ELEN 4017 – Network Fundamentals

Tutorial No. 1
Instructions:
 The objective of the tutorial is to discuss ‘Review Questions’ and ‘End Problems’
of Chapter 1 from the book, “Computer Networking – A Top- Down Approach”,
5th Edition (International Edition).
 Only some of the following questions can be discussed during the tutorial
session. You are expected to solve the remaining questions as your homework
and discuss any related queries with the demonstrators or the instructor.
 Please bring your textbooks in the tutorial sessions.

1. (R7) Is HFC (Hybrid-Fiber-Coax) transmission-rate dedicated or shared among users? Are

collisions possible in a downstream HFC channel? Why or why not?

2. State two pros and two cons for both the dial-up as well as the DSL technology.

3. (R10) What is the transmission rate of Ethernet LANs? For a given transmission rate, can
each user on the LAN continuously transmit at that rate?

4. (Based on R12) State at-least 3 differences between Circuit switching and Packet
switching?

5. (P1) Consider the circuit-switched network in figure 1.12 (as given below) assuming
there are ‘n’ circuits on each link

a. What is the maximum number of simultaneous connections that can be in

progress at any one time in this network?
b. Suppose that all connections are between the switch in the upper-left-hand
corner and the switch in the lower right hand corner. What is the maximum
number of simultaneous connections that can be in progress?’
6. Suppose that all links in the network use TDM frames with 24 slots and each slot consists
of 8 bits. The frame rate on any link is 1000 frames/s and it takes 5 ms to establish a
connection between two hosts. Determine how long does it take to send a file of 1
Gigabytes from one host to another, with both of them connected over this circuit-
switched network?

7. (P2) Consider an application that transmits data at a steady rate (for example, the
sender generates an N-bit unit of data every k time units, where k is small and fixed).
Also, when such an application starts, it will continue running for a relatively long period
of time.
a. Would a packet switched network or a circuit switched network be more
appropriate for this application? Why?
b. Assuming packet-switching is used and that the sum of all application data-rates
is less than the Capacity of every link, is some form of congestion control
needed? Why?

8. (Based on P3) Make an analogy for the above delays for cars using ‘highways’ as links
and ‘tollbooths’ as routers

a. Assuming tollbooths are located 100 km apart, and a 10 car caravan having a
speed of 100km/hr for each car is traveling from tollbooth to tollbooth. Also
assuming that each tollbooth services a car at a rate of 1 car/12 seconds 1)
define what are the times in this example analogous to ‘transmission delay’ and
‘propagation delay’ and calculate their values. (Hint: You can think of each car as
a ‘bit’ and the complete caravan as the ‘packet’)
b. Suppose the caravan travels 200 km, beginning in front of one tollbooth, passing
through a second tollbooth, and finishing just before a third tollbooth. What is
the end-to-end delay?
c. Repeat the above part ‘b’ assuming that there are 7 cars instead of 10 in the
caravan.
9. (P4) Design and describe an application-level protocol to be used between an Automatic
Teller Machine, and a bank's centralized computer.
a. Your protocol should allow a user's card and password to be verified, the account
balance (which is maintained at the centralized computer) to be queried, and an
account withdrawal (i.e., when money is given to the user) to be made. Your
protocol entities should be able to handle the all-too-common case in which
there is not enough money in the account to cover the withdrawal.
b. Specify your protocol by listing the messages exchanged, and the action taken by
the messages. Sketch the operation of your protocol for the case of a simple
 withdrawal with no errors, using a diagram similar to that in Figure 1.2 of book
(msgs along time). Explicitly state the assumptions made by your protocol about
the underlying end-to-end transport service.

10. (P5) This elementary problem begins to explore propagation delay and transmission
delay, two central concepts in data networking. Consider two hosts, Hosts A and B,
connected by a single link of rate ‘R’ bps. Suppose that the two hosts are separated by
‘m’ meters, and suppose the propagation speed along the link is ‘s’ m/s. Host A is to
send a packet of size ‘L’ bits to Host B.
a. Express the propagation delay, ‘dprop’ in terms of ‘m’ and ‘s’.
b. Determine the transmission time of the packet, ‘dtrans’ in terms of ‘L’ and ‘R’.
c. Ignoring processing and queuing delays, obtain an expression for the end-to-end
delay.
d. Suppose Host A begins to transmit the packet at time ‘t=0’. At time ‘t=dtrans’,
where is the last bit of the packet?
e. Suppose ‘dprop’ is greater than ‘t=dtrans’ . At time ‘t=dtrans’, where is the first bit of
the packet?
f. Suppose ‘dprop’ is less than ‘t=dtrans’. At time ‘t=dtrans’, where is the first bit of the
packet?
g. Suppose ‘s=2.5*108’, ‘L=100bits’ and ‘R=28 kbps’. Find the distance ‘m’ so that
‘dprop’ equals ‘dtrans’ .

11. (P7) In this problem we consider sending real-time voice from Host A to Host B over a
packet-switched network (VoIP). Host A converts analog voice to a digital 64 kbps bit
stream on the fly. Host A then groups the bits into 48-byte packets. There is one link
between host A and B; its transmission rate is 1 Mbps and its propagation delay is 2
msec. As soon as Host A gathers a packet, it sends it to Host B. As soon as Host B
receives an entire packet, it converts the packet's bits to an analog signal. How much
time elapses from when a bit is created (from the original analog signal at A) until a bit is
decoded (as part of the analog signal at B)?

12. (P10) Consider the queueing delay in a router buffer (preceding an outbound link).
Suppose all packets are ‘L’ bits, the transmission rate is ‘R’ bps and that ‘N’ packets
arrive to the buffer every ‘LN/R’ seconds. Find the average queueing delay of a packet.
(Hint: The queuing delay for the first packet is zero; for the second packet ‘L/R’; for the
third packet ‘2L/R’. The ‘Nth’ packet has already been transmitted when the second
batch of packet arrives )