Data Link Control

11.1
 Data Link
Control
The two main functions of the
data link layer are :-
1 data link control (deals with the design
and procedures for communication
between two
adjacent nodes: node-to-node
communication).

2 media access control (deals how

11.2 share the link).
 Data link control functions include
framing, flow and error control, and software
implemented protocols that provide smooth
and reliable transmission of frames between
nodes.
To implement data link control, we need
protocols.
protocol :- is a set of rules that need to be
implemented in software and run by the two
nodes involved in data exchange at the data
link layer.

11.3
 • Data transmission in the physical
layer means moving bits in the form
of a signal from the source to the
destination.
• The physical layer provides bit
synchronization to ensure that the
sender and receiver use the same bit
durations and timing.
11.4
 11- FRAMING
1
The data link layer needs to pack bits into frames, so
that each frame is distinguishable from another.
Our postal system practices a type of framing. The
simple act of inserting a letter into an envelope
separates one piece of information from another;
the envelope serves as the delimiter.
Topics discussed in this section:
Fixed-Size Framing – no boundaries for frames, size used as
the delimeter
Variable-Size Framing – define begining and end of frame,
character oriented or bit oriented approach
11.5
 • Framing in the data link layer separates
a message from one source to a
destination, or from other messages to
other destinations, by adding a sender
address and a destination address.

• The destination address defines where the

packet is to go; the sender address helps
the recipient acknowledge the receipt.

11.6
 Fixed-Size
•Framing
Frames can be of fixed or variable size. In
fixed-size framing, there is no need for defining
the boundaries of the frames; the size itself can
be used as a delimiter.

An example of this type of framing is the

ATM wide-area network, which uses
frames of fixed size called cells.

11.7
 Variable-Size
Framing
• In variable-size framing, we need a way
to define the end of the frame and the
beginning of the next.
•Two approaches were used for this purpose:
a character-oriented approach and a bit-
oriented approach.

11.8
 Character-Oriented
Protocols
• In a character-oriented protocol, data to be
carried are 8- bit characters from a coding
system such as ASCII .
• The header, which normally carries the source

and destination addresses and other control

information, and the trailer, which carries error
detection or error correction redundant bits, are
also multiples of 8 bits.

11.9
 Figure 11.1 A frame in a character-oriented
protocol

To separate one frame from the next, an 8-bit (1-byte)

flag is added at the beginning and the end of a frame.
The flag, composed of protocol-dependent special
characters, signals the start or end of a frame. Figure
11.1 shows the format of a frame in a character-oriented
protocol

11.10
 Bit-Oriented
Protocols
In a bit-oriented protocol, the data section of a
frame is a sequence of bits to be interpreted by
the upper layer as text, graphic, audio, video,
and so on. However, in addition to headers (and
possible trailers), we still need a delimiter to
separate one frame from the other.

Most protocols use a special 8-bit pattern flag

01111110 as the delimiter to define the
beginning and the end of the frame, as shown in
11.12
•Bit stuffing is the process of adding one extra bit 0
whenever five consecutive 1s follow a 0 in the data,
so that the receiver does not mistaken the pattern
0111110 for a flag.
 Figure 11.3 A frame in a bit-oriented
protocol

11.14
 11-2 FLOW AND ERROR
CONTROL
The most important responsibilities of the data link
layer are flow control and error control. Collectively,
these functions are known as data link control.

Topics discussed in this section:

Flow Control
Error Control

11.16
 Flow control refers to a set of procedures
used to restrict the amount of data
that the sender can send
before waiting for
acknowledgment.
•Each receiving device has a block of memory, called a
buffer, reserved for storing incoming data until they are
processed.
•If the buffer begins to fill up, the receiver must be able to
tell the sender to halt transmission until it is once again
able to receive.

11.17
 Error control is both error detection and error
correction. It allows the receiver to tell the sender
of any frames lost or damaged in transmission
and coordinates the retransmission of those
frames by the sender.

Error control in the data link layer is

based on automatic repeat request
(ARQ), which is the retransmission of
data.

11.18
 11-3
PROTOCOLS
Now let us see how the data link layer can combine
framing, flow control, and error control to achieve the
delivery of data from one node to another. The protocols
are normally implemented in software by using one of
the common programming languages. To make our
discussions language-free, we have written in
pseudocode a version of each protocol that concentrates
mostly on the procedure instead of deeply the details of
language rules.

11.19
 Figure 11.5 classification of protocols discussed in this
chapter

11.20
 11-4 NOISELESS CHANNELS

Let us first assume we have an ideal channel in

which no frames are lost, duplicated, or corrupted.
We introduce two protocols for this type of channel.

