Notes for Lecture-1

MCA 206: Advanced Computer Networks

1.Communication
It is an exchange of thoughts, messages, information, speech, signals, writing or behavior.
Requirements for a proper communication are medium + energy, protocol. Some of the design
goals/criterion for communication are as follows:
1. Availability of communication system
2. Reliability
3. Scalability
4. Security
a. authenticity
b. integrity
5. Efficiency
a. bandwidth
b. speed
c. energy
d. cost
e. spectral efficiency (in case of wireless networks)
2.Communication Networks
The various modes of communication are as follows:
1. Before electronic age
a. doves/pigeons
b. postal system
2. Telegraphy
3. Telephone networks
4. Internet
5. Cellular/wireless networks
Internetworking is a concept of connecting different networks.
3.History of Internet
1961-62: Packet-switching theory was introduced in the internet.
1969: Host computers on ARPANET were connected to other nodes.
1972: Email application was launched.
The host-to-host protocol called Network Control Protocol (NCP) was completely implemented.
Mid 70’s: The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) established MFENet for its researchers in
Magnetic Fusion Energy.
80’s: Formation of other major networks like NSFNET, USENET, etc.
1985-95: Privatization of NSFNET. The Backbone had then grown from six nodes with
56 kbps links to 21 nodes with multiple 45 Mbps links the Backbone had grown from six nodes
with 56 kbps links to 21 nodes with multiple 45 Mbps links.
4.Design Goals of Internet
4.1. Primary Goal
“To develop an effective technique for multiplexed utilization of interconnected networks.”
Each network may be of a different type. Hence, Gateways (a layer of internet packet switches)
are used to interconnect the networks. These perform the necessary conversions (if any). Other
sources of variability in the design are addressing, MTU (maximum transfer unit), delivery
guarantees, delay/bandwidth, routing.

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4.2. Other Goals
1. Communication in the presence of failure
It means that if two entities are communicating over the Internet, and some failure causes the
Internet to be temporarily disrupted and reconfigured to reconstitute the service, then the entities
communicating should be able to continue without having to reestablish or reset the high level
state of their conversation.
2. Multiple types of Service
It is required that the Internet architecture should support, at the transport service level, a variety
of types of service. Usually the requirements differ in terms of speed, latency and reliability. In
general, there are two classes of applications: a) those which requires low bandwidth but low
delay in delivery. e.g: remote login. b) those which are less concerned with delay but very
concerned with throughput. e.g: file transfer.
Such a goal caused TCP & IP to evolve as two layers. TCP provided the reliable sequenced data
stream, while IP provided a basic building block called datagram.
3. Accommodation of different networks.
4. Distributed Management.
Individual networks (that constitute Internet) are managed and maintained by different
organizations, each operating a subset of gateways. Hence, there is no centralized management
of the Internet.
5. Cost Effectiveness.
Internet architecture does not produce as cost effective a utilization of expensive communication
resources as a more tailored architecture would. Internet packets are fairly long, and if short
packets are sent the overhead is quite apparent. On the other hand, large packets for file transfer
have a very minute overhead.
6. Dynamic host attachment & removal.
The host's connected to an individual network (i.e. part of internet) can be dynamically added or
removed which makes Internet more scalable.
7. Resource Accounting.
It is a desirable goal when designing any kind of network. This gives the accounting details of
the usage of resources by different hosts connected in the network.
It is easy to achieve in the case of cellular networks, etc. where the underlying theory is circuit
switching. Since, Internet architecture is built over packet switching, it has been difficult to
achieve this goal.
5.Internet Service Semantics
1. Best-effort: packet-switching datagram service.
2. Packets may be a) dropped b) duplicated c) reordered.
3. Packets cannot be created.