Introduction

1.1

1-1 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.

Topics discussed in this section:

Components of a data communications system
Data Flow
1.2

Figure 1.1 Components of a data communication system

1.3

Figure 1.2 Data flow (simplex, half-duplex, and full-duplex)

1.4

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
1.5

Network Criteria

Performance

Reliability

Depends on Network Elements- Transit time & Response time

Measured in terms of Delay and Throughput
Failure rate of network components i.e. time it takes for a link
to recover from failure
Measured in terms of availability/robustness

Security

Data protection against corruption/loss of data due to:

1.6

Errors
Malicious users (unauthorized access)

Physical Structures

Type of Connection

Physical Topology

1.7

Point to Point - single transmitter and receiver

Multipoint - multiple recipients of single transmission
Connection of devices
Type of transmission - unicast, mulitcast, broadcast

Figure 1.3 Types of connections: point-to-point and multipoint

1.8

Figure 1.4 Categories of topology

1.9

Figure 1.5 A fully connected mesh topology (five devices)

1.10

Figure 1.6 A star topology connecting four stations

1.11

Figure 1.7 A bus topology connecting three stations

1.12

Figure 1.8 A ring topology connecting six stations

1.13

Figure 1.9 A hybrid topology: a star backbone with three bus networks

1.14

Comparison
Topology

Advantages

Disadvantages

Bus

Cheap. Easy to install.

Difficult to reconfigure.
Break in bus disables
entire network.

Star

Cheap. Easy to install.

Easy to reconfigure.
Fault tolerant.

More expensive than bus.

Ring

Efficient. Easy to install.

Reconfiguration difficult.
Very expensive.

Mesh

Simplest. Most fault

tolerant.

Reconfiguration extremely
difficult.
Extremely expensive.
Very complex.

1.15

Categories of Networks

Local Area Networks (LANs)

Wide Area Networks (WANs)

Long distances
Provide connectivity over large areas

Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs)

1.16

Short distances
Designed to provide local interconnectivity (usually privately
owned)

Provide connectivity over areas such as a city, a campus

Provides high speed data connection to the Internet

Figure 1.10 An isolated LAN connecting 12 computers to a hub in a closet

1.17

Figure 1.11 WANs: a switched WAN and a point-to-point WAN

1.18

Figure 1.12 A heterogeneous network made of four WANs and two LANs

1.19

Computer Network Building Blocks

1.20

Repeater - To increase strength of signals periodically (sort of an

electronic analog regenerator, works at physical layer).It is used to
extend LAN by placing it between two cable segments .
Hub - Physical layer device, used to connect hosts of same
network. Star topology(physically),Ethernet hub simulates a shared
bus, hence acts as broadcasting device. It can also be described as
multi-port repeater.
Bridge - Works at link layer. It may be used to join two LAN
segments (A,B), constructing a larger LAN. A bridge is able to filter
traffic passing between the two LANs and may enforce a security
policy separating different work groups located on each of the LANs.

1.21

Switch - link layer device, used to connect hosts in

LAN. Unlike hub, it is a point-point device =>fwds pkts
to particular port (no broadcasting). Uses Mac table for
forwarding. Faster and has more ports than bridge. A
vital difference between a hub and a switch is that all
the nodes connected to a hub share the bandwidth
among themselves, while a device connected to a switch
port has the full bandwidth all to itself.
Router - ip layer device, used to connect different LAN.
It can connect different types of physical networks.
Gateway It is used for an application gateway, which
is a process that connects two different protocol suites
for one particular application. Historically routers were
called gateways.

Switching

1.22

In order to overcome the problems related

to point to point and multi-point
connection , we require switching.
A switched network consists of a series of
interlinked nodes, called switches.
Switches are devices capable of creating
temporary connections between two or
more devices linked to the switch.

Circuit Switching
A complete, dedicated, physical path consisting
of connected links is established between
source and destination hosts before any data
exchange takes place.
Source ---------signalling msg-----> Destination
<-----------reply--------<---------data----------->

1.23

Cont.

1.24

End to end resources are reserved, full

bandwidth.
Data packets move in sequential manner
through dedicated connection.
The data flows continuously.
Circuit-like (guaranteed) performance
Low propagation delay (can be known in
advance)
Thus it has 3 stages - connection establishment,
data transfer, connection termination.

A best example for the circuit switching would be a telephone

network. In the diagram above the caller A dials specific
number to connect to the caller B. Once caller A finishes
dialling the destination number, it reaches the telephone switch.
The switch searches and select any one of the available routes
to the destination. The connection is established when the caller
B answers his phone. The red colour line on the diagram
above shows the connection path During the whole conversation
between caller A and B, the established connection will be
used
1.25

Virtual Circuit Switching

1.26

Data is exchanged between hosts using a virtual

circuit . A virtual circuit is a logical path that is
set up between the SD before data transfer.
It is non-dedicated connection through a shared
medium on which all packets from the sender
are sent.
Unlike CS , VCS allows simultaneous sharing of
link capacity, by more than one virtual circuits
passing through the link.

Cont.

1.27

Each such circuit is identified by labels called Virtual

circuit Identifiers(VCI) and it uniquely identifies a single
link of connection from S2D. This tags are embedded in
header and based on it switches forward packet to next
switch.
To swap the tags each switch has tables termed as
virtual circuit tables. Each entry in the table records
values of incoming VCI and outgoing VCI as well as
incoming and outgoing links .

Packet Switching

Each data stream is divided into packets.

Each packet is transmitted from S2D individually
via intermediate switches
Packet comprises of 3 parts - header, payload
and checksum

1.28

Header -- SD address, packet type, sequence types,

timestamp etc
Payload Actual data to be transmitted
Checksum Error detection and correction

Cont.

1.29

Sender transmits the packets, the switch

completely receives the packet , examines
packet header to find out the destination
address and then determines the next link to
forward the packet.
The packets may reach destination through
different paths.
The packets received can be out of order , so
requires reassembling at the receiver host .
Users share network resources.

Internet Protocol (IP) is an example of packet switching.

When a person sends a message via appropriate
application and protocols to another user, the messages
are divided into packet which consists of chunks of data in
small quantity. The packets take any of the available path
to the destination. Upon reaching the destination, packets
are reassembled into the original message.