the entire capacity of the channel to send the data in one
direction.

Half-Duplex
•Each station can both transmit and receive, but not at the same
time.
•When one device is sending, the other can only receive, and vice
versa.
•Use the entire capacity for each direction of data transmission.

Full-Duplex(Duplex)
•Both stations can transmit and receive simultaneously.
•Used when both directions is required at all the time.
•The capacity of the channel must be divided between the two
directions.
1-2 NETWORKS

A network is a set of devices (often referred to as nodes)

connected by communication links. A node can be a
computer, printer, or any other device capable of sending
and/or receiving data generated by other nodes on the
network. A link can be a cable, air, optical fiber, or any
medium which can transport a signal carrying
information.
Topics discussed in this section:
 Network Criteria
 Physical Structures
 Categories of Networks
Network Criteria

 Performance (Transmit & Response time)

 Depends on Network Elements
 Measured in terms of Delay and Throughput
 Reliability(frequency of failure)
 Failure rate of network components
 Measured in terms of availability/robustness
 Security
 Data protection against corruption/loss of data due to:
 Errors
 Malicious users
 Physical Structures

 Type of Connection
 Point to Point - single transmitter and receiver
 Entire capacity of the channel used between two devices
 Multipoint - multiple recipients of single transmission
 The capacity of the channel is shared, either spatially(If several devices use
the link simultaneously) or temporally(If devices must take turns- timeshared
connection).
 Physical Topology
 Connection of devices
 Type of transmission - unicast, mulitcast, broadcast
Figure 1.3 Types of connections: point-to-point and multipoint
Figure 1.4 Categories of topology
Figure 1.5 A fully connected mesh topology (five devices)

Application – connection of telephone regional offices

Mesh

 Every device has a dedicated(link carries only between two

devices) point-to-point link to every other device.
 For a mesh network with n nodes, we need n(n-1)/2 duplex-mode
links
 To accommodate that many links, every device must have n-1
input/output(I/O) ports to be connected to other n-1 stations.
 Advantages:
 Dedicated link – eliminates traffic problem
 Robust – If one system becomes unusable, it doesn’t
incapacitate the entire system
 Privacy and security
 Fault identification and fault isolation are easy
 Disadvantages:
 Amount of cabling and the no of I/O ports
 Installation and reconnection are difficult
 Accommodate more space
Figure 1.6 A star topology connecting four stations

Application – LAN(Local Area Networks)

Star

 Each device has a dedicated point-to-point link only on a central

controller, usually called a hub.
 The devices are not directly linked to other devices – hence it does
not allow direct traffic between devices.
 The controller acts as an exchange: If one device wants to send
data to another, it sends data to the controller and then it relays
the data to the other connected device.
 In star, each device needs only one link and one I/O port to
connect to any other devices.
 Adv:
 Less cabling needed
 Less expensive than mesh topology
 Robustness, fault identification and fault isolation are easy.
 Disadv:
 Dependency of the whole topology on a single point, the hub.
If the hub goes down, the whole system is dead.
Figure 1.7 A bus topology connecting three stations

Application – Ethernet LANs ( first LANs)

Bus
 Multipoint connection – One long cable acts as a backbone to link
all the devices in the network.
 Nodes are connected to the bus cable by drop lines(connection
running between the device and the main cable) and
taps(connectors that either splices into the main cable or
punctures the sheathing of a cable to create a contact with the
metallic core).
 Adv:
 Ease of installation
 Uses less cabling than mesh and star topologies
 Redundancy is eliminated – Only one backbone cable
stretches through the entire facility.
 Disadv:
 Difficult in reconnection and fault isolation
 Difficult to add new devices
 Does not Robust – if a fault or break in the bus cable, then it
stops all transmission.
Figure 1.8 A ring topology connecting six stations

