UNIT-II C0MMUNICATION NETWORKS -PROBLEMS, BOOK BACK

EXCERCISES (PART-1)
1. Go-Back-N ARQ, if 5 is the number of bits for the sequence number, then the
maximum size of the receive window must be _______.
Sol: Receiver window size is always 1
2. In Go-Back-N ARQ, if frames 4, 5, and 6 are received successfully, the receiver
may send an ACK _______ to the sender.
Sol: 7
3. In Go-Back-N ARQ, if 5 is the number of bits for the sequence number, then the
maximum size of the send window must be _____.
Sol: Sender window size = 2m – 1. If m =5, sender window size is 31.
4. In a Go-Back-N ARQ, if the window size is 63, what is the range of sequence
numbers?
Sol: The sequence numbers range from 0 to 2 m– 1. window size (2m − 1) should be
less than the sequence number ( 0 to 2m − 1). Therefore the sequence numbers range
from 0 to 63.
5. In Go–back 3 flow control protocol every 6th packet is lost. If we have to send 11
packets. How many transmissions will be needed ?

Sol: window size is 8 (ie.23). These are the serial transmissions of packets:1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 6 7 8 9 10 11 9 10 11 . Hence total 17 transmissions are needed. Packets in
bold in the above were failed transmissions. Hence their window (underlined) was
resent.

1 2 3 4 5 6 (lost), 7 8 6 7 8(retransmitted), 9(lost), 10 11 9 10 11(retransmitted)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 6 7 8 9 10 11 9 10 11

Ans:17

6. In Selective Repeat ARQ, if 5 is the number of bits for the sequence number,
then the maximum size of the send and receive window must be _____.
Sol: send and receive window size is 2 m-1
m=5, both send and receive window size is 16

7. In the _________Protocol, if no acknowledgment for a frame has arrived, we

resend all outstanding frames.
Sol: Go-Back-N ARQ

8. Draw the flow control using following scenario:

a.Frame 0 is sent, but lost.
b.Frame 0 is resent and acknowledged.
c.Frame 1 is sent and acknowledged, but the acknowledgment is lost.
 d.Frame 1 is resent and acknowledged.
Sol:

9. In the _________ protocol we avoid unnecessary transmission by sending only

frames that are corrupted.
Sol: Selective-Repeat ARQ

10. Consider a selective repeat sliding window protocol that uses a frame size of 1
KB to send data on a 1.5 Mbps link with a one-way latency of 50 msec. To
achieve a link utilization of 60%, the minimum number of bits required to
represent the sequence number field is ________.
Sol:
Transmission delay = Frame Size/bandwidth
= (1*8*10^3)/(1.5 * 10^6)=5.33ms
Propagation delay = 50ms
Efficiency = Window Size/(1+2a) = .6

a = Propagation delay/Transmission delay

So, window size = 11.856(approx)
min sequence number = 2*window size = 23.712
bits required in Min sequence number = log2(23.712)
Answer is 4.56

Ceil(4.56) = 5

11.
12.
13.A slotted ALOHA network transmits 200 bit frames using a shared channel
with a 200Kbps bandwidth. Find the throughput if the system produces a) 1000
frames per second b) 500 frames per second c) 250 frames per second
Sol: The frame transmission time is 200/200 kbps or 1 ms.
a. In this case G is 1. So S=G× e−G= 0.368 (36.8 percent). This means that the
throughput is 1000 × 0.0368 = 368 frames. Only 368 out of 1000 frames will
probably survive. Note that this is the maximum throughput case,
percentagewise.
 b. Here G is 1/2. In this case S=G× e−G= 0.303 (30.3 percent). This means that
the throughput is 500 × 0.303 = 151. Only 151 frames out of 500 will probably
survive.
c. Now G is 1/4. In this case S=G× e−G= 0.195 (19.5 percent). This means that
the throughput is 250 × 0.195 = 49. Only 49 frames out of 250 will probably
survive.
14.

