Question No 6

Transmission Imapiment:
Signals travel through transmission media, which are not perfect. The imperfection causes
signal impairment. This means that the signal at the beginning of the medium is not the same as
the signal at the end of the medium. What is sent is not what is received. Three causes of
impairment are attenuation, distortion, and noise.
Attenuation means a loss of energy. When a signal, simple or composite, travels through a
medium, it loses some of its energy in overcoming the resistance of the medium. That is why a
wire carrying electric signals gets warm, if not hot, after a while. Some of the electrical energy in
the signal is converted to heat. To compensate for this loss, amplifiers are used to amplify the
signal.

Distortion means that the signal changes its form or shape. Distortion can occur in a composite
signal made of different frequencies.Each signal component has its own propagation speed
through a medium and, therefore, its own delay in arriving at the final destination. Differences in
delay may create a difference in phase if the delay is not exactly the same as the period duration.
In other words, signal components at the receiver have phases different from what they had at the
sender. The shape of the composite signal is therefore not the same.

Noise is another cause of impairment. Several types of noise, such as thermal noise, induced
noise, crosstalk, and impulse noise, may corrupt the signal. Thermal noise is the random motion of
electrons in a wire which creates an extra signal not originally sent by the transmitter. Induced
noise comes from sources such as motors and appliances. These devices act as a sending antenna,
and the transmission medium acts as the receiving antenna. Crosstalk is the effect of one wire on
the other. One wire acts as a sending antenna and the other as the receiving antenna. Impulse
noise is a spike (a signal with high energy in a very short time) that comes from power lines,
lightning, and so on.






Question No 7
i) IP Classes
Class A addresses always have the first bit of their IP addresses set to 0. Since Class A networks have an
8-bit network mask, the use of a leading zero leaves only 7 bits for the network portion of the address,
allowing for a maximum of 128 possible network numbers, ranging from 0.0.0.0 127.0.0.0. Number
127.x.x.x is reserved for loopback, used for internal testing on the local machine.
Class B addresses always have the first bit set to 1 and their second bit set to 0. Since Class B
addresses have a 16-bit network mask, the use of a leading 10 bit-pattern leaves 14 bits for the network
portion of the address, allowing for a maximum of 16,384 networks, ranging from 128.0.0.0
181.255.0.0.
Class C addresses have their first two bits set to 1 and their third bit set to 0. Since Class C addresses
have a 24-bit network mask, this leaves 21 bits for the network portion of the address, allowing for a
maximum of 2,097,152 network addresses, ranging from 192.0.0.0 223.255.255.0.
Class D addresses are used for multicasting applications. Class D addresses have their first three bits set
to 1 and their fourth bit set to 0. Class D addresses are 32-bit network addresses, meaning that all the
values within the range of 224.0.0.0 239.255.255.255 are used to uniquely identify multicast groups.
There are no host addresses within the Class D address space, since all the hosts within a group share the
groups IP address for receiver purposes.
Class E addresses are defined as experimental and are reserved for future testing purposes. They have
never been documented or utilized in a standard way.
ii) Layer 2 Devices and Their Functions


Layer 2 defines how data is formatted for transmission and how access to the physical media is controlled. These
devices also provide an interface between the Layer 2 device and the physical media. Some common examples are
a NIC installed in a host, bridge, or switch.

Question No 8:
GSM Architecture
The GSM network architecture as defined in the GSM specifications can be grouped into four main
areas:
Mobile station (MS)
Base-station subsystem (BSS)
Network and Switching Subsystem (NSS)
Operation and Support Subsystem (OSS)

Simplified GSM Network Architecture


Mobile station
Mobile stations (MS), mobile equipment (ME) or as they are most widely known, cell or mobile
phones are the section of a GSM cellular network that the user sees and operates. In recent years
their size has fallen dramatically while the level of functionality has greatly increased. A further
advantage is that the time between charges has significantly increased.
There are a number of elements to the cell phone, although the two main elements are the main
hardware and the SIM.
The hardware itself contains the main elements of the mobile phone including the display, case,
battery, and the electronics used to generate the signal, and process the data receiver and to be
transmitted. It also contains a number known as the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI).
This is installed in the phone at manufacture and "cannot" be changed. It is accessed by the network
during registration to check whether the equipment has been reported as stolen.
The SIM or Subscriber Identity Module contains the information that provides the identity of the user
to the network. It contains are variety of information including a number known as the International
Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI).


