Questions and Answers of Computer Network

Imagine that you have trained your St. Bernard, Bernie, to carry a box of three 8mm tapes instead of a flask of brandy. (When your disk fills up, you consider that an emergency.) These tapes each
An alternative to a LAN is simply a big timesharing system with terminals for all users. Give two advantages of a client-server system using a LAN.
The performance of a client-server system is influenced by two network factors: the bandwidth of the network (how many bits/sec it can transport) and the latency (how many seconds it takes for the
Besides bandwidth and latency, what other parameter is needed to give a good characterization of the quality of service offered by a network used for digitized voice traffic?
A factor in the delay of a store-and-forward packet-switching system is how long it takes to store and forward a packet through a switch. If switching time is 10 µsec, is this likely to be a major
A client-server system uses a satellite network, with the satellite at a height of 40,000 km. What is the best-case delay in response to a request?
In the future, when everyone has a home terminal connected to a computer network, instant public referendums on important pending legislation will become possible. Ultimately, existing legislatures
A collection of five routers is to be connected in a point-to-point subnet. Between each pair of routers, the designers may put a high-speed line, a medium-speed line, a low-speed line, or no line.
A group of 2n - 1 router is interconnected in a centralized binary tree, with a router at each tree node. Router i communicate with router j by sending a message to the root of the tree. The root
A disadvantage of a broadcast subnet is the capacity wasted when multiple hosts attempt to access the channel at the same time. As a simplistic example, suppose that time is divided into discrete
What are two reasons for using layered protocols?
The president of the Specialty Paint Corp. gets the idea to work with a local beer brewer to produce an invisible beer can (as an anti-litter measure). The president tells her legal department to
What is the principal difference between connectionless communication and connection-oriented communication?
Two networks each provide reliable connection-oriented service. One of them offers a reliable byte stream and the other offers a reliable message stream. Are these identical? If so, why is the
What does ''negotiation'' mean when discussing network protocols? Give an example.
In Fig. 1-19, a service is shown. Are any other services implicit in this figure? If so where? If not, why not?
In some networks, the data link layer handles transmission errors by requesting damaged frame to be retransmitted. If the probability of a frame's being damaged is p, what is the mean number of
Which of the OSI layers handles each of the following? (a) Dividing the transmitted bit stream into frames. (b) Determining which route through the subnet to use.
If the unit exchanged at the data link level is called a frame and the unit exchanged at the network level is called a packet, do frames encapsulate packets or do packets encapsulate frames? Explain
A system has an n-layer protocol hierarchy. Applications generate messages of length M bytes. At each of the layers, an h-byte header is added. What fraction of the network bandwidth is filled with
List two ways in which the OSI reference model and the TCP/IP reference model are the same. Now list two ways in which they differ.
What is the main difference between TCP and UDP?
The subnet of Fig. 1-25(b) was designed to withstand a nuclear war. How many bombs would it take to partition the nodes into two disconnected sets? Assume that any bomb wipes out a node and all of
The Internet is roughly doubling in size every 18 months. Although no one really knows for sure, one estimate put the number of hosts on it at 100 million in 2001. Use these data to compute the
When a file is transferred between two computers, two acknowledgement strategies are possible. In the first one, the file is chopped up into packets, which are individually acknowledged by the
Why does ATM use small, fixed-length cells?
How long was a bit on the original 802.3 standard in meters? Use a transmission speed of 10 Mbps and assume the propagation speed in coax is 2/3 the speed of light in vacuum.
An image is 1024 x 768 pixels with 3 bytes/pixel. Assume the image is uncompressed. How long does it take to transmit it over a 56-kbps modem channel? Over a 1-Mbps cable modem, over a 10-Mbps
Ethernet and wireless networks have some similarities and some differences. One property of Ethernet is that only one frame at a time can be transmitted on an Ethernet. Do 802.11 share this property
Wireless networks are easy to install, which makes them inexpensive since installation costs usually far overshadow equipment costs. Nevertheless, they also have some disadvantages. Name two of them.
List two advantages and two disadvantages of having international standards for network protocol?
When a system has a permanent part and a removable part (such as a CD-ROM drive and the CD-ROM), it is important that the system be standardized, so that different companies can make both the
Compute the Fourier coefficients for the function f (t) = t (< t < 1).
A noiseless 4-kHz channel is sampled every 1 msec. What is the maximum data rate?
Television channels are 6 MHz wide. How many bits/sec can be sent if four-level digital signals are used? Assume a noiseless channel.
