Alice and Bob are communicating over an IP packet-switched network. The route between A and B is 340 km long and traverses 17 hops in total. The effective bit rate on each hop/link is 16.384 Mb/s and the average link utilisation is 80%. The mean packet payload is 486 bytes while the overall header is 28 bytes. (Assume a velocity of propagation to be 2x10^8 m/s.)

i) If the data between Alice and Bob is carried over UDP, using the M/M/1 model, estimate the total end-to-end delay for a single packet.

ii) How long would it take for a 243 kbyte file to be transferred between Alice and Bob?

iii) If the file was carried using TCP, what would happen to the overall delay? Explain your reasoning.

iv) If the packet payloads are now fixed to be exactly 486 bytes, revise your estimate for file transfer between A and B.^