15. Draw the flow diagram of CSMA/CD and CSMA/CA.

16.Assume the propagation delay in a broadcast network is 5 μs and the frame
transmission time is 10 μs.
a.How long does it take for the first bit to reach the destination?
b.How long does it take for the last bit to reach the destination after the first bit
has arrived?
c.How long is the network involved with this frame (vulnerable to collision)?

Sol: Assume the propagation delay in a broadcast network is 5 μs and the

frame transmission time is 10 μs.
a) It takes 5μs for the first bit to reach the destination.
b) The last bit arrives at the destination 10μs after the first bit.
c)The network is involved with this frame for 5 + 10 = 15μs
17.Assume the propagation delay in a broadcast network is 3 μs and the frame
transmission time is 5 μs. Can the collision be detected no matter where it
occurs?
Sol: Before the last bit of the frame is transmitted the sender has to detect the
collision for that frame. As the complete frame is sent already by the sender. So
it is not in a state listen for a collision anymore.
18. In a wireless LAN, station A is assigned IFS = 5 milliseconds and station B
is assigned IFS = 7 milliseconds. Which station has a higher priority? Explain
the reason.
Sol: The station with lowest IFS has higher priority. therefore station A has
highest priority.
19.There is no acknowledgment mechanism in CSMA/CD, but we need this
mechanism in CSMA/CA. Explain the reason.
Sol: CSMA/CD is capable of detecting collision between stations, as each
station can hear other nodes and once a collision bit is sensed on the
transmission channel the stations immediately halt the operations. Therefore the
collision bit is considered as an acknowledgement. As a result no acknowledge
is required.
20. In a bus CSMA/CD network with a data rate of 10 Mbps, a collision occurs
20 μs after the first bit of the frame leaves the sending station. What should the
length of the frame be so that the sender can detect the collision?

Sol: For the sender to detect the collision, the last bit of the frame should not
have left from the sender station.This means that the transmission delay (Tfr)
needs to be greater than 40 μs (20 μs + 20 μs) or The frame length should be at
least 10 Mbps * 40 μs = 400 bits.
21. To understand why we need to have a minimum frame size Tfr= 2 ×Tp in a
CDMA/CD network, assume we have a bus network with only two stations, A
and B, in which Tfr= 40 μs and Tp= 25 μs. Station A starts sending a frame at
time t = 0.0 μs and station B starts sending a frame at t = 23.0 μs. Answer the
following questions:
a.Do frames collide?
b.If the answer to part ‘a’ is yes, does station A detect collision?
c.If the answer to part ‘a’ is yes, does station B detect collision?
Sol:Given Tfr= 40 μs and Tp= 25 μs.
station A sends at t=0. B will receive this frame at t=25μs. Meanwhile, B has
already sent its own frame at t=23μs. So collision occurs.
Now, since average transmission time for a frame is Tfr=40μs, A will sent the
last bit of the frame only at t=40μs. A will receive the first bit of the frame sent
by B at t=48μs. Thus A can not detect collision at t=48μs.
Take the case of B. B receives the frame sent by A at t=25μs. B will sent last bit
of its frame only at t=63μs. So B will detect collision at t=25μs.

22. Consider a CSMA/CD network that transmits data at a rate of 100 Mbps
(108 bits per second) over a 1 km (kilometre) cable with no repeaters. If the
minimum frame size required for this network is 1250 bytes, what is the signal
speed (km/sec) in the cable?
Sol: Data should be transmitted at the rate of 100 Mbps.
Transmission Time = 2 x Propagation Time
No.of bits in a frame/channel capacity =2x(distance/propagation speed)
1250*8 / (100 * 106) = 2*(103/propagation speed)
Propagation speed = (2 * 103 * 100 * 106) / (1250 * 8)
= 2 * 10 * (103) km/sec
= 20000 km/sec
23. What is the hexadecimal equivalent of the following Ethernet
address?

