ELEN 4017 – Network Fundamentals

Tutorial No. 2
Instructions:
 The objective of the tutorial is to discuss ‘Review Questions’ and ‘End Problems’
of Chapter 1 and 2 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.
Chapter 1

1. (P12) Consider a packet of length ‘L’ which begins at end-system A, travels over one
link to a packet switch, and travels from the packet switch over a second link to a
destination end-system. Let ‘di’, ‘si’ and ‘Ri’ denote the length, propagation speed
and the transmission rate of link ‘i’, for ‘i=1,2’. The packet switch delays each packet
by ‘dproc’. (Hint: Since the problem involves a lot of parameters, it is better to draw
the links and entities and write the associated parameters besides corresponding
entity/link)
 Assuming no queuing delays, what is the total end-to-end delay for the
packet in terms of ‘di’, ‘si’, ‘Ri’ (i=1,2) and ‘L’?
 Suppose now the packet is 1000 bytes, the propagation speed on both links
is 2.5*108 m/s, the transmission rate of both the links is 1 Mbps, the packet
switching delay is 1 ms, the length of the first link is 4000 km and the length
of the last link is 1000 km. For these values, what is the end to end delay?

2. (P23) Suppose two hosts, A and B, are separated by 10000 kilometers and are
connected by a direct link of ‘R=1Mbps’. Suppose the propagation speed over the
link is 2.5*108 m/s
 Calculate the bandwidth-delay product, ‘R* dprop’.
 Consider sending a file of 400,000 bits from Host A to Host B. Suppose the file
is sent continuously as one large message. What is the maximum number of
bits that will be in the link at any given time?
 Provide an interpretation of the bandwidth-delay product.
 What is the width (in meters) of a bit in the link? Is it longer than a football
field?
 Derive a general expression for the width of a bit in terms of the propagation
speed ‘s’, the transmission rate ‘R’, and the length of the link ‘m’.
Chapter 2

1. (R6) Suppose you wanted to do a transaction from a remote client to a server as fast
as possible. Would you use TCP or UDP? Why?

2. (R8) List the four broad classes of services that a transport protocol can provide. For
each of the service classes, indicate if either UDP or TCP (or both) provide such as a
service.

3. (R10) Describe how Web caching can reduce the delay in receiving a requested
object. Will Web caching reduce the delay for all objects requested by a user or for
only some of the objects? Why?

4. (R17) Suppose Alice, with a Web-based e-mail account (such as Hotmail or gmail),
sends a message to Bob, who accesses his mail from his mail server using POP3.
Discuss how the message gets from Alice’s host to Bob’s host. Be sure to list the
series of application-layer protocols that are used to move the message between the
two hosts.

5. (R18) Is it possible for an organization’s Web server and mail server to have exactly
the same alias for a hostname (for example, foo.com)? What would be the type for
the RR that contains the hostname of the mail server?

6. (P8) Suppose within your Web browser you click on a link to obtain a Web page. The
IP address for the associated URL is not cached in your local host, so a DNS lookup is
necessary to obtain the IP address. Suppose that n DNS servers are visited before
your host receives the IP address from DNS; the successive visits incur an RTT of
RTT1, …... , RTTn. Further suppose that the Web page associated with the link
contains exactly one object, consisting of a small amount of HTML text. Let RTT0
denote the RTT between the local host and the server containing the object.
Assuming zero transmission time of the object, how much time elapses from when
the client clicks on the link until the client receives the object?

7. (P9) Referring to Problem above (P8), suppose the HTML file references eight very
small objects on the same server. Neglecting transmission times, how much time
elapses with
a. Non-persistent HTTP with no parallel TCP connections?
b. Non-persistent HTTP with the browser configured for 5 parallel connections?
c. Persistent HTTP?

8. (P10) Consider a short, 10-meter link, over which a sender can transmit at a rate of
150 bits/sec in both directions. Suppose that packets containing data are 100,000
bits long, and packets containing only control (e.g., ACK or handshaking are 200 bits
long. Assume that N parallel connections each get 1/N of the link bandwidth. Now
 consider the HTTP protocol, and suppose that each downloaded object is 100 Kbits
long, and that the initial downloaded object contains 10 referenced objects from the
same sender. Would parallel downloads via parallel instances of non-persistent HTTP
make sense in this case? Now consider persistent HTTP. Do you expect significant
gains over the non-persistent case? Justify and explain your answer.

9. (P11) What is the difference between MAIL FROM: in SMTP and From: in the mail
message itself?

10. (P16) Consider accessing your e-mail with POP3.

a. Suppose you have configured your POP mail client to operate in the
download-and-delete mode. Complete the following transaction:
i. C: list
ii. S: 1 498
iii. S: 2 912
iv. S: .
v. C: retr 1
vi. S: blah blah ...
vii. S: ..........blah
viii. S: .
ix. ?
x. ?
b. Suppose you have configured your POP Suppose you have configured your
POP mail client to operate in the download-and-keep mode. Complete the
following transaction:
i. C: list
ii. S: 1 498
iii. S: 2 912
iv. S: .
v. C: retr 1
vi. S: blah blah ...
vii. S: ..........blah
viii. S: .
ix. ?
x. ?

11. Considering both HTTP and SMTP protocols are essentially used to transfer
information from one host to another, discuss at-least two similarities and two
dissimilarities between the two protocols.

12. (D4) Can you configure your browser to open multiple simultaneous connections to a
website? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a large number of
simultaneous TCP connections?