1. Briefly explain (i) Coaxial Cable and (ii) Optical fiber.

Answer
Coaxial Cable Coaxial cable has traditionally been an important part of the long distance telephone network. Today, it faces increasing competition from optical fiber, terrestrial microwave, and satellite. Using frequency-division multiplexing (FDM), a coaxial cable can carry over 10,000 voice channels simultaneously. Physical Description

Coaxial cable Coaxial cable, like twisted pair, consists of two conductors, but constructed differently to permit it to operate over a wider range frequency. It consists of hollow outer cylindrical conductor that surrounds a single inner wire conductor. The inner conductor is held in place by either regularly spaced insulating rings or a solid dielectric material. The outer conductor is covered with jacket or shield. The physical description is illustrated in figure 5.2. A single coaxial cable has a diameter of from 1 to 2.5cm. Because of its shielded, concentric construction, coaxial cable is much less susceptible to interference and crosstalk than twisted pair. Coaxial cable can be used over long distances and support more stations on a shared line than twisted pair. Coaxial cable is perhaps the most versatile transmission medium and is enjoying widespread use in a wide variety of applications. The most important of these are used in television distribution and Long-distance telephone transmission. Also they find applications in Short-run computer system links and Local area networks. Coaxial cable is spreading rapidly as a means of distributing TV signals to individual homes-cable TV. From its modest beginnings as Community Antenna Television (CATV), designed to provide service to remote areas, cable TV will eventually reach almost as many homes and offices as the telephone. A cable TV system can carry dozens or even hundreds of TV channels at ranges up to a few tens of kilometers. Coaxial cable is also commonly used for short range connections between devices. Using digital signaling, coaxial cable can be used to provide high-speed I/O channels on computer systems.

Optical Fiber A optical fiber is a thin, flexible medium capable of guiding an optical ray. Total internal reflection is the basic principle on which the transmission of data takes place through fibers. . If the angle of incidence is sufficiently large, then the light in the fiber will reflect repeatedly in the interface between the materials. The fiber need not be straight but can conduct light even when bent. An optical fiber has a cylindrical shape and consists of three concentric sections; the core, the cladding and the jacket. The core is the inner most sections and consists of one or more very thin strands, or fibers, made of glass or plastic and is as shown in Figure 5.5. The core has a diameter in the range of 8 to 100mm. Each fiber is surrounded by its own cladding, a glass or plastic coating that has optical properties different from those of the core. Various glasses and plastics can be used to make optical fibers. The lowest losses have been obtained using fibers of ultra-pure fused silica. Ultra pure fiber is difficult to manufacture; higher loss multi component glass fibers are more economical and still provide good performance. Plastic fiber is even less costly and can be used for short-haul links, for which moderately high losses are acceptable.

The interface between the core and cladding acts as a reflector to confine light that would otherwise escape the core. The outermost layer, surrounding one or a bundle of cladded fibers, is the jacket. The jacket is composed of plastic and other material layered to protect against moisture, abrasion, crushing and other environmental dangers. One of the most significant technological breakthroughs in data transmission has been the development of practical fiber optic communication systems. Optical fiber already enjoys considerable use in long-distance telecommunications, and its use in military applications is growing. The continuing improvements in performance and decline in prices, together with the inherent advantages of optical fiber, have made it increasingly attractive for LAN.

2. What are the functions of (i) Routers (iii) Bridges Answer

Router A router is an intelligent packet sorter, which can look at the ultimate destination for a packet and analyze the best way to get it there. A router is often a full - fledged computer system with multiple network cards and its own operating system. Routers operate on Layer 3, the network layer that routes data o different networks. Router performance is measured using its packet- forwarding rate, which is the number of packets transferred per second from input to output port. This rate depends on packet size, and how many protocols are being supported.

Unlike bridges and switches, which use the hardware-configured MAC address to determine the destination of the data, routers use the software-configured network address to make decisions. This approach makes routers more functional than bridges or switches, and it also makes them more complex because they have to work harder to determine the information. Bridges Bridges are intelligent devices that operate at layer 2 and are used to interconnect LANs of the same type. Packets received on one port may be retransmitted or forwarded on another port. A bridge unlike repeaters will not start retransmission until it has received the complete packet. As a consequence, stations on either side of a bridge may be transmitting simultaneously without causing collisions. Unlike repeaters, bridges may provide filtering and forwarding services across the link.

Bridge interconnects two Token Ring LANs : Bridges are networking devices that divide up networks. A bridge functions by blocking or forwarding data, based on the destination MAC address written into each frame of data.