Topics discussed in this section:

Simplest Protocol – has no flow or error control
Stop-and-Wait Protocol – sender sends one frame, stops until it
receives agree from receiver and then sends the next frame

11.21
 1-Simplest

Protocol
Our first protocol, which we call the Simplest Protocol, is one
that has no flow or error control. Like other protocols, it is a
unidirectional protocol in which data frames are traveling in
only one direction-from the sender to receiver.
 The receiver can immediately handle any frame it receives
with a processing time that is small enough to be negligible.
 The data link layer of the receiver immediately removes the
header from the frame and hands the data packet to network
layer, which can also accept the packet immediately.
 In other words, the receiver can never be fill out with
incoming frames.
11.22
 Figure 11.6 The design of the simplest protocol with no flow or error
control

11.23
11.24
11.25
 Example 11.1
Figure 11.7 shows an example of communication using this protocol. It is very
simple. The sender sends a sequence of frames without even thinking about
the receiver. To send three frames, three events occur at the sender site and
three events at the receiver site. Note that the data frames are shown by tilted
boxes; the height of the box defines the transmission time difference between
the first bit and the last bit in the frame.
Figure 11.7 Flow diagram for Example
11.1

11.26
 Stop-and-Wait
Protocol
If data frames arrive at the receiver site faster
than they can be processed, the frames must be
stored until their use. Normally, the receiver
does not have enough storage space, especially
if it is receiving data from many sources.
 We need to tell the sender to slow down. There
must be
feedback from the receiver to the sender.
 The sender sends one frame, stops until it
receives agreement the receiver (okay to go
ahead), and then sends the next frame. We still
have unidirectional communication for data
frames, but auxiliary ACK frames (simple tokens
of acknowledgment) travel from the other
11.27 direction. We add flow control to our previous
 Figure 11.8 Design of Stop-and-Wait Protocol

11.28
 Example 11.2
Figure 11.7 shows an example of communication using this protocol. It is still
very simple. The sender sends one frame and waits for feedback from the
receiver. When the ACK arrives, the sender sends the next frame. Note that
sending two frames in the protocol involves the sender in four events and the
receiver in two events.
Figure 11.7 Flow diagram for Example
11.2

11.29
 11-5 NOISY
CHANNELS

Although the Stop-and-Wait Protocol gives us an idea of how to

add flow control to its predecessor, noiseless channels are
nonexistent. We discuss three protocols in this section that use
error control.

Topics discussed in this section:

Stop-and-Wait Automatic Repeat Request(ARQ)
Go-Back-N Automatic Repeat Request
Selective Repeat Automatic Repeat Request

11.32
 Error correction in Stop-and-Wait ARQ is done by
keeping a copy of the sent frame and retransmitting
of the frame when the timer expires.

In Stop-and-Wait ARQ, we use sequence numbers

to number the frames.
The sequence numbers are based on modulo-2
arithmetic.

In Stop-and-Wait ARQ, the acknowledgment number

always announces in modulo-2 arithmetic the
sequence number of the next frame expected.

11.33
 Figure 11.10 Design of the Stop-and-Wait ARQ
Protocol

11.34
 Example 11.3
Figure 11.11 shows an example of Stop-and-Wait ARQ. Frame 0 is sent and
acknowledged. Frame 1 is lost and resent after the time-out. The resent frame 1 is
acknowledged and the timer stops. Frame 0(second ) is sent and acknowledged, but
the acknowledgment is lost. The sender has no idea if the frame or the
acknowledgment is lost, so after the time-out, it resends frame 0, is
acknowledged
which
.
Figure 11.11 Flow
diagram for Example
11.3

1
Efficiency
•very inefficient if our channel is thick and long.
•By thick, we mean that our channel has a large bandwidth; by
long, we mean the round-trip delay is long. The product of these
two is called the bandwidth delay product.
•The bandwidth-delay product is a measure of the number of bits
we can send out of our system while waiting for news from the
receiver.
 Pipelinin

gInbegun
networking and in other areas, a task is often
before the previous task has ended. This is
known as pipelining. There is no pipelining in Stop-
and-Wait ARQ because we need to wait for a frame
to reach the destination and be acknowledged
before the next frame can be sent.

 Pipelining improves the efficiency of the

transmission if the number of bits in transition is
large with respect to the bandwidth-delay .

11.39
 Go-Back-N Automatic Repeat
Request
 To improve the efficiency of transmission
(filling the pipe), multiple frames must be
in transition while waiting for
acknowledgment. In other words, we
need to let more than one frame be
outstanding to keep the channel busy
while the sender is waiting for
acknowledgment.

 In this protocol we can send several

frames before receiving
11.40 acknowledgments; we keep a copy of
Sequence number:
•The header of the frame allows m bits for the
sequence number, the sequence number range
from 0 to 2m-1.

•For eg: if m is 4, the only sequence number are 0 to

15. we can repeat the sequence.