Sol:5A:11:55:18:AA:0F
24.How does the Ethernet address 1A:2B:3C:4D:5E:6F appear on the
line in binary?
The address is sent left-to-right, byte by byte; for each byte, it is sent
right-to-left, bit by bit, as
Sol:1A-0001 1010, 2B-0010 1011, 3C-0011 1100, 4D-0100 1101,
5E-0101 1110, 6F-0110 111
← 01011000 11010100 00111100 10110010 01111010
1110110
25.An Ethernet MAC sub layer receives 42 bytes of data from the
upper layer. How many bytes of padding must be added to the data?
Sol:

The minimum data size in the Standard Ethernet is 46 bytes.

Therefore, we need to add 4 bytes of padding to the data (46 − 42 =
4) .You must add (46 bytes – 42 bytes) 4 bytes of padding to the
data.
26. What is the ratio of useful data to the entire packet for the
smallest Ethernet frame?
Sol:The minimum length of an Ethernet frame is 64 bytes. The
useful data in that Ethernet frame is 46 bytes. The ratio is (46
bytes/64 bytes) = 0.71875.

27. Suppose the length of a 10Base5 cable is 2500 m. If the

speed of propagation in a thick coaxial cable is 200,000,000
m/s, how long does it take for a bit to travel from the beginning
to the end of the network? Assume there is a 10 μs delay in the
equipment.
Sol: 10Base5 has a maximum length of 500 metres so repeaters
should be inserted into the cable in order to ensure transmission
is possible over the full length of the 2500m cable. 4 repeaters
are required as shown below:

10s + 2500/200,000,000 = 22.5s.

28. In a Standard Ethernet LAN, the average size of a frame is
1000 bytes. If a noise of 2 ms occurs on the LAN, how many
frames are destroyed?
Sol:The data rate for a Standard Ethernet is 10Mbps. Mbps stands
for mega-bits per second.Therefore convert mega-bits per second
to mega-bytes per second by dividing10Mbps by 8 bits/byte.
Therefore your data rate is 1.25MBps (aka 1.25 mega-bytes per
second).1.25 MBps is the same as 1,250,000 bytes per
second.Therefore if you lose all the bytes transmitted for 2 ms (aka.
0.002 seconds) because of noise, you will lose (1,250,000 MBps x
0.002 seconds) 2500 bytes.You lose (2500/1000) 2.5 frames, but
since you can’t transmit partial frames, if you lose any part of a
frame you lose the entire frame, 3 frames were destroyed.
29. Why is there no need for CSMA/CD on a full-duplex
Ethernet LAN?
Sol: For a full duplex transmission the chance for collision as
well as contention is less compared to half duplex. It is because,
everyone can send and receive data independently. so there is
no chance for carrier sensing and collision detection. It makes
no need for CSMA/CD on a full-duplex Ethernet LAN.
30. What are the common Standard Ethernet implementations?
Sol: The common traditional Ethernet implementations are
10Base5, 10Base2, 10- Base-T, and 10Base-F.
31. How is the preamble field different from the SFD field?
Sol:The preamble is a 56-bit field that provides an alert and
timing pulse. It is added to the frame at the physical layer and is
not formally part of the frame. SFD is a one byte field that
serves as a start of frame (flag). SFD is not serving as the
synchronization but preamble does this between source and
receiver.
32. What are the advantages of dividing an Ethernet LAN with
a bridge?
Sol: (i)They raise the bandwidth.
(ii)They separate collision domains
33. What is the relationship between a switch and a bridge?
Sol: A switch is an N-port bridge where N is the number of
station on the LAN. This way, the bandwidth is only shared
between the station and switch and the collision domain is
divided into N domains. A layer-2 switch is an N-port bridge
with additional sophistication that allows faster handling of
packets.
34. The data rate of 10Base5 is 10Mbps. How long does it
take to create the smallest frame? Show your calculations.
 Sol:The smallest frame is 64 bytes or 512 bits. With a data rate
of 10 Mbps, we haveTfr = (512 bits) / (10 Mbps) =51.2 μs.This
means that the time required to send the smallest frame is the
same at the maximum time required to detect the collision.
35. Five protocol layers. 100 byte message. 10 bytes header
added at each layer (including 1st and 5th). What is the
efficiency?
Sol:
100 bytes + 5(10 bytes) = 150 bytes
36. The address 43:7B:6C:DE: 10:00 has been shown as the
source address in an Ethernet frame. The receiver has discarded
the frame. Why?
Sol: The first byte in binary is 01000011. The least significant
bit is 1. This means that the patterned fines a multicast address.
A multicast address can be a destination address, but not a
source address. (A packet must be sent by a “single”
computer.)Therefore, the receiver knows that there is an error,
and discards the packet.
37. Do the MAC addresses used in an 802.3 (Wired Ethernet) and
the MAC addresses used in an 802.11 (Wireless Ethernet) belong to
two different address spaces?

