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Com puter N et w or k s P ro b l e m s
Chapter 1 Chapter 5 Chapter 2 Chapter 6 Chapter 3 Chapter 7 Chapter 4 Chapter 8

Chapter 4 The Medium Access Control Layer

1. For this problem, use a formula from this chapter, but first state the formula. Frames arrive randomly at a 100-Mbps channel for transmission. If the channel is busy when a frame arrives, it waits its turn in a queue. Frame length is exponentially distributed with a mean of 10,000 bits/frame. For each of the following frame arrival rates, give the delay experienced by the average frame, including both queueing time and transmission time. (a) 90 frames/sec. (b) 900 frames/sec. (c) 9000 frames/se. Answer: The formula is the standard formula for Markov queueing given in section 4.1.1, namely, T = 1/(C ? ). Here C = 108 and = 104, so T = 1/(10000 ? lambda) sec. For the three arrival rates, we get (a) 0.1 msec, (b) 0.11 msec, (c) 1 msec. For case (c) we are operating a queueing system with = /C = 0.9, which gives the 10 delay. 2. A group of Nstations share a 56-kbps pure ALOHA channel. Each station outputs a 1000-bit frame on an average of once every 100 sec, even if the previous one has not yet been sent (e.g., the stations can buffer outgoing frames). What is the maximum value of N ? Answer: With pure ALOHA the usable bandwidth is 0.184 56 kbps = 10.3 kbps. Each station requires 10 bps, so N = 10300/10 = 1030 stations. 3. Consider the delay of pure ALOHA versus slotted ALOHA at low load. WHich one is less ? Explain your answer. Answer: With pure ALOHA, transmission can start instantly. At low load, no collisions are expected so the transmission is likely to be successful. With slotted ALOHA, it has to wait for the next slot. This introduces half a slot time of delay. 4. Ten thousand airline reservation stations are competing for the use of a single slotted ALOHA channbel. The average station makes 18 requests/hour. A slot is 125 sec. What is the approximate total channel load ? Answer: Each terminal makes one request every 200 sec, for a total load of 50 requests/sec. Hence G = 50/8000 = 1/160.

5. A large population of ALOHA users manages to generate 50 requests/sec, including both originals and retransmissions. Time is slotted in units of 40 msec. (a) What is the chance of success on the first attempt ? (b) What is the probability of exactly k collisions and then a success ? (c) What is the expected number of transmission attempts needed ? Answer: (a) With G = 2 the Poisson law gives a probability of e2. (b) (1 ? eG)keG = 0.135 0.865k . (c) The expected number of transmissions is eG = 7.4 . 6. Meadurements of a slotted ALOHA channel with an infinite number of users show that 10 percent of the slots are idle. (a) What is the channel load, G? (b) What is the throughput? (c) Is the channel underloaded or overloaded?
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Answer: (a) From the Poisson law again, P = e-G ,so G =-lnP =-ln 0.1 = 2.3. (b) Using S =Ge-G with G = 2.3 and e-G = 0.1, S = 0.23. (c) Whenever G > 1 the channel is overloaded, so it is overloaded.

7. In an infinite-population slotted ALOHA system, the mean number of slots a station waits between a collision and its retransmission is 4. Plot the delay versus throughput curve for this system. Answer: The number of transmissions is E = e-G . The E events are separated by E - 1 intervals of four slots each, so the delay is 4(e-G 1). The throughput is given by S= Ge-G . Thus, we have two parametric equations, one for delay and one for throughput, both in terms of G. For each G value it is possible to find the corresponding delay and throughput, yielding one point on the curve.

8. How long does a station, s, have to wait in the worst case before it can start transmitting its frame over a LAN that uses (a) the basic bit-map protocol? (b) Mok and Wards protocol with permuting virtual station number? Answer: (a) The worst case is: all stations want to send and s is the lowest numbered station. Wait time N bit contention period + (N - 1) d bit for transmission of frames. The total is N + (N - 1)d bit times. (b) The worst case is: all stations have frames to transmit and s has the lowest virtual station number. Consequently, s will get its turn to transmit after the other N - 1 stations have transmitted one frame each, and N contention periods of size log N each. Wait time is thus (N - 1) d + N log2 bits.

9. A LAN uses Mok and Wards version of binary countdown. At a certain instant, the ten stations have the virtual station numbers 8, 2, 4, 5, 1, 7, 3, 6, 9 and 0. The next three stations to send are 4, 3 and 9, in that order. What are the new virtual station numbers after all three have finished their transmissions? Answer: When station 4 sends, it becomes 0, and 1, 2, and 3 are increased by 1. When station 3 sends, it becomes 0, and 0, 1, and 2 are increased by 1. Finally, when station 9 sends, it becomes 0 and all the other stations are incremented by 1. The result is 9, 1, 2, 6, 4, 8, 5, 7, 0, and 3.