Base Station Subsystem (BSS)
The Base Station Subsystem (BSS) section of the GSM network architecture that is fundamentally
associated with communicating with the mobiles on the network. It consists of two elements:
Base Transceiver Station (BTS): The BTS used in a GSM network comprises the radio
transmitter receivers, and their associated antennas that transmit and receive to directly
communicate with the mobiles. The BTS is the defining element for each cell. The BTS
communicates with the mobiles and the interface between the two is known as the Um
interface with its associated protocols.
Base Station Controller (BSC): The BSC forms the next stage back into the GSM
network. It controls a group of BTSs, and is often co-located with one of the BTSs in its
group. It manages the radio resources and controls items such as handover within the group
of BTSs, allocates channels and the like. It communicates with the BTSs over what is termed
the Abis interface.


Network Switching Subsystem (NSS)
The GSM network subsystem contains a variety of different elements, and is often termed the core
network. It provides the main control and interfacing for the whole mobile network. The major
elements within the core network include:
Mobile Switching services Centre (MSC): The main element within the core network area
of the overall GSM network architecture is the Mobile switching Services Centre (MSC). The
MSC acts like a normal switching node within a PSTN or ISDN, but also provides additional
functionality to enable the requirements of a mobile user to be supported. These include
registration, authentication, call location, inter-MSC handovers and call routing to a mobile
subscriber. It also provides an interface to the PSTN so that calls can be routed from the
mobile network to a phone connected to a landline. Interfaces to other MSCs are provided to
enable calls to be made to mobiles on different networks.
Home Location Register (HLR): This database contains all the administrative information
about each subscriber along with their last known location. In this way, the GSM network is
able to route calls to the relevant base station for the MS. When a user switches on their
phone, the phone registers with the network and from this it is possible to determine which
BTS it communicates with so that incoming calls can be routed appropriately. Even when the
phone is not active (but switched on) it re-registers periodically to ensure that the network
(HLR) is aware of its latest position. There is one HLR per network, although it may be
distributed across various sub-centres to for operational reasons.
Visitor Location Register (VLR): This contains selected information from the HLR that
enables the selected services for the individual subscriber to be provided. The VLR can be
implemented as a separate entity, but it is commonly realised as an integral part of the MSC,
rather than a separate entity. In this way access is made faster and more convenient.
Equipment Identity Register (EIR): The EIR is the entity that decides whether a given
mobile equipment may be allowed onto the network. Each mobile equipment has a number
known as the International Mobile Equipment Identity. This number, as mentioned above, is
installed in the equipment and is checked by the network during registration. Dependent
upon the information held in the EIR, the mobile may be allocated one of three states -
allowed onto the network, barred access, or monitored in case its problems.
Authentication Centre (AuC): The AuC is a protected database that contains the secret
key also contained in the user's SIM card. It is used for authentication and for ciphering on
the radio channel.
Gateway Mobile Switching Centre (GMSC): The GMSC is the point to which a ME
terminating call is initially routed, without any knowledge of the MS's location. The GMSC is
thus in charge of obtaining the MSRN (Mobile Station Roaming Number) from the HLR
based on the MSISDN (Mobile Station ISDN number, the "directory number" of a MS) and
routing the call to the correct visited MSC. The "MSC" part of the term GMSC is misleading,
since the gateway operation does not require any linking to an MSC.
SMS Gateway (SMS-G): The SMS-G or SMS gateway is the term that is used to
collectively describe the two Short Message Services Gateways defined in the GSM
standards. The two gateways handle messages directed in different directions. The SMS-
GMSC (Short Message Service Gateway Mobile Switching Centre) is for short messages
being sent to an ME. The SMS-IWMSC (Short Message Service Inter-Working Mobile
Switching Centre) is used for short messages originated with a mobile on that network. The
SMS-GMSC role is similar to that of the GMSC, whereas the SMS-IWMSC provides a fixed
access point to the Short Message Service Centre.


Operation and Support Subsystem (OSS)
The OSS or operation support subsystem is an element within the overall GSM network architecture
that is connected to components of the NSS and the BSC. It is used to control and monitor the
overall GSM network and it is also used to control the traffic load of the BSS. It must be noted that
as the number of BS increases with the scaling of the subscriber population some of the
maintenance tasks are transferred to the BTS, allowing savings in the cost of ownership of the
system.