Sol: Yes, MAC address is unique therefore they would have two
different address spaces for sending. When sending to or from a wired
Ethernet, the frames would be sent through or two that MAC address.
When sending frames to and from the wireless Ethernet, data would
be sent to that address not the wired Ethernet.
38.An AP may connect a wireless network to a wired network. Does
the AP need to have two MAC addresses in this case?
Sol: The address space used by a station in a wired network and a
station in a wireless network can belong to same address space if both
the networks are locally connected.
39. An AP in a wireless network plays the same role as a link-layer
switch in a wired network. However, a link-layer switch has no MAC
address, but an AP normally needs a MAC address. Explain the
reason.
Sol: In link layer addressing mechanism , only devices in a network
which receive and consume data require MAC addresses for unique
identification. A switch in a link layer is used to connect devices with
in the same network. A switch simple forwards a data packet from
source to destination by looking at the source and destination address
in the packet header. A link layer switch maintains a forwarding table
consisting of the MAC addresses of different devices with in the
network and the ports to which they are connected to. Therefore a
switch is simple a passing device on the network which forwards data
packets. Data packets are never consumed or used by a switch so the
switches do not have MAC addresses. Maintaining a MAC address
for a switch is space consuming and adds extra overhead.
40.What is the reason that Bluetooth is normally called a wireless
personal area network (WPAN) instead of a wireless local area
network (WLAN)?
Sol: A wireless LAN is usually used for devices belonging to large
geographical areas. Wireless LAN is more suitable for devices
belonging to same building or same project or floor.
41.Fill in the blanks. The 83.5 MHz bandwidth in Bluetooth is
divided into__79_channels, each of _1_MHz.
42.What is the spread spectrum technique used by Bluetooth?
Sol: Frequency hopping spreading spectrum is
transmission technique, used to transmit radio signals.
43.What is the modulation technique in the radio layer of Bluetooth?
In otherwords, how are digital data (bits) changed to analog signals
(radio waves)?
Sol: The Bluetooth radio interface also uses a modulation
technique called Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying, GFSK. This
form of modulation is spectrally efficient and also enables the use of
efficient radio power amplifiers, thereby saving on battery life.
44.What MAC protocol is used in the baseband layer of Bluetooth?
Sol: The MAC protocol is used in the baseband layer of Bluetooth is
in the form of TDD-TDMA(Time Division Duplex-Time Division
Multiple Access)
45.What is the actual bandwidth used for communication in a
Bluetooth network?
Sol: Bluetooth operates at frequencies between 2.402 and 2.480 GHz,
or 2.400 and 2.4835 GHz including guard bands 2 MHz wide at the
bottom end and 3.5 MHz wide at the top.This is in the globally
unlicensed (but not unregulated) industrial, scientific and medical
(ISM) 2.4 GHz short-range radio frequency band.