0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,0,1,2,3,….
Sliding Window
•Is a feature of packet based data transmission protocols.
•Each portion of the data transmission is assigned a unique consecutive
sequence number, and the receiver uses the numbers to place received
packets in the correct order, discarding duplicate packets and
identifying missing ones.
•The range which is the concern of the sender is called the send sliding
window; the range that is the concern of the receiver is called the
receive sliding window.
•The maximum size of the window is 2m – 1.
 Figure 11.12 Send window for Go-Back-N
ARQ

11.43
 The send window is an abstract concept
defining an imaginary box of size 2m − 1 with
three variables: Sf, Sn, and Ssize.
Sf defines the sequence number of the first (oldest)
outstanding frame.
Sn holds the sequence number that will be
assigned to the next frame to be sent.
Ssize defines the size of the window, which is fixed
in our protocol.

The send window can slide one

or more slots when a valid acknowledgment
arrives.
11.44
 Figure 11.13 Receive window for Go-Back-N
ARQ

The receive window is an abstract concept defining an

imaginary box of size 1 with one single variable
Rn .
The window slides when a correct frame has arrived;
sliding occurs one slot at a time.
11.45
TIMERS:
•Timer for each frame sent.
Acknowledgment:
•The receiver sends positive ack if the frame has arrived safely.
•If a frame is damaged or received out of order , the receiver is silent and will
discard all subsequent frames until it receives the one it is expecting.
•The silence at the receiver causes the timer of the unacknowledged frame at
the sender site to expire.
•This cause the sender to go back and resend all the frames , beginning with
the one with the expired timer.
•The receiver does not have to acknowledge each frame received.
•It can send one cumulative acknowledgment for several frames.
Resending a Frame
When the timer expires, the sender resends all outstanding
frames. For example, suppose the sender has already sent frame
6, but the timer for frame 3 expires. This means that frame 3 has
not been acknowledged; the sender goes back and sends frames 3,
4,5, and 6 again. That is why the protocol is called Go-Back-N
ARQ.
 Figure 11.14 Design of Go-Back-N
ARQ

11.48
 Selective Repeat Automatic
Repeat Request
 Go-Back-N ARQ simplifies the process at the receiver
site. The receiver keeps track of only one variable,
and there is no need to buffer out-of-order frames;
they are simply discarded. However, this protocol is
very inefficient for a noisy link. Why ? In a noisy link a
frame has a higher probability of damage, which
means the resending of multiple frames.

 This resending uses up the bandwidth and slows down

the transmission. For noisy links, there is another
mechanism that does not resend N frames when just
one frame is damaged;
 only the damaged frame is resent. This mechanism
is called Selective Repeat ARQ. It is more efficient
11.54
  This Protocol also uses two windows: a send
window and a receive window.
 There are differences between the windows in
this protocol and the ones in Go-Back-N. First,
the size of the send window is much smaller; it is
2m-1. Second, the receive window is the same
size as the send window.
 For example, if m = 4, the sequence numbers go
from 0 to 15, but the size of the window is just 8
(it is 15 in the Go-Back-N Protocol). The smaller
window size means less efficiency in filling the
pipe, but the fact that there are fewer duplicate
frames.

11.55
 Figure 11.18 Send window for Selective Repeat
ARQ

11.56
  The receive window in Selective Repeat is totally
different from the one in Go Back-N. First, the size
of the receive window is the same as the size of the
send window(2m-1). The Selective Repeat Protocol
allows as many frames as the size of the receive
window to arrive out of order and be kept until
there is a set of in-order frames to be delivered to
the network layer.

 Because the sizes of the send window and receive

window are the same, all the frames in the send
frame can arrive out of order and be stored until
they can be delivered. We need, however, to
mention that the receiver never delivers packets
out of order to the network layer. Figure 11.19
shows the receive window in this
11.57
 Figure 11.19 Receive window for Selective Repeat
ARQ

11.58
 Figure 11.20 Design of Selective Repeat
ARQ

11.59
 Note

In Selective Repeat ARQ, the size of

the sender and receiver window
must be at most one-half of 2m.

11.63
 Piggybacki
ng
 The three protocols we discussed in this section are all
unidirectional: data frames flow in only one direction although
control information such as ACK and NAK frames can travel in
the other direction. In real life, data frames are normally flowing
in both directions: from node A to node B and from node B to
node A. This means that the control information also needs to
flow in both directions.
 A technique called piggybacking is used to improve the
efficiency of the bidirectional protocols. When a frame is
carrying data from A to B, it can also carry control information
about arrived (or lost) frames from B; and verse versa.

11.64
 Figure 11.24 Design of piggybacking in Go-Back-N
ARQ
Piggybacking – control information flow in both directions
and improves the efficiency of bidirectional protocols

11.65
  Note that each node now has two windows: one send
window and one receive window. Both also need to
use a timer.
 An important point about piggybacking is that both
sites must use the same algorithm.
 This algorithm is complicated because it needs to
combine two arrival events into one.

11.66