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DEPENDABLE SYSTEMS AND SOFTWARE

Data Networks 2015

Dr. Arnd Hartmanns

A01: Internet, Protocols, Layers, Delays, and Modest


Questions regarding the assignments on this sheet will be discussed in the tutorials on May 5 and 6.
Remember to indicate your tutorial preferences in dCMS. Tutorial allocation will become visible on
Monday, May 4. You also need to form a group of 2, 3 or 4 students for the programming and modelling
labs, or alternatively be signed up for random group allocation, by the end of Sunday, May 3.
Q1: Pulse dialling
Rotary-dial telephones used pulse dialling to initiate calls. Read up on pulse dialling online, then create
a specification for this signalling protocol according to the five elements described in the lecture.
Q2: Circuit vs. packet switching
Suppose users share a 2 Mbps link. Also suppose each user transmits continuously at 1 Mbps when active,
but is active only 20 percent of the time on average.
(a) How many users can be supported at most when circuit switching is used?
Now suppose that packet switching is used instead.
(b) What is the maximum number n of users that can transmit at the same time while incurring
essentially no queueing delay?
(c) Assume there are n + 1 users. What is the probability that, at any given point in time, exactly one
of them is transmitting? What is the probability for all of them transmitting?
What is the fraction of time during which the length of the queue increases? For what fraction of
time does it decrease?
Q3: Networks and peering
Recall the discussion of Tier-1 networks, peering, and CDNs. Then read up online on a recent ( 2014)
dispute between Level 3 Communications and Verizon regarding network traffic caused by the Netflix
service.
(a) Which of the involved companies are regarded as Tier-1 networks? Do they have peering agreements?
(b) What are their relationships to the Netflix service and to the customers of this service, respectively?
What network roles do they fulfil in these relationships?
(c) Find out what the cause of the dispute was, and how it affected Netflix users.
(d) Describe the principle of net neutrality. How does it relate to the dispute?
Q4: Delay calculations
How long does it take a packet of length 1000 bytes to propagate over a link of distance 2500 km,
propagation speed 2.5 108 m/s, and transmission rate 2 Mbps?

More generally, how long does it take a packet of length L to propagate over a link of distance d,
propagation speed s, and transmission rate R bps? Does this delay depend on packet length? Does it
depend on transmission rate?

Q5: Satellite links


We have used the tracert command to find out how long it takes a packet to travel over the Internet
from the Saarland University network to the web server www.usp.ac.fj of the University of the South
Pacific in Fiji and back.
(a) Perform the same measurement from your home Internet connection for comparison. Can you
roughly map the names of the hops displayed by tracert to geographical locations?
(b) Use online tools to approximately calculate the total air-line distance that one packet travels until
it reaches Fiji according to your tracert result (or the one shown in Lecture 1).
Let us assume that all processing, queueing and transmission delays are zero, and the propagation speed
of all links is the speed of light.
(c) How long would one packet take to travel to Fiji and back under these ideal conditions, according
to your tracert result?
Let us now assume that the packets travel via a standard communications satellite in geostationary orbit
(i.e. located at approx. 35786 km above the equator) instead.
(d) How long would one packet take to travel to Fiji and back via such a satellite?
Q6: Layers
We have seen two examples of layered architectures in the lecture so far: air travel and the Internet.
Describe at least one other layered (real-life or computer-based) architecture that you know of. What are
the services provided by the individual layers? Do the layers use some form of encapsulation to provide
their services?
Q7: Modest warmup
Download and install the most recent version of the Modest Toolset from dCMS.
(a) Use the Modest model introduce in Lecture 3 to test your installation: Create a representation
of its symbolic semantics with the help of the mosta tool, and investigate its concrete semantics by
having modes generate a number of simulation traces.
(b) Use Modest to formally specify the behavioural rules of your description of the pulse dialling
protocol of Q1.

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