Application – High Speed LANs

Ring
 Each device has a dedicated point-to-point connection with only
the two devices on either side of it.
 A signal is passed along the ring in one direction, from device to
device, until it reaches the destination.
 Each device in a ring incorporates a repeater – regenerates the
bits and passes them along
 Adv:
 Easy to install and configure
 Fault isolation is simplified – if one device does not receive a
signal within a period, it can issue an alarm. Then the alarm
alerts the network operator to the problem and its location.
 Disadv:
 Unidirectional traffic
 A break in the ring can disable the entire network.
 This weakness is solved by a dual ring or a switch capable of
closing off the break.
Figure 1.9 A hybrid topology: a star backbone with three bus networks
 Categories of Networks
 Local Area Networks (LANs)
 Short distances
 Designed to provide local interconnectivity
 Common topologies – bus, ring and star.
 Data rates – 4 to 6 Mbps
 Speed – 100 or 1000 Mbps
 Wide Area Networks (WANs)
 Long distances
 Provide connectivity over large areas
 Switched WAN –X.25(ATM(Asynchronous Transfer Mode) netowrk), Frame Relay
 Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs)
 Provide connectivity over areas such as a city, a campus
 Size- between LAN and WAN – high speed connectivity
 Telephone company network – DSL line, Cable TV network
Figure 1.10 An isolated LAN connecting 12 computers to a hub in a closet
Figure 1.11 WANs: a switched WAN and a point-to-point WAN
Figure 1.12 A heterogeneous network made of four WANs and two LANs
 1-3 THE INTERNET

The Internet has revolutionized many aspects of our daily

lives. It has affected the way we do business as well as the
way we spend our leisure time. The Internet is a
communication system that has brought a wealth of
information to our fingertips and organized it for our use.
The internet is a collaboration of more than hundreds of
thousands of interconnected networks.

Topics discussed in this section:

Organization of the Internet
Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
Figure 1.13 Hierarchical organization of the Internet
 PROTOCOLS

A protocol is synonymous with rule. It consists of a set of

rules that govern data communications. It determines
what is communicated, how it is communicated and when
it is communicated. The key elements of a protocol are
syntax, semantics and timing

Topics discussed in this section:

 Syntax
 Semantics
 Timing
 Elements of a Protocol

 Syntax
 Structure or format of the data
 Indicates how to read the bits - field delineation
 Semantics
 Interprets the meaning of the bits
 Knows which fields define what action
 Timing
 When data should be sent and what
 Speed at which data should be sent or speed at which it is being
received.
USES OF NETWORKS

1. Business Applications
 To design products, write brochures, and do the payroll
 Useful for resource sharing – to make all programs, equipment, and especially
data available to anyone on the network without regard to the physical location
of the resource or the user.
 Sharing physical resources such as printers, and tape backup systems, is
sharing information
 To access relevant information and documents instantly.
 Networks called VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) may be used to join the
individual networks at different sites into one extended network.

Fig. A network with two

clients and one server
 This whole arrangement is called the client-server model.
 It is widely used and forms the basis of much network usage.
 The most popular realization is that of a Web application, in which the server
generates Web pages based on its database in response to client requests that may
update the database.
 If we look at the client-server model in detail, we see that two processes (i.e.,
running programs) are involved, one on the client machine and one on the server
machine.
 Communication takes the form of the client process sending a message over the
network to the server process.
 The client process then waits for a reply message.
 When the server process gets the request, it performs the requested work or looks up
the requested data and sends back a reply. These messages are shown in Fig.