Question No 9
2.2.1 Circuit switching
Circuit switching was the rst switching technique used in communication networks
because it is simple enough to carry analog signals. This thesis will just focus on the
digital version of circuit switching. Of course, the main example of its use is the phone
system [72], but it is also used in the core of the Internet in the form of SONET/SDH
and DWDM equipment [81, 126]. In circuit switching, the transmission medium is
typically divided into channels using Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM), 2 Time
Division Multiplexing (TDM) or Code Division Multiplexing (CDM) [172]. A circuit
is a string of concatenated channels from the source to the destination that carriers
an information ow.3
To establish the circuits, a signaling mechanism is used. This signaling only carries
control information, and it is considered an overhead. It is also the most complex
part in circuit switching, as all decisions are taken by the signaling process. It is
commonly assumed that the signaling and per-circuit state management make circuit
switches hard to design, congure and operate.
In circuit switching the channel bandwidth is reserved for an information ow. To
ensure timely delivery of the data, the capacity of the circuit has to be at least equal
to the peak transmission rate of the ow. In this case, the circuit is said to be peak
allocated, and then the network oers a connection-oriented service with a perfect
quality of service (QoS) in terms of delay jitter and bandwidth guarantees, However,
this occurs at the cost of wasting bandwidth when sources idle or simply slow down.
Contention only occurs when allocating channels to circuits during circuit/call
establishment. If there are not enough channels for the request, the call establishment
may be delayed, blocked or even dropped. In contrast, once the call is accepted,
resources are not shared with other ows, eliminating any uncertainty and, thus,
removing the need for buering, processing or scheduling in the data path. When
circuits are peak allocated, the only measure of Quality of Service (QoS) in circuit
switching is the blocking probability of a call.
To summarize, circuit switching provides trac isolation and trac engineering,
but at the expense of using bandwidth ineciently and signaling overhead. It is often
said that these two drawbacks make circuit switching highly inexible, especially in
a highly dynamic environment such as the Internet. I will argue in this that these
drawbacks are outweighed by the advantages of using more circuit switching in the
core of the network.

Packet switching
Packet switching is the basis for the Internet Protocol (IP) [152, 172]. In packet
switching, information ows are broken into variable-size packets (or _xed-size cells
as in the case of ATM). These packets are sent, one by one, to the nearest router, which
will look up the destination address, and then forward them to the corresponding next
hop. This process is repeated until the packet reaches its destination. The routing of
the information is thus done locally, hop-by-hop. Routing decisions are independent
of other decisions in the past and in other routers; however, they are based on network
state and topology information that is exchanged among routers using BGP, IS-IS or
OSPF [148]. The network does not need to keep any state to operate, other than the
routing tables.
The forwarding mechanism is called store-and-forward because IP packets are
completely received, stored in the router while being processed, and then transmitted.
Additionally, packets may need to be bu_ered locally to resolve contention for
resources. 4 If the system runs out of bu_ers, packets are dropped.
With the most scheduling policies, such as FCFS and WFQ, packet switchingremains work
conserving; it keeps the link busy as long as there are packets waiting
to be sent. This allows it to have a statistical multiplexing gain; that is, the capacity
of an outgoing link can be much smaller than the sum of its tributaries and still have a
packet delay or drop probability within certain statistical bounds. This gain is higher
when tra_c is more bursty. The bu_ering needs and the statistical multiplexing are
the main characteristics of packet switching, and they will be crucial in its comparison
with circuit switching.
In the Internet, the network service is connectionless and best e_ort; that is, it
provides no delivery guarantees. Reliability, ow control and connection-oriented
services are provided by end-to-end mechanisms, such as with TCP [153]. Because
the underlying service is best e_ort, there are no guarantees in terms of packet drops,
maximum delay, delay jitter or bandwidth.
Much research was done in the early days of computer networking comparing circuit
switching, packet switching and message switching (a variant of packet switching,
in which the whole information ow is treated as a single switching unit) [96, 10, 164,
97, 175, 95]. Most of the work was done in the context of packet radio, satellite, and
local area networks and shows how in these environments packet switching provided
higher throughput for a given bound on the average delay. Packet switching not only
made an e_ective use of the network bandwidth, but it also was robust and resilient
to node and link failures.
Later work on di_erent scheduling algorithms and signaling mechanisms, such as
Weighted Fair Queueing (WFQ) [62], Generalized Processor Sharing (GPS) [141],
Di_erentiated Services (Di_Serv) [16], Integrated Services (IntServ) [20] and De_cit
Round Robin (DRR) [113], showed how packet switching can also provide QoS guarantees
if the admission of new ows to the network can be controlled.