Communication Control Device Hub

One network component that has become standard equipment in networks is the hub. Figure shows a hub as the central component in a star topology. Also called a repeater hub, the basic networking component used in traditional 10-Mbps Ethernet networks to connect network stations to form a local area network (LAN). Hubs can be used for

Connecting about a dozen computers to form a workgroup or departmental LAN Connecting other hubs in a cascaded star topology to form a larger LAN of up to roughly a hundred computers

How It Works
Hubs are the foundation of traditional 10BaseT Ethernet networks. The hub receives signals from each station and repeats the signals to all other stations connected to the hub. In active hubs (which all of todays hubs are), the signal received from one port is regenerated (amplified) and retransmitted to the other ports on the hub. Hubs thus perform the function of a repeater and are sometimes called multiport repeaters. From a logical cabling point of view, stations wired into a hub form a star topology. Hubs generally have RJ-45 ports for unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cabling, and they range in size from 4 to 24 or more ports for connecting stations to the hub, plus one or more uplink ports for connecting the hub to other hubs in a cascaded star topology. Hubs generally have various light-emitting diode (LED) indicator lights to indicate the status of each port, link status, collisions, and so on. Hubs with several different types of LAN connectors such as RJ-45, BNC, and AUI are commonly called combo hubs. There are numerous types of hubs for various specialized uses. These include the following: Active Hubs Most hubs are active; that is, they regenerate and retransmit signals in the same way as a repeater does. Because hubs usually have eight to twelve ports for network computers to connect to, they are sometimes called multiport repeaters. Active hubs require electrical power to run. Passive Hubs Some types of hubs are passive; examples include wiring panels or punch-down blocks. They act as connection points and do not amplify or regenerate the signal; the signal passes through the hub. Passive hubs do not require electrical power to run. Hybrid Hubs Advanced hubs that will accommodate several different types of cables are called hybrid hubs. Figure shows a main hub (the hybrid) with three sub-hubs.

Hub Considerations
Hub-based systems are versatile and offer several advantages over systems that do not use hubs. In the standard linear-bus topology, a break in the cable will take the network down. With hubs, however, a break in any of the cables attached to the hub affects only a limited segment of the network. Figure 1.27 shows that a break or disconnected cable affects only one workstation while the rest of the network keeps functioning. Hub-based topologies include the following benefits:

Wiring systems can be changed or expanded as needed. Different ports can be used to accommodate a variety of cabling types. Monitoring of network activity and traffic can be centralized

Switch
There is another type of data-link layer connection device, called a switch, which has largely replaced the bridge in the modern network. It is also replacing routers in many instances. A switch is a box with multiple cable jacks, making it look similar to a hub. In fact, some manufacturers hubs and switches of various sizes that are identical in appearance, except for their markings. The difference between a hub and a switch is that a hub forwards every incoming

packet out through all of its ports, and a have switch forwards each incoming packet only to the port that provides access to the destination system, as shown in Figure

Figure : A switch forwards incoming packets only to the port that provides access to the destination system

Because they forward data to a single port only, switches essentially convert the LAN from a shared network medium to a dedicated one. If you have a small network that uses a switch instead of a hub (such a switch is sometimes called a switching hub), each packet takes a dedicated path from the source computer to the destination, forming a separate collision domain for those two computers. Switches still forward broadcast messages to all of their ports, but not unicasts and multicasts. No computers receive packets destined for other systems, and no collisions occur during unicast transmissions because every pair of computers on the network has what amounts to a dedicated cable segment connecting them. Thus, a bridge reduces unnecessary traffic congestion on the network, but a switch practically eliminates it. Another advantage of switching is that each pair of computers has the full bandwidth of the network dedicated to it. A standard Ethernet LAN using a hub might have 20 or more computers sharing the same 10 Mbps of bandwidth. Replace the hub with a switch, and every pair of computers has its own dedicated 10-Mbps channel. This can greatly improve the overall performance of the network without the need for any workstation modifications. In addition, some switches provide ports that operate in full-duplex mode, which means that two computers can send traffic in both directions at the same time using separate wire pairs within the network cable. Full-duplex operation effectively doubles the throughput of a 10-Mbps network to 20 Mbps.

Installing Switches Switches generally aren't needed on small networks that only use a single hub. They are more often found on larger networks, where they're used instead of bridges or routers. If you take a standard enterprise internetwork consisting of a backbone and a series of segments and replace the routers with switches, the effect is profound. On the routed network, the backbone must carry the internetwork traffic generated by all the segments. This can lead to heavy traffic on the backbone, even if it uses a faster medium than the segments. On a switched network, you connect the computers to individual workgroup switches, which are in turn connected to a highperformance backbone switch, as shown in Figure 3.5. As a result, any computer on the network can open a dedicated channel to any other computer, even when the data path runs through several switches. There are many different ways to use switches on a complex internetwork; you don't have to replace all of the hubs and routers with switches at one time. For example, you can continue to use your standard shared network hubs and connect them all to a multiport switch instead of routers. This increases the efficiency of your internetwork traffic. On the other hand, if your network tends to generate more traffic within the individual LANs than between them, you can replace the workgroup hubs with switches to increase the available intranetwork bandwidth for each computer, leaving the backbone network intact. Switch Types There are two basic types of switches: cut-through and store-and-forward. A cut-through switch forwards packets immediately by reading the destination address from their data-link layer protocol headers as soon as they're received and relaying the packets out through the appropriate port with no additional processing. The switch doesn't even wait for the entire packet to arrive before it begins forwarding it. In most cases, cut-through switches use a hardware-based mechanism that consists of a grid of input/output (I/O) circuits that enable data to enter and leave the switch through any port. This is called matrix switching or crossbar switching. This type of switch is relatively inexpensive and minimizes the delay incurred during the processing of packets by the switch (which is called latency).