Figure 1-2. The client-server model involves requests and replies

 A computer network can provide a powerful communication medium among
employees. For example – Email (Electronic Maill)
 Telephone calls between employees may be carried by the computer network instead
of by the phone company. This technology is called IP telephony or Voice over IP
(VoIP) when Internet technology is used.
 Video Conferencing –Video can be added to audio so that employees at distant
locations can see and hear each other as they hold a meeting. This technique is a
powerful tool for eliminating the cost and time previously devoted to travel.
 Desktop sharing lets remote workers see and interact with a graphical computer
screen. This makes it easy for two or more people who work far apart to read and
write a shared blackboard or write a report together.
 Remote Patient Monitoring used in Telemedicine.
 Doing business electronically, especially with customers and suppliers e-commerce
(electronic commerce) - Using computer networks, manufacturers can place orders
electronically as needed. This reduces the need for large inventories and enhances
efficiency.
Goals of Networks for Companies
 Resource sharing: equipment, programs, data
 Communication medium for separated employees
 high reliability
– replicated data
– hardware
 Saving money
– mainframe: 10 times faster, but 1000 times more expensive than
PC
– client-server model
 Scalability
– mainframe: replace a larger one
– client-server model: add more servers
2. Home Applications
 People initially bought computers for word processing and games.
 Recently, the biggest reason to buy a home computer was probably for
Internet access.
 Now, many consumer electronic devices, such as set-top boxes, game
consoles, and clock radios, come with embedded computers and computer
networks, especially wireless networks, and home networks are broadly
used for entertainment, including listening to, looking at, and creating
music, photos, and videos.
 Internet access provides home users with connectivity to remote computers.
 Home users can access information, communicate with other people, and
buy products and services with e-commerce.
 Many newspapers have gone online and can be personalized.
 Online digital library - Many professional organizations, such as the ACM
(www.acm.org) and the IEEE Computer Society (www.computer.org),
already have all their journals and conference proceedings online.
 Fig. In a peer-to-peer system there are no fixed
clients and servers.

 Many peer-to-peer systems, such BitTorrent, do not have any central database
of content.
 Peer-to-peer communication is often used to share music and videos - include
fans sharing public domain music, families sharing photos and movies, and
users downloading public software packages.
 Person-to-person communication - E-mail - Twitter service that lets people
send short text messages called ‘‘tweets’’ to their circle of friends or other
willing audiences.
 The Internet can be used by applications to carry audio (e.g., Internet radio
stations) and video (e.g., YouTube).
 Between person-to-person communications and accessing information are
social network applications. – Facebook
 Groups of people can work together to create content - Wikipedia, an
encyclopedia anyone can edit, but there are thousands of other wikis
 Online Shopping – Flipkart, Amazon, ebay, meesho, etc,.
 e-commerce is widely used is access to financial institutions. Many people already
pay their bills, manage their bank accounts, and handle their investments
electronically.

Fig. Some forms of

e-commerce

 Entertainment – Users can find, buy, and download MP3 songs and DVD-quality movies and
add them to their personal collection. TV shows now reach many homes via IPTV (IP
TeleVision) systems that are based on IP technology instead of cable TV or radio transmissions.
 OTT – Over The Top platform
 Game playing
 Consumer electronic devices are networked - For example, some high-end cameras already have
a wireless network capability and use it to send photos to a nearby display for viewing.
3. Mobile Users
 To read and send email, tweet, watch movies, download music, play games, or simply to surf the
Web for information.
 Wireless networks are of great value to fleets of trucks, taxis, delivery vehicles, and
repairpersons for keeping in contact with their home base.
 Wireless hotspots based on the 802.11 standard - resulting in a patchwork of coverage at cafes,
hotels, airports, schools, trains and planes. Anyone with a laptop computer and a wireless modem
can just turn on their computer on and be connected to the Internet through the hotspot
 Wireless networks are of great value to fleets of trucks, taxis, delivery vehicles, and
repairpersons for keeping in contact with their home base.
 Wireless networks are also important to the military.
 Text messaging or texting – SMS, Nowadays, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.,
 Electronic book readers can download a newly purchased book or the next edition of a magazine
or today’s newspaper wherever they roam.
 Electronic picture frames can update their displays on cue with fresh images.
 Short text messages from the mobile are used to authorize payments for food in vending
machines, movie tickets, and other small items instead of cash and credit cards.
 Wearable computers are another promising application.
TRANSMISSION MODES

