Answer of Question 1:

(Part a)

TCP Reno Performance in case of packet losses due to non-congestion in
wireless Networks

In wired network packet loss usually occurs due to congestion and traditional TCP Reno
use congestion control mechanism to improve performance. Whenever TCP Reno detects packet
loss it sets its congestion window size to 1 and goes into slow start.
In case of wireless networks packet loss due to congestion is not the main reasons, there
are many other main reasons for packet loss i.e. interference, mobility, handover, fading etc.
If TCP Reno uses congestion control mechanism in wireless network for packet loss due
to non-congestion, it will think packet loss due to congestion and go into slow start to avoid
congestion but as there is no congestion on wireless network, so it will waste lots of available
bandwidth available to send packets.

Example

If Host A wants to send data to Host B in a wireless network and TCP Reno is working
that network. At start congestion window size is 1 segment and will increase exponentially on
each successful acknowledgement. When congestion window size will reach to threshold value
TCP will go into congestion avoidance mode to avoid congestion but there is no congestion on
the network.
Now at this point Host B moves from its terminal to other terminal and few packets are
lost due to handover. On detection of missing acknowledgement TCP will think that there is
congestion on the network and on timeout it will go to slow start and set congestion window size
to 1. But as packet was not lost due to congestion, all bandwidth is available for data
transmission and after handover complete Host B will be available for communication. So due to
congestion control mechanism for packet loss due to non-congestion, lots of bandwidth will be
wasted by TCP Reno.















(Part b)

Three Enhancements of TCP proposed for Wireless Environments

1. Indirect TCP (I-TCP)

Indirect TCP was developed because the performance of traditional TCP for wireless
environment was not good and also TCP cannot be changed in the wired network. So some new
enhancement of TCP was needed to overcome these two problems.
Indirect TCP splits end-to-end TCP connection into two parts, one for wired network and
other part for wireless network. Traditional Standard TCP is used within wired network and for
wireless network modified TCP is used to work in wireless environment.

Working






Figure 1
Host 1 wants to send data to host 2. Host 1 is connected with access point through wired
link and host 2 is connected with access point through wireless link. Between host 1 and access
point Standard TCP will work and between host 1 and access point modified TCP will be used.
TCP connection will split at access point and it will act as proxy between two hosts for Host 1
access point is host 2 and for host 2 access point is host 1. Now if host 1 sends a packet to host 2,
access point will store it in its buffer and send the acknowledgement by itself to host 1 and also
transmits the buffered packet to host 2 and wait for acknowledgement of host 2 on receiving of
acknowledgement it will discard the packet from its buffer, it will repeat same process for all
packets.
In case if access point detects any missing acknowledgement access point will retransmit packet
from its buffer and host 1 will not know about any missing acknowledgement from host 2. Both
hosts are unaware of separate TCP connections.
In case of handover if host 2 moves from its access point (Foreign Agent) other foreign agent
then previous foreign agent will send all buffered data and proxy information to new foreign
agent.

2. Snooping TCP

Problem of Indirect TCP is that it splits the TCP connection and does not maintain single
end-to-end connection between sender and receiver. For example if host 1 sends packet to host to
when intermediate access point will receive data it will send the acknowledgement to host 1
Access Point
(Foreign Agent)
Host 1
Host 2
Standard TCP for Wired Network
Modified TCP for Wireless Network
without confirming that packet is received by host 2. This problem is resolved in Snooping TCP
that maintains transparent end-to-end TCP connection between sender and receiver.

Working
In snooping TCP foreign agent nearest to host 2 will buffer packets for fast
retransmission and discards packets when it receive acknowledgement from receiving host but
will not send acknowledgements by itself, instead it will snoop each packet goes through it for
acknowledgements. If it finds any missing acknowledgement or duplicate acknowledgement it
will locally retransmit packet from its buffer. Closest access point has much shorter timeout time
then sending host because it is far nearer then it. It will filter the duplicate and missing
acknowledgements to save host 1 from retransmitting the packet.
Access point works transparently between sending and receiving hosts and both hosts are
unaware of any snooping or anything else so this will maintain the single end-to-end connection
between two hosts because access point will not send acknowledgements on its own but only
snoops the packets to fast retransmit packets in case of loss.

3. Mobile TCP

There is another reason of packet loss in wireless environment which is disconnection of
mobile host which can happen very often in wireless network. If a host want to send data to
mobile host and due to some reason mobile host disconnects during communication, so host 1
will wait for acknowledgement and if it does not receives ACK for specified time it will
retransmit packet and double the time of retransmission after each retransmission. In case of
Indirect TCP if mobile host at receiving end disconnects then foreign agent will have to store
more and more packets in its buffer until host reconnects. The more time it reconnection takes
more buffer is needed. And if mobile host is disconnected during handover then previous agent
will have to send more packets and information to the new foreign agent.
Mobile TCP was developed to solve this problem of disconnection which is common in
wireless environment.

