Communication Networks (2nd Edition) Chapter 6 Solutions

36. Suppose that 80 percent of the traffic generated in the LAN is for stations in the LAN, and 20 percent is for
stations outside the LAN. Is an Ethernet Hub preferable to an Ethernet switch? Does the answer change if the
percentages are reversed?

Solution:

The difference between a hub and a switch is that in the hub frame are broadcast to all lines, while in
a switch, frames are forwarded to another collision domain only if the destination is in that domain.
When 80% of the traffic is local, the switch will only forward 20% of frames to other collision domains,
thus increasing the bandwidth available on those domains. If 80% of the traffic is to other collision
domains, then the switch forward more traffic to other domains. If there is only one other domain,
then the switch forwards almost as much traffic as a hub would and is thus ineffective in containing
broadcast traffic. On the other hand, if the switch has multiple broadcast domains, then the amount
of traffic forwarded from the switch will be less than that forwarded by a hub.

37. Calculate the parameter a and the maximum throughput for a Gigabit Ethernet hub with stations at a 100-meter
distance and average frame size of 512 bytes; 1500 bytes; and 64,000 bytes.

d = 100
Tprop = 0.0000005
R = 1.00E+09

512 1500 64000

a 0.12207 0.041667 0.000977
Throughput 0.56 0.788525 0.993754

42. Use IEEE 802.3 and IEEE 802.11 to discuss three differences between wired and wireless LANs.

Solution:

Error rate: Unlike wired LANs, wireless LANs have high error rate due to interference and noise.
Wireless LANs need to implement ARQ and/or error correction to increase the reliability of the
communication channel.

Station mobility: Unlike wired LANs where stations connected to the LANs are static, in wireless
LANs, the stations can be mobile and portable. Wireless LAN protocols may have to implement
dynamic traffic routing and service handoff when the station moves from one service area to another.

Collision detection: Collision detection is not effective in wireless LANs due to the hidden station
problem. Consequently, the sender must wait for explicit acknowledgment (e.g. RTS/CTS) from the
receiver to know whether or not a frame has been received. The wireless LAN protocol implements a
collision avoidance algorithm rather than the collision detection in wired LAN, and the delay in the
contention period is longer than thee round-trip delay of 2tprop of wired LAN because of waiting for the
receiver’s acknowledgment.

Other differences:

Security: In a wired LAN, the transmission medium is usually physically secure. In a wireless LAN,
any device within the geographic transmission area can intercept the transmissions. To provide data
security, wireless LANs need to implement encryption at the expense of higher cost and reduced
performance.

Power consumption: Portable and mobile devices are usually battery powered, and thus have limited
power capacity. The wireless LAN protocol must be designed to be power efficient.

All these issues are addressed in the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN protocol.

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Communication Networks (2nd Edition) Chapter 6 Solutions

43. For data packet radio networks, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of providing reliability by (a)
implementing error correction at the physical layer, (b) implementing error control as part of the MAC layer, and (c)
implementing error control at the LLC layer.

Solution:

Error correction at the physical layer uses up bandwidth in the form of check bits and adds complexity
in terms of hardware for detecting and correcting errors. If the bit error rate is low, ARQ at a higher
layer may be simpler and more efficient. However, if the bit error rate is high, error correction may
become essential to be able to communicate at all over the radio medium.

Error control at the MAC layer is the preferred approach if the error rate is not too high. The number
of check bits required for error detection is less than for error correction. Bandwidth is “wasted” only
on retransmissions, not in a large number of check bits in every transmission. The implementation of
ARQ is much simpler than complex error correction.

Error control at the LLC layer provides flexibility when operating over a MAC sublayer. The MAC
sublayer can provide connectionless service and the LLC can add reliability for those network layers
that require it.

44. Consider the distributed coordination function in IEEE 802.11. Suppose that all packet transmissions are
preceded by a RTS-CTS handshake. Find the capacity of this protocol following the analysis used for CSMA-CD.

Solution:

In IEEE 802.11 DCF with RTS-CTS handshake, the sender stations contend for the channel by
sending a RTS frame to the receiver, and it successfully captures the channel only when it receives a
CTS frame from the receiver.

The sender does not know if it has succeeded until time = DIFS + XRTS + SIFS + XCTS. By this time, if
no CTS frame arrives, the sender knows it has failed and will execute a backoff. This duration is
similar to 2tprop in CSMA-CD. Therefore, in CSMA-CA, the time can be divided in contention slots of
size (DIFS + XRTS + SIFS + XCTS).

Src DIFS RTS SIFS Data DIFS RTS

Dest SIFS CTS SIFS ACK SIFS CTS

Contention slot Data transmission Contention slot

Similar to CSMA-CD, suppose all stations are contending for the channel and have a probability of p
to transmit RTS during a contention slot. Then the maximum probability of success is 1/e as the
number of station increases, and the average # of contention slots in a contention period is e.

The maximum throughput occurs when all of the channel time is spent in transmission period followed
by contention intervals.

X data
ρ max =
X data + 2 SIFS + X ack + e( DIFS + X rts + SIFS + X cts )

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Communication Networks (2nd Edition) Chapter 6 Solutions

47. Why is error control (ARQ and retransmission) included in the MAC layer in IEEE 802.11 and not in IEEE
802.3?

Solution:

Error control is required in the MAC in IEEE 802.11 because of the noise and interference in the
wireless medium. In contrast, the wired medium for IEEE 802.3 protocol has very low error rates.

52. Six stations (S1-S6) are connected to an extended LAN through transparent bridges (B1 and B2), as shown in
the figure below. Initially, the forwarding tables are empty. Suppose the following stations transmit frames: S2
transmits to S1, S5 transmits to S4, S3 transmits to S5, S1 transmits to S2, and S6 transmits to S5. Fill in the
forwarding tables with appropriate entries after the frames have been completely transmitted.

S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6

LAN1 LAN2 LAN3

B1 B2
port 1 port 2 port 1 port 2

Station Port Station Port

Solution:

Station Port Station Port

S2 1 S2 1
S5 2 S5 2
S3 2 S3 1
S1 1 S1 1
S6 2

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