The transmission of binary data across a link

can be accomplished in either parallel or serial
mode. In parallel mode, multiple bits are sent
with each clock tick. In serial mode, 1 bit is
sent with each clock tick. While there is only
one way to send parallel data, there are three
subclasses of serial transmission:
asynchronous, synchronous, and isochronous.
Topics discussed in this section:
Parallel Transmission
Serial Transmission
4.36
Figure 4.31 Data transmission and modes

4.37
Parallel Transmission
 Binary data, consisting of 1s and 0s, may be organized into groups of n bits
each. By grouping, we can send data n bits at a time instead of 1. This is
called parallel transmission.
 The mechanism for parallel transmission is a conceptually simple one: Use
n wires to send n bits at one time.
 That way each bit has its own wire, and all n bits of one group can be
transmitted with each clock tick from one device to another.
 Figure 4.32 shows how parallel transmission works for n =8. Typically, the
eight wires are bundled in a cable with a connector at each end.
 Adv  Speed: It can increase the transfer speed by a factor of n over serial
transmission.
 Disadv  cost: It requires n communication lines (wires in the example)
just to transmit the data stream and limited to short distances.
Figure 4.32 Parallel transmission

4.39
Serial Transmission
 In serial transmission one bit follows another, so we need only one
communication channel rather than n to transmit data between two
communicating devices.
 Serial transmission occurs in one of three ways: asynchronous,
synchronous, and isochronous.
 Adv  with only one communication channel, serial transmission
reduces the cost of transmission over parallel by roughly a factor of n.
 Since communication within devices is parallel, conversion devices are
required at the interface between the sender and the line (parallel-to-serial)
and between the line and the receiver (serial-to-parallel).
Figure 4.33 Serial transmission

4.41
Asynchronous Transmission
 Without synchronization, the receiver cannot use timing to predict when the
next group will arrive.
 To alert the receiver to the arrival of a new group, an extra bit is added to
the beginning of each byte. This bit, usually a 0, is called the start bit.
 To let the receiver know that the byte is finished, 1 or more additional bits
are appended to the end of the byte. These bits, usually 1s, are called stop
bits.
 In addition, the transmission of each byte may then be followed by a gap of
varying duration.
 This gap can be represented either by an idle channel or by a stream of
additional stop bits.
 For example, the connection of a keyboard to a computer is a natural
application for asynchronous transmission.
Figure 4.34 Asynchronous transmission

4.43
Note

In asynchronous transmission, we send

1 start bit (0) at the beginning and 1 or
more stop bits (1s) at the end of each
byte. There may be a gap between
each byte.

4.44
Note

Asynchronous here means

“asynchronous at the byte level,”
but the bits are still synchronized;
their durations are the same.

4.45
Synchronous Transmission
 In synchronous transmission, the bit stream is combined into longer
"frames," which may contain multiple bytes.
 Each byte, however, is introduced onto the transmission link without a gap
between it and the next one.
 It is left to the receiver to separate the bit stream into bytes for decoding
purposes.
 Timing becomes very important, because the accuracy of the received
information is completely dependent on the ability of the receiving device
to keep an accurate count of the bits as they come in.
 Adv  Speed
 For this reason, it is more useful for high-speed applications such as the
transmission of data from one computer to another.
 Byte synchronization is accomplished in the data link layer.
 Here, there may be uneven gaps between frames.
Figure 4.35 Synchronous transmission

4.47
Note

In synchronous transmission, we send

bits one after another without start or
stop bits or gaps. It is the responsibility
of the receiver to group the bits.