Working
Like Indirect TCP, mobile TCP also splits TCP connection in two parts standard TCP for
wired network and modified TCP for wireless network. In mobile TCP packets are not buffered
and in case of packet loss sending host will detect missing or duplicate acknowledgement and
will retransmit packet, this maintains the end-to-end connection between sender and receiver.
In Mobile TCP access point or foreign agent works as supervisor it monitors the packets passing
through it and if it detects that there is no acknowledgement from receiving mobile host for the
specified period of time it will assume that mobile host is disconnected and set the window size
of sending device to 0 which will send the device to persistent mode. Sending device will stop
retransmitting the packets and will remain in persistent mode. Whenever sender will detect that
receiving mobile host is reconnected it will set the window size of sender to previous value and
sender will start from where it stopped. This prevents sender to go in slow start.



Answer of Question 2:

Fragmentation

Every Network has the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) which is the maximum data
in bytes that a network can carry at a time. If a packet has size greater than MTU then it will be
divided into smaller part and sent separately independent of each other, this process is called
fragmentation.
To divide a packet into smaller fragments MTU is used. Size of fragmented packet +
original packets header size is less than or equal to MTU because the header of the original
packet is copied into the header of fragmented packet.

Following are the main fields used in fragmentation and reassembly of original packet.

Identification ID: Identification number or ID is used with each fragmented packet which is
same in every fragmented packet of a single original packet. ID helps the destination to
reassemble the packet because it groups the packets with same ID and source IP together to form
original packet.
More Flag (MF): this field tells whether the packet is last or not. If it is set to 1 then it mean the
fragmented packet is not the last packet and there is one or more fragment after this and if it is 0
then it tells that the fragment is last.
Fragment Offset (FO): this field tells the position of the fragment in original packet with
respect to original datagram. Offset of a data in original packet is measured in unit of 8 bytes.
For example if we want to fragment a packet of 3000 bytes into three fragments and MTU is
1200 bytes. First fragment will have bytes from 0 to 1200 and its offset will be 0/8 = 0, the next
fragment will carry the bytes from 1200 to 2399 and its offset will be 1200/8 = 150 and the last
fragment will have the bytes from 2400 to 3000 and its offset will be 2400/8 = 300. This force to
choose the size of fragment that has first byte of multiple of 8.

At destination packets are reassembled into original packets this process is called
reassembly. ID, more flag, and fragment offset tell that which fragment belong to particular
original packet and where to position the fragment.
Fragments are sent independent of each other and may take different paths to reach to the
destination that is why they are reassembled at destination. A fragmented packet can again be
fragmented into more fragments at any host or router in path but are reassembled at destination.
Example
Host A wants to send a datagram of 3020 bytes (3000 bytes of data + 20 bytes of header) to host
b and data will pass through network 1 with MTU 1500 bytes and Network 2 with MTU 1000
bytes (as shown in figure 1).




Figure 1
Host A
Network 1 MTU =1500
Router
Host B
Network 1 MTU =1000
The datagram will be needed fragment into three parts to pass through the network 1, as 20 bytes
header will be attached to each fragment so MTU for data will be 1480.
First fragment will carry bytes from 0 to 1479 of data so its FO (Fragment Offset) will be
0/8 = 0 and because it is not the last fragment so its MF (More Flag) will be 1. ID (Identification)
for each fragment will be same because they belong to same original datagram say 1 in this case.
Second fragment will carry bytes from 1480 to 2959 of data so its FO will be 1480/8 =
185 and this fragment too is not the last so its MF will be 1.
Third fragment will carry bytes from 2960 to 2999 of data so its FO will be 2960/8 = 370
and this fragment is last so its MF will be 0.
Now to get passed through network 2 fragments with total size of 1500 bytes will again
be fragmented into sub fragments because its MTU is 1000 bytes. Now both fragments of 1500
bytes will be sub fragmented into two fragments ad follow
First sub fragment of fragment 1 will carry data bytes from 0 to 975 and 20 bytes of
header here 4 bytes will be wasted because first byte of each fragment must be multiple of 8. FO
of this sub fragment will be 0/8 = 0 + 0 = 0 (0 is added from previous fragment because FO is
related to original datagram). Its MF will be 1 because it is first sub fragment.
Second sub fragment will carry the data from 976 to 1499 and its offset will be (976/8 +
0 = 122) and as it is last sub fragment its MF will be 1.