If a binary signal is sent over a 3-kHz channel whose signal-to-noise ratio is 20 dB, what is the maximum achievable data rate?
What signal-to-noise ratio is needed to put a T1 carrier on a 50-kHz line?
What is the difference between a passive star and an active repeater in a fiber network?
How much bandwidth is there in 0.1 micron of spectrum at a wavelength of 1 micron?
It is desired to send a sequence of computer screen images over an optical fiber. The screen is 480 x 640 pixels, each pixel being 24 bits. There are 60 screen images per second. How much bandwidth
Is the Nyquist theorem true for optical fiber or only for copper wire?
In Fig. 2-6 the left hand band is narrower than the others. Why?
Radio antennas often work best when the diameter of the antenna is equal to the wavelength of the radio wave. Reasonable antennas range from 1 cm to 5 meters in diameter. What frequency range does
Multi path fading is maximized when the two beams arrive 180 degrees out of phase. How much of a path difference is required to maximize the fading for a 50-km-long 1-GHz microwave link?
A laser beam 1 mm wide is aimed at a detector 1 mm wide 100 m away on the roof of a building. How much of an angular diversion (in degrees) does the laser have to have before it misses the detector?
The 66 low-orbit satellites in the Iridium project are divided into six necklaces around the earth. At the altitude they are using, the period is 90 minutes. What is the average interval for handoffs
Consider a satellite at the altitude of geostationary satellites but whose orbital plane is inclined to the equatorial plane by an angle. To a stationary user on the earth's surface at north
How many end office codes were there pre-1984, when each end office was named by its three-digit area code and the first three digits of the local number? Area codes started with a digit in the range
Using only the data given in the text, what is the maximum number of telephones that the existing U.S. system can support without changing the numbering plan or adding additional equipment? Could
A simple telephone system consists of two end offices and a single toll office to which each end office is connected by a 1-MHz full-duplex trunk. The average telephone is used to make four calls per
A regional telephone company has 10 million subscribers. Each of their telephones is connected to a central office by a copper twisted pair. The average length of these twisted pairs is 10 km. How
Is an oil pipeline a simplex system, a half-duplex system, a full-duplex system, or none of the above?
The cost of a fast microprocessor has dropped to the point where it is now possible to put one in each modem. How does that affect the handling of telephone line errors?
A modem constellation diagram similar to Fig. 2-25 has data points at the following coordinates: (1, 1), (1, -1), (-1, 1), and (-1, -1). How many bps can a modem with these parameters achieve at 1200
A modem constellation diagram similar to Fig. 2-25 has data points at (0, 1) and (0, 2). Does the modem use phase modulation or amplitude modulation?
In a constellation diagram, all the points lie on a circle centered on the origin. What kind of modulation is being used?
How many frequencies does a full-duplex QAM-64 modem use?
An ADSL system using DMT allocates 3/4 of the available data channels to the downstream link. It uses QAM-64 modulation on each channel. What is the capacity of the downstream link?
In the four-sector LMDS example of Fig. 2-30, each sector has its own 36-Mbps channel. According to queuing theory, if the channel is 50% loaded, the queuing time will be equal to the download time.
Ten signals, each requiring 4000 Hz, are multiplexed on to a single channel using FDM. How much minimum bandwidth is required for the multiplexed channel? Assume that the guard bands are 400 Hz wide.
Why has the PCM sampling time been set at 125 µsec?
What is the percent overhead on a T1 carrier; that is, what percent of the 1.544 Mbps are not delivered to the end user?
Compare the maximum data rate of a noiseless 4-kHz channel using (a) Analog encoding (e.g., QPSK) with 2 bits per sample. (b) The T1 PCM system.
If a T1 carrier system slips and loses track of where it is, it tries to resynchronize using the 1st bit in each frame. How many frames will have to be inspected on average to resynchronize with a
What is the difference, if any, between the demodulator part of a modem and the coder part of a codec? (After all, both convert analog signals to digital ones.)
A signal is transmitted digitally over a 4-kHz noiseless channel with one sample every 125 µsec. How many bits per second are actually sent for each of these encoding methods? (a) CCITT 2.048 Mbps
A pure sine wave of amplitude A is encoded using delta modulation, with x samples/sec. An output of +1 corresponds to a signal change of +A/8, and an output signal of -1 corresponds to a signal
SONET clocks have a drift rate of about 1 part in 109. How long does it take for the drift to equal the width of 1 bit? What are the implications of this calculation?
In Fig. 2-37, the user data rate for OC-3 is stated to be 148.608 Mbps. Show how this number can be derived from the SONET OC-3 parameters.