4.48
Isochronous Transmission
In real-time audio and video, in which uneven delays between
frames are not acceptable, synchronous transmission fails.
 For example, TV images are broadcast at the rate of 30 images
per second; they must be viewed at the same rate.
 If each image is sent by using one or more frames, there should
be no delays between frames.
 For this type of application, synchronization between
characters is not enough; the entire stream of bits must be
synchronized.
 The isochronous transmission guarantees that the data arrive at
a fixed rate.
NETWORK HARDWARE

Two dimensions of Network Hardware

•Transmission Technologies
1. Point-to-point links
2. Broadcast links
•Scale
1. Personal area networks
2. Local area networks
3. Metropolitan area networks
4. Wide are networks
5. The internet
Transmission Technologies
There are two types of transmission technology that are in widespread use: broadcast networks and point-to-point
networks.
Point-to-point networks:
Point-to-point links connect individual pairs of machines.
To go from the source to the destination on a network made up of point-to-point links, short messages, called packets in
certain contexts, may have to first visit one or more intermediate machines.
Often multiple routes, of different lengths, are possible, so finding good ones is important in point-to-point networks.
Point-to-point transmission with exactly one sender and exactly one receiver is sometimes called unicasting.

Broadcast Networks:
In contrast, on a broadcast network, the communication channel is shared by all the machines on the network; packets sent
by any machine are received by all the others.
An address field within each packet specifies the intended recipient.
Upon receiving a packet, a machine checks the address field. If the packet is intended for the receiving machine, that
machine processes the packet; if the packet is intended for some other machine, it is just ignored.
 A wireless network is a common example of a broadcast link, with communication
shared over a coverage region that depends on the wireless channel and the
transmitting machine.
 Broadcast systems usually also allow the possibility of addressing a packet to all
destinations by using a special code in the address field.
 When a packet with this code is transmitted, it is received and processed by every
machine on the network. This mode of operation is called broadcasting.
 Some broadcast systems also support transmission to a subset of the machines,
which known as multicasting.
Scale  Distance

Fig. Classification of interconnected

processors by scale.
1. Personal Area Network (PAN)
 PANs (Personal Area Networks) let devices communicate over the range of a
person.
 A common example is a wireless network that connects a computer with its
peripherals.
 To design a short-range wireless network, called Bluetooth is used to connect these
components without wires.
 In the simplest form, Bluetooth networks use the master-slave paradigm of Fig..
 The system unit (the PC) is normally the master, talking to the mouse, keyboard, etc.,
as slaves.
 The master tells the slaves what addresses to use, when they can broadcast, how long
they can transmit, what frequencies they can use, and so on.
 It is often used to connect a headset to a mobile phone without cords and it can allow
your digital music player to connect to your car merely being brought within range.
 A completely different kind of PAN is formed when an embedded medical device
such as a pacemaker, insulin pump, or hearing aid talks to a user-operated remote
control.
 PANs can also be built with other technologies that communicate over short ranges,
such as RFID on smartcards and library books.
Personal Area Network

Bluetooth PAN configuration

5
4
2. Local Area Network (LAN)
 A LAN is a privately owned network that operates within and nearby a single
building like a home, office or factory.
 LANs are widely used to connect personal computers and consumer electronics to let
them share resources (e.g., printers) and exchange information.
 When LANs are used by companies, they are called enterprise networks.
 Wireless LANs are very popular these days, especially in homes, older office
buildings, cafeterias, and other places where it is too much trouble to install cables.
 In these systems, every computer has a radio modem and an antenna that it uses to
communicate with other computers.