Figure 2 illustrate the process of fragmentation



Answer of Question 3:

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

Session Initiation Protocol is a communication protocol which is used to control session
(start, manage, end) between two or more users for communication such as voice call, video
conference, instant messaging etc. SIP is also widely used in VoIP.
SIP works on application layer and is independent of transport layer protocols i.e. it can run on
both TCP and UDP.

Working

SIP is text based protocol and it is similar to HTTP. SIP uses two types of different
messages that are as follow

1. Request Messages
There are six request messages
INVITE: this message is used by the caller to establish a session for communication.
ACK: it is a conformation message sent by caller after receiver answers INVITE
message.
BYE: this message is used to end the session.
OPTIONS: this message is used to request the information about the capabilities of
machine.
CANCEL: this message is used to cancel the session initialization request.
REGISTER: this message is used to tell the current location of the user. It contains
the users current IP address and port on which user will communicate.

2. Responses Messages
Whenever user agent receives a request message it sends a response message. There are
six responses.
Provisional Responses: this message tells to its recipient that request is received
and is under process.
Positive Final Responses: these messages tell the request initiator that request has
been received, processed successfully and accepted.
Redirect Responses: these are usually sent by proxy server. When a proxy server
cannot process a request it sends redirection response to caller that can be the
location of other proxy or the location of receiver.
Client error Response: this response means that there is syntax error in request
and it cannot be processed by server side.
Server Side error: this response means that request is correct but server cannot
process request due to problem at server side.
Global Failure: this means that request cannot be processed by any server.



User Agents
User agents are end points that want to communicate with each other using SIP. If a user
agent is sending request and receiving response then it is referred to as User Agent Client (UAC)
and if it is receiving requests and sending response then it is referred to as User Agent Server
(UAS).

Proxy Server
Although two user agents can communicate directly with each other but proxy servers are
very important in SIP. A proxy server works as intermediary to perform routing of session
messages to the entity closer to user agent.

Communication through session
For a user agent to communicate with other user involves three parts, establish a session,
communicate and terminate session.

1. Establish a session
It requires a three way handshake, first user agent initiate session by sending INVITE
request using transport layer protocol to the user agent with whom it want to communicate. If the
receiver of request wants to start a session then it will send a replay and session initiator will
send ACK to conform the receipt of reply this will establish a session between to users. But if
sender of INVITE request does not receive any replay or negative response then it can CANCEL
the session.
2. Communicate
After the session is established then both user agent will communicate using temporary
ports.
3. Terminate session
When the communication is done any user agent can send BYE message to terminate the
session.

Tracking
Sometimes receiver can be in other terminal away from its own terminal. SIP uses
registration concept to track a user if it is not in its own terminal. A user will register itself with
registration server if it is not in its own terminal. Now if sender want to communicate it will use
email address of receiver in INVITE message instead of IP address. Proxy server will receive the
message and then sends a look up message to the register server wit which receiver is registered.
If proxy server receives the replay then it will change the email address with IP address in
INVITE messages header and send it to receiver.

Benefits

SIP is a text based protocol which is easy to extend
SIP is simple to use and lightweight
SIP uses authentication and encryption which increase security.




Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is used to automatically assign IP addresses and
other configuration information to a host in TCP/IP network. DHCP contains a pool of IP
addresses and whenever it receives a request from a host it assigns it an IP address from pool of
available addresses. It is a client\server protocol in which client requests the configuration
information from DHCP server to enable it to communicate on the network and DHCP server
provides the required information such as IP address, DNS address, and default gateway.

DHCP Messages
Following are the DHCP messages sent between server and clients.
DHCP Discover: broadcasted by client when it when it want to connect with the
network, requesting the configuration information from server.
DHCP Offer: Sent by server when it receives discover message from client. It
contains the IP address to offer to the client and other configuration information.
DHCP Request: sent by client if it select the DHCP offer. It contains the IP
address that client selected.
DHCP Decline: sent by client if it declines the offer of IP address sent by server.
DHCP ACK: sent by server acknowledging the client request of selected IP
address.
DHCP NACK: sent by server if it declines the client request of selected IP
address.
DHCP Release: sent by client to server if client releases the IP address assigned to
it.
DHCP Inform: sent by client if it already has IP address and wants additional
configuration parameters information.