10. Sixteen stations, numbered 1 through 16, are contending for the use of a shared channel by using the adaptive tree walk protocol. If all the stations whose addresses are prime numbers suddenly become ready at once, how many bit slots are needed to resolve the contention? Answer: Stations 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and 13 want to send. Eleven slots are needed, with the contents of each slot being as follows: slot 1: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 slot 2: 2, 3, 5, 7 slot 3: 2, 3 slot 4: 2 slot 5: 3 slot 6: 5, 7 slot 7: 5 slot 8: 7 slot 9: 11, 13 slot 10: 11 slot 11: 13

11. A collection of 2n stations uses the adaptive tree walk protocol to arbitrate access to a shared cable. At a certain instant, two of them become ready. What are the minimum, maximum, and mean number of slots to walk the tree if 2n >>1?
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Answer: The number of slots required depends on how far back in the tree one must go to find a common ancestor of the two stations. If they have the same parent (i.e., one level back), which happens with probability 2-n , it takes 2n + 1 slots to walk the tree. If the stations have a common grandparent, which happens with probability 2-n+1 the tree walk takes 2n - 1 slots, etc. The worst case is 2n + 1 (common parent), and the best case is three slots (stations in different halves of the tree). The mean, m, is given by This expression can be simplified to

12. The wireless LANs that we studied used protocols such as MACA instead of using CSMA/CD. Under what conditions, if any, would it be possible to use CSMA/CD instead? Answer: Radios cannot receive and transmit on the same frequency at the same time, so CSMA/CD cannot be used. If this problem could be solved (e.g., by equipping each station with two radios), there is still the problem of not all stations being within radio range of each other. Only if both of these problems can be solved, is CSMA/CD a candidate.

13. What properties do the WDMA and GSM channel access protocols have in common? See Chap. 2 for GSM. Answer: Both of them use a combination of FDM and TDM. In both cases dedicated frequency (i.e., wavelength) bands are available, and in both cases these bands are slotted for TDM.

14. Six stations, A through F, communicate using the MACA protocol. Is it possible that two transmissions take place simultaneously? Explain your answer. Answer: Yes. Imagine that they are in a straight line and that each station can reach only its nearest neighbors. Then A can send to B while E is sending to F.

15. A seven-story office building has 15 adjacent offices per floor. Each office contains a wall socket for a terminal in the front wall, so the sockets form a rectangular grid in the vertical plane, with a separation of 4 m between sockets, both horizontally and vertically. Assuming that it is feasible to run a straight cable between any pair of sockets, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, how many meters of cable are needed to connect all sockets using (a)a star configuration with a single router in the middle? (b)an 802.3 LAN? Answer: (a) Number the floors 1-7. In the star configuration, the router is in the middle of floor 4. Cables are needed to each of the 7 15 1 = 104 sites. The total length of these cables is The total length is about 1832 meters. (b) For 802.3, 7 horizontal cables 56 m long are needed, plus one vertical cable 24 m long, for a total of 416 m.

16. What is the baud rate of the standard 10-Mbps Ethernet? Answer: The Ethernet uses Manchester encoding, which means it has two signal periods per bit sent. The data rate of the standard Ethernet is 10 Mbps, so the baud rate is twice that, or 20 megabaud.
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is 10 Mbps, so the baud rate is twice that, or 20 megabaud.

17. Sketch the Manchester encoding for the bit stream: 0001110101. Answer: The signal is a square wave with two values, high (H) and low (L). The pattern is LHLHLHHLHLHLLHHLLHHL.

18. Sketch the differential Manchester encoding for the bit stream of the previous problem. Assume the line is initially in the low state. Answer: The pattern this time is HLHLHLLHHLLHLHHLHLLH.

19. A 1-km-long, 10-Mbps CSMA/CD LAN (not 802.3) has a propagation speed of 200 m/ sec. Repeaters are not allowed in this system. Data frames are 256 bits long, including 32 bits of header, checksum, and other overhead. The first bit slot after a successful transmission is reserved for the receiver to capture the channel in order to send a 32-bit acknowledgement frame. What is the effective data rate, excluding overhead, assuming that there are no collisions? Answer: The round-trip propagation time of the cable is 10 sec. A complete transmission has six phases: transmitter seizes cable (10 sec) transmit data (25.6 sec) Delay for last bit to get to the end (5.0 sec) receiver seizes cable (10 sec) acknowledgement sent (3.2 sec) Delay for last bit to get to the end (5.0 sec) The sum of these is 58.8 sec. In this period, 224 data bits are sent, for a rate of about 3.8 Mbps.

20. Two CSMA/CD stations are each trying to transmit long (multiframe) files. After each frame is sent, they contend for the channel, using the binary exponential backoff algorithm. What is the probability that the contention ends on round k, and what is the mean number of rounds per contention period? Answer: Number the acquisition attempts starting at 1. Attempt i is distributed among 2i-1 slots. Thus, the probability of a collision on attempt i is 2-(i-1). The probability that the first k - 1 attempts fail, followed by a success on round k is which can be simplified to The expected number of rounds is then just .

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