Fig. Wireless and wired LANs. (a) 802.11. (b) Switched Ethernet.
 In most cases, each computer talks to a device in the ceiling as shown in Fig.(a). This
device, called an AP (Access Point), wireless router, or base station, relays packets
between the wireless computers and also between them and the Internet.
 There is a standard for wireless LANs called IEEE 802.11, popularly known as WiFi,
which has become very widespread. It runs at speeds anywhere from 11 to hundreds of
Mbps.
 Wired LANs use a range of different transmission technologies.
 Most of them use copper wires, but some use optical fiber.
 LANs are restricted in size, which means that the worst-case transmission time is bounded
and known in advance.
 Typically, wired LANs run at speeds of 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, have low delay
(microseconds or nanoseconds), and make very few errors.
 The topology of many wired LANs is built from point-to-point links.
 IEEE 802.3, popularly called Ethernet, is, by far, the most common type of wired LAN.
Fig. (b) shows a sample topology of switched Ethernet.
 Each computer speaks the Ethernet protocol and connects to a box called a switch with a
point-to-point link.
 A switch has multiple ports, each of which can connect to one computer. The job of the
switch is to relay packets between computers that are attached to it, using the address in
each packet to determine which computer to send it to.
 To build larger LANs, switches can be plugged into each other using their
ports.
 It is also possible to divide one large physical LAN into two smaller logical
LANs.
 Sometimes, the layout of the network equipment does not match the
organization’s structure.
 For example, the engineering and finance departments of a company might
have computers on the same physical LAN because they are in the same
wing of the building but it might be easier to manage the system if
engineering and finance logically each had its own network Virtual LAN or
VLAN.
 In this design each port is tagged with a ‘‘color,’’ say green for engineering
and red for finance.
 The switch then forwards packets so that computers attached to the green
ports are separated from the computers attached to the red ports.
 Broadcast packets sent on a red port, for example, will not be received on a
green port, just as though there were two different LANs.
 A switched Ethernet is a modern version of the original Ethernet design
that broadcast all the packets over a single linear cable. At most one machine
could successfully transmit at a time, and a distributed arbitration
mechanism was used to resolve conflicts.
 It used a simple algorithm: computers could transmit whenever the cable
was idle.
 If two or more packets collided, each computer just waited a random time
and tried later. We will call that version classic Ethernet.

 Both wireless and wired broadcast networks can be divided into static and
dynamic designs, depending on how the channel is allocated.
 A typical static allocation would be to divide time into discrete intervals and
use a round-robin algorithm, allowing each machine to broadcast only when
its time slot comes up.
 Static allocation wastes channel capacity when a machine has nothing to say
during its allocated slot, so most systems attempt to allocate the channel
dynamically (i.e., on demand).
 Dynamic allocation methods for a common channel are either centralized or decentralized.
 In the centralized channel allocation method, there is a single entity, for example, the base
station in cellular networks, which determines who goes next.
 It might do this by accepting multiple packets and prioritizing them according to some
internal algorithm.
 In the decentralized channel allocation method, there is no central entity; each machine
must decide for itself whether to transmit.
 Characteristics
– small size
– transmission technology
• single cable (single channel)
• 10Mbps ~ 10Gb/s
 • 10Gb/s : 10,000,000.000 bps
– topology:
• bus
– Ethernet (IEEE 802.3): 10 or 100 Mbps (10Gb/s)
• ring
– IBM token ring (IEEE 802.5): 4 or 16 Mbps
• Wireless broadcast
2. Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)
 A MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) covers a city.
 The best-known examples of MANs are the cable television networks
available in many cities.
 These systems grew from earlier community antenna systems used in areas
with poor over-the-air television reception.
 In those early systems, a large antenna was placed on top of a nearby hill and
a signal was then piped to the subscribers’ houses.

 At first, these were locally designed, ad hoc systems.

 Then companies began jumping into the business, getting contracts from local
governments to wire up entire cities.
 The next step was television programming and even entire channels designed
for cable only.
 Often these channels were highly specialized, such as all news, all sports, all
cooking, all gardening, and so on.
 But from their inception until the late 1990s, they were intended for television
reception only.
 When the Internet began attracting a mass audience, the cable TV network
operators began to realize that with some changes to the system, they could
provide two-way Internet service in unused parts of the spectrum.
 At that point, the cable TV system began to morph from simply a way to
distribute television to a metropolitan area network.
 To a first approximation, a MAN might look something like the system
shown in Fig..
 In this figure we see both television signals and Internet being fed into the
centralized cable headend for subsequent distribution to people’s homes.

 Cable television is not the only MAN, though.