IP Lease Process
There are two types of lease processes
1. Obtaining new IP lease
1. When a host want a new IP address and other network configuration information it start
communication with DHCP server by broadcasting DHCPDiscover message
2. When DHCP server receives request from client it sends DHCPOffer message that
contains the IP address being offered to client and other network configuration
information.
3. Client responds to IP address offer from server by selecting offered IP and sending
DHCPRequest message telling server that client has accepted IP address.
4. DHCP conforms the clients request by sending DHCPACK message finalizing the lease
of IP address.
When client receives acknowledgement from server, it configures its TCP/IP properties and
start communication on the network.



2. Renewing IP lease
When 50% of IP address lease time is completed, client tries to renew its IP lease by
sending DHCP request message to the server from which IP lease was taken. If server is
available then server check whether lease is available if yes then server will send DHCPACK to
client renewing IP lease for client
If server is available but lease is not available then server will send DHCPNACK to client
and client will start the process of obtaining new IP address.
If there is no response from server then client will wait until 87% of lease time completes
then it will again send request for renew of IP lease to server if still no response and lease time is
complete then client will start the process of new IP lease by broadcasting DHCPDiscover
message.

Benefits
It saves from manually configuring each network host on the network.
Prevents IP addresses conflicts which can occur in manual configuration of host.


BOOTP Protocol

BOOTP protocol is used to assign IP address from a pool of IPs to host on a network when
it starts up. It was intended to use with diskless workstations, assigning them IP address on
startup and giving the information about the location of their Operating system.
BOOTP was designed to overcome the deficiencies of RARP such as it provides more
information then only IP address and in can be anywhere on the network. BOOTP provides the
base to its successor DHCP which is now widely used in place of it. BOOTP does not provide
extended features of DHCP such as lease and renewal features.

Working
BOOTP is a static configuration protocol because it maintains a table that contains a
predetermined binding of IP address and physical address. Whenever a client requests a IP
address BOOTP protocol matches the physical address of client and returned an IP address
bound with that physical address. Table is managed by network administrator.


Network Address Translation (NAT)

Network Address Translation protocol is used to map local unregistered IP addresses of a
private network to unique global IP address. Hosts in a private network can use registered global
IP addresses locally within their private network, but if any host wants to communicate globally
with internet it requires a globally unique IP address. So NAT is used to translate the local IP
address of that host with the unique global IP address if host is communicating with global
network and when a packet will come from global network for that host NAT will translate it
back to local IP.
NAT works as intermediary between private local network and global network. Gateway
router can be configured to perform the function of NAT.


Working
For example if a host of local network is using local IP (192.168.1.2) to communicate
locally and wants to communicate with a server outside of local network and a gateway router is
configured to perform NAT function. When router will receive a packet it will read the IP
address of source host and also verify that the source meets the criteria of address translation by
checking Access Control List. If ok then it will translate the local IP address with a global IP
from available given global IP addresses for example that is (213.10.45.4) and add the entry of
that mapping in its NAT table.
Now if the Outside server responds, the packet from server will come on (213.19.45.4) IP of
default gateway. Gateway router will check for mapping against that global IP address in NAT
table if entry found it will retranslate the global IP address with local IP address of host and
forward the packet to destination IP of (192.168.1.2).

There are two types of IP address mappings
Static Mapping
In static mapping there is a fixed one-to-one relationship between local and global
addresses. Each host in a local network with local IP is assigned a one permanent global IP
address and host will always communicate with that global IP on global network.

Dynamic Mapping
In dynamic mapping there is a pool of global IP addresses from which an available global IP
address is mapped with the local IP of local host if it wants to communicate on the outside
network and entry of mapping is added into NAT table. In this first come first serve mechanism
is used.

Benefit
The main benefit for which NAT was created is that NAT minimize the space of required
global IP addresses, for example if there are 100 hosts in local private network they can use
unregistered local IP addresses within local network and when some host want to communicate
on global network it can be assigned a global IP address from available range of 20 to 25 global
IP addresses that saves the space of global IP addresses because instead of assigning 100 global
IPs to each host we have only 20 to 25 global IP addresses.



Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)

Address Resolution Protocol is used to translate an IP address of host into its physical
address.
Within a single physical network host are identified by their physical address instead of IP
address but higher level protocols use IP addresses instead of physical addresses as destination
address of host. So ARP maps the IP addresses of host with its physical address. ARP uses
lookup tables to perform mapping of addresses.

Working
If a device wants to send data to other device in a network it need the physical address of
receiving device. Each device maintains ARP cache to map IP address with physical address. So
if sending device will look for the physical address of the device against its IP if sending device
finds the physical address it will simply send the data on that address.
In case if sending device does not find the physical address of receiving device then, it will send
broadcast message within a network requesting for physical address of receiving device, the
device will match IP if IP matches with devices IP then it will send ARP response to sending
device and device will update its ARP cache.