3. Define the terms Error Detection and Correction with respect to Data Transmission. Also explain the following concepts with respect to Error Detection and Correction: Parity Bits Cyclic Redundancy Check

Answer There are two types of attacks against errors: Error Detecting Codes: Include enough redundancy bits to detect errors and use ACKs and retransmissions to recover from the errors. Error Correcting Codes: Include enough redundancy to detect and correct errors. To understand and deal with errors, we consider the following some of the terms and conventions used: 1. Messages (frames) consist of m data (message) bits and r redundancy bits, yielding an n = (m+r)-bit codeword. 2. Hamming Distance: Given any two codewords, we can determine how many of the bits differ. Simply exclusive or (XOR) the two words, and count the number of 1 bits in the result. 3. Significance? If two codewords are d bits apart, d errors are required to convert one to the other. 4. A code's Hamming Distance is defined as the minimum Hamming Distance between any two of its legal codewords (from all possible codewords). 5. In general, all possible data words are legal. However, by choosing check bits carefully, the resulting codewords will have a large Hamming Distance. The larger the Hamming distance, the better able the code can detect errors. Parity Bits parity: A single parity bit is appended to each data block (e.g. each character in ASCII systems) so that the number of 1 bits always adds up to an even (odd) number. If the total number of bits including the appended bit is even, the parity bit appended is called even parity. Similarly, If the total number of bits including the appended bit is odd, the parity bit appended is called odd parity of even parity: 1. Data is 1000000 After using even parity the code becomes 10000001 2. Data is 1111101 After using even parity the code becomes 11111010 Error Detection or Cyclic Redundant Code (CRC) The most popular error detection codes are based on polynomial codes or cyclic redundancy codes (CRCs). It is used for error detection and is most commonly used as Error correction is relatively expensive (computationally and in bandwidth). For example, 10 redundancy bits are required to correct 1 single-bit error in a 1000-bit message. Detection? In contrast, detecting a single bit error requires only a single-bit, no matter how large the message. Using this technique the receiver acknowledges correctly received frames and discards incorrect ones.

4. Write notes on (i) Non-Persistent CSMA (ii) 1-Persistent CSMA (iii) P Persistent CSMA Answer
1. Non-Persistent CSMA : Non-persistent CSMA is less greedy. The algorithm is given below: Sense the channel. IF the channel is idle, THEN transmit. If the channel is busy, THEN wait a random amount of time and start over.

2. 1-Persistent CSMA : 1-Persistent CSMA is selfish. The algorithm is given below: Sense the channel. IF the channel is idle, THEN transmit. IF the channel is busy, THEN continue to listen until channel is idle. Now transmit immediately.

3. P Persistent CSMA : p Persistent CSMA is a slotted approximation. The algorithm is given below: Sense the channel. IF the channel is idle, THEN with probability p transmit and with probability (1-p) delay for one time slot and start over. IF the channel is busy, THEN delay one time-slot and start over.

5. Explain about Dynamic or Adaptive Routing algorithms with necessary example. Answer
Dynamic or adaptive Routing algorithms in contrast change their routing decisions to reflect changes in topology and usually the traffic as well. Dynamic routing attempts to solve this problem by constructing routing tables automatically, based on information carried by routing protocols, and allowing the network to act nearly autonomously in avoiding network failures and blockages. Dynamic routing dominates the Internet. However, the configuration of the routing protocols often requires a skilled touch; one should not suppose that networking technology has developed to the point of the complete automation of routing. Packet-switched networks, such as the Internet, split data up into packets, each labeled with the complete destination address and each routed individually. Circuit switched networks, such as the voice telephone network, also perform routing, in order to find paths for circuits (such as telephone calls) over which they can send large amounts of data without continually repeating the complete destination address.

6. Discuss the problems that occur while establishing a connection. Answer

Connection establishment Establishing a connection sounds easy but in practice it is not so. The problem occurs when the network can lose, store and duplicate packets. The Major problem is the existence of delayed duplicates. It can be solved in various ways but not of them work satisfactorily. One way is to use throw away transport addresses. Here each time a transport address is needed, a new one is generated. When a connection is released, the address is discarded. Another possibility is to give each connection a connection identifier that is a sequence number incremented for each connection established. This number is chosen by initiating party. After each connection is released, each transport entity could update a table listing obsolete connections this scheme has basic flaws: it requires each transport entity to maintain a certain amount of history information indefinitely. If a machine crashes and loses its memory, it will no longer know which connection identifiers have already been used. Another mechanism is to kill off the aged packets. Packet lifetime can be restricted to a known maximum using one of the following ways. 1. Restricted subnet design 2. Putting a hop counter in each packet 3. Time stamping each packet. The connection establishment protocol introduced by Tomlinson is known as a three way handshake. This protocol does not require both sides to begin sending with the same sequence number