 Recent developments in highspeed wireless Internet access have resulted in
another MAN, which has been standardized as IEEE 802.16 and is popularly
known as WiMAX.
Fig. A metropolitan area network based on cable TV.
3. Wide Area Network (WAN)
 A WAN (Wide Area Network) spans a large geographical area, often a country or
continent.
 The WAN in Fig. is a network that connects offices in Perth, Melbourne, and
Brisbane.
 Each of these offices contains computers intended for running user (i.e., application)
programs.

Fig. WAN that connects three branch offices in Australia.

 These machines are called as hosts. The rest of the network that connects
these hosts is then called the communication subnet, or just subnet for
short. The job of the subnet is to carry messages from host to host.
 In most WANs, the subnet consists of two distinct components: transmission
lines and switching elements.
 Transmission lines move bits between machines which can be made of
copper wire, optical fiber, or even radio links.
 Switching elements, or just switches, are specialized computers that
connect two or more transmission lines.
 When data arrive on an incoming line, the switching element must choose an
outgoing line on which to forward them.
 These switching computers have been called as Routers.
 The routers will usually connect different kinds of networking technology.
 The networks inside the offices may be switched Ethernet, for example,
while the long-distance transmission lines may be SONET links.
 Many WANs will in fact be internetworks, or composite networks that are
made up of more than one network.
 There are two other varieties of WANs.
 First, rather than lease dedicated transmission lines, a company might connect its
offices to the Internet .
 This allows connections to be made between the offices as virtual links that use the
underlying capacity of the Internet.
 This arrangement, shown in Fig.1, is called a VPN (Virtual Private Network).
 Compared to the dedicated arrangement, a VPN has the usual advantage of
virtualization, which is that it provides flexible reuse of a resource (Internet
connectivity).
 Consider how easy it is to add a fourth office to see this.
 A VPN also has the usual disadvantage of virtualization, which is a lack of control
over the underlying resources.
 With a dedicated line, the capacity is clear.
 With a VPN your mileage may vary with your Internet service.

 The second variation is that the subnet may be run by a different company.
 The subnet operator is known as a network service provider and the offices are its
customers. This structure is shown in Fig. 2.
 Fig.1 WAN using a virtual private network.

 The subnet operator will connect to other customers too, as long as they can
pay and it can provide service.
 Since it would be a disappointing network service if the customers could
only send packets to each other, the subnet operator will also connect to
other networks that are part of the Internet.
 Such a subnet operator is called an ISP (Internet Service Provider) and the
subnet is an ISP network.
 Its customers who connect to the ISP receive Internet service.
 Fig.2 WAN using as an ISP network.

 In most WANs, the network contains many transmission lines, each connecting a
pair of routers.
 If two routers that do not share a transmission line wish to communicate, they
must do this indirectly, via other routers.
 There may be many paths in the network that connect these two routers. How the
network makes the decision as to which path to use is called the routing
algorithm.
 How each router makes the decision as to where to send a packet next is called
the forwarding algorithm.
 Other kinds of WANs make heavy use of wireless technologies.
 In satellite systems, each computer on the ground has an antenna through which it can
send data to and receive data from to a satellite in orbit.
 All computers can hear the output from the satellite, and in some cases they can also
hear the upward transmissions of their fellow computers to the satellite as well.

 The cellular telephone network is another example of a WAN that uses wireless
technology.
 This system has already gone through three generations and a fourth one is on the
horizon.
 The first generation was analog and for voice only.
 The second generation was digital and for voice only.
 The third generation is digital and is for both voice and data.
 Each cellular base station covers a distance much larger than a wireless LAN, with a
range measured in kilometers rather than tens of meters.
 The base stations are connected to each other by a backbone network that is usually
wired.
 The data rates of cellular networks are often on the order of 1 Mbps, much smaller than
a wireless LAN that can range up to on the order of 100 Mbps.
Internetworks
 A collection of interconnected networks is called an internetwork or internet.
 The Internet uses ISP networks to connect enterprise networks, home networks, and
many other networks.