To accommodate lower data rates than STS-1, SONET has a system of virtual tributaries (VT). A VT is a partial payload that can be inserted into an STS-1 frame and combined with other partial payloads
What is the essential difference between message switching and packet switching?
What is the available user bandwidth in an OC-12c connection?
Three packet-switching networks each contain n nodes. The first network has a star topology with a central switch, the second is a (bidirectional) ring, and the third is fully interconnected, with a
Compare the delay in sending an x-bit message over a k-hop path in a circuit-switched network and in a (lightly loaded) packet-switched network. The circuit setup time is s sec, the propagation delay
Suppose that x bits of user data are to be transmitted over a k-hop path in a packet-switched network as a series of packets, each containing p data bits and h header bits, with x >> p + h. The bit
In a typical mobile phone system with hexagonal cells, it is forbidden to reuse a frequency band in an adjacent cell. If 840 frequencies are available, how many can be used in a given cell?
The actual layout of cells is seldom as regular that as shown in Fig. 2-41. Even the shapes of individual cells are typically irregular. Give a possible reason why this might be.
Make a rough estimate of the number of PCS micro cells 100 m in diameter it would take to cover San Francisco (120 square km).
Sometimes when a mobile user crosses the boundary from one cell to another, the current call is abruptly terminated, even though all transmitters and receivers are functioning perfectly. Why?
D-AMPS has appreciably worse speech quality than GSM. Is this due to the requirement that D-AMPS be backward compatible with AMPS, whereas GSM had no such constraint? If not, what is the cause?
Calculate the maximum number of users that D-AMPS can support simultaneously within a single cell. Do the same calculation for GSM. Explain the difference.
Suppose that A, B, and C are simultaneously transmitting 0 bits, using a CDMA system with the chip sequences of Fig. 2-45(b). What is the resulting chip sequence?
In the discussion about orthogonality of CDMA chip sequences, it was stated that if S•T = 0 then is also 0. Prove this.
Consider a different way of looking at the orthogonality property of CDMA chip sequences. Each bit in a pair of sequences can match or not match. Express the orthogonality property in terms of
A CDMA receiver gets the following chips: (-1 +1 -3 +1 -1 -3 +1 +1). Assuming the chip sequences defined in Fig. 2-45(b), which stations transmitted, and which bits did each one send?
At the low end, the telephone system is star shaped, with all the local loops in a neighborhood converging on an end office. In contrast, cable television consists of a single long cable snaking its
A cable TV system has 100 commercial channels, all of them alternating programs with advertising. Is this more like TDM or like FDM?
A cable company decides to provide Internet access over cable in a neighborhood consisting of 5000 houses. The company uses a coaxial cable and spectrum allocation allowing 100 Mbps downstream
Using the spectral allocation shown in Fig. 2-48 and the information given in the text, how many Mbps does a cable system allocate to upstream and how many to downstream?
How fast can a cable user receive data if the network is otherwise idle?
An upper-layer packet is split into 10 frames, each of which has an 80 percent chance of arriving undamaged. If no error control is done by the data link protocol, how many times must the message be
The following character encoding is used in a data link protocol: A: 01000111; B: 11100011; FLAG: 01111110; ESC: 11100000 Show the bit sequence transmitted (in binary) for the four-character frame: A
The following data fragment occurs in the middle of a data stream for which the byte-stuffing algorithm described in the text is used: A B ESC C ESC FLAG D. What is the output after stuffing?
One of your classmates, Scrooge, has pointed out that it is wasteful to end each frame with a flag byte and then begin the next one with a second flag byte. One flag byte could do the job as well,
A bit string, 0111101111101111110, needs to be transmitted at the data link layer. What is the string actually transmitted after bit stuffing?
When bit stuffing is used, is it possible for the loss, insertion, or modification of a single bit to cause an error not detected by the checksum? If not, why not? If so, how? Does the checksum
Can you think of any circumstances under which an open-loop protocol, (e.g., a Hamming code) might be preferable to the feedback-type protocols discussed throughout this chapter?
To provide more reliability than a single parity bit can give, an error-detecting coding scheme uses one parity bit for checking all the odd-numbered bits and a second parity bit for all the
Sixteen-bit messages are transmitted using a Hamming code. How many check bits are needed to ensure that the receiver can detect and correct single bit errors? Show the bit pattern transmitted for
An 8-bit byte with binary value 10101111 is to be encoded using an even-parity Hamming code. What is the binary value after encoding?

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