A store-and-forward switch waits until an entire packet arrives before forwarding it to its destination. This type of unit can be a shared-memory switch, which has a common memory buffer that stores the incoming data from all of the ports, or a bus architecture switch, with individual buffers for each port, connected by a bus. While the packet is stored in the switch's memory buffers, the switch takes the opportunity to verify the data by performing a cyclical redundancy check (CRC). The switch also checks for other problems peculiar to the data-link layer protocol involved, which may result in malformed framescommonly known as runts, giants, and a condition called jabber. This checking naturally introduces additional latency into the packet forwarding process, and the additional functions make store-and-forward switches more expensive than cut-through switches.

Repeaters
As signals travel along a cable, they degrade and become distorted in a process called "attenuation." If a cable is long enough, attenuation will finally make a signal unrecognizable. Installing a repeater enables signals to travel farther. How Repeaters Work A repeater works at the physical layer of the OSI Reference Model to regenerate the network's signals and resend them out on other segments. Figure shows how repeaters regenerate weak signals.

The repeater takes a weak signal from one segment, regenerates it, and passes it to the next segment. To pass data through the repeater from one segment to the next, the packets and the Logical Link Control (LLC) protocols must be identical on each segment. A repeater will not

enable communication, for example, between an 802.3 LAN (Ethernet) and an 802.5 LAN (Token Ring). Repeaters do not translate or filter signals. For a repeater to work, both segments that the repeater joins must use the same access method. The two most common access methods are carrier-sense multiple-access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) and token passing. A repeater cannot connect a segment using CSMA/CD to a segment using the token-passing access method. That is, a repeater cannot translate an Ethernet packet into a Token Ring packet. As shown in Figure, repeaters can move packets from one kind of physical media to another. They can take an Ethernet packet coming from a thinnet coaxial-cable segment and pass it on to a fiber-optic segment, provided the repeater is capable of accepting the physical connections.

Figure : Repeaters can connect different types of media Some multiport repeaters act as multiport hub and connect different types of media. Repeater Considerations Repeaters afford the least expensive way to expand a network. When the need arises to extend the physical network beyond its distance or node limitations, consider using a repeater to link segments if neither segment is generating much traffic or limiting costs is a major consideration. No Isolation or Filtering Repeaters send every bit of data from one cable segment to another, even if the data consists of malformed packets or packets not destined for use on the network.

This means that a problem with one segment can disrupt every other segment. Repeaters do not act as filters to restrict the flow of problem traffic. Repeaters will also pass a broadcast storm along from one segment to the next, back and forth along the network. A broadcast storm occurs when so many broadcast messages are on the network that the number is approaching the network bandwidth limit. If a device is responding to a packet that is continuously circulating on the network, or a packet is continuously attempting to contact a system that never replies, network performance will be degraded. Implementing a repeater This section summarizes what you need to consider when deciding whether to implement repeaters in your network. Use a repeater to:

Connect two segments of similar or dissimilar media. Regenerate the signal to increase the distance transmitted. Pass all traffic in both directions. Connect two segments in the most cost-effective manner.
NOTE Repeaters improve performance by dividing the network into segments, thus reducing the number of computers per segment.

Do not use a repeater when:

There is heavy network traffic. Segments are using different access methods. Data filtering is needed.

Bridges
Like a repeater, a bridge can join segments or workgroup LANs. Figure 7.11 shows a bridge connecting two network segments. However, a bridge can also divide a network to isolate traffic or problems. For example, if the volume of traffic from one or two computers or a single

department is flooding the network with data and slowing down the entire operation, a bridge could isolate those computers or that department. Bridges can be used to:

Expand the length of a segment. Provide for an increased number of computers on the network. Reduce traffic bottlenecks resulting from an excessive number of attached computers. Split an overloaded network into two separate networks, reducing the amount of traffic on each segment and making each network more efficient.

Link unlike physical media such as twisted-pair and coaxial Ethernet.

Figure : A bridge connecting two networks

How Bridges Work Because bridges work at the data-link layer of the OSI reference model, all information contained in the higher levels of the OSI reference model is unavailable to them. Rather than distinguish between one protocol and another, bridges simply pass all protocols along the network. All protocols pass across bridges, so it is up to the individual computers to determine which protocols they can recognize. A bridge works on the principle that each network node has its own address. A bridge forwards packets based on the address of the destination node.

Bridges actually have some degree of intelligence in that they learn where to forward data. As traffic passes through the bridge, information about the computer addresses is stored in the bridge's RAM. The bridge uses this RAM to build a routing table based on source addresses. Initially, the bridge's routing table is empty. As nodes transmit packets, the source address is copied to the routing table. With this address information, the bridge learns which computers are on which segment of the network.

Figure 7.12 The routing table keeps track of addresses

Bridge Considerations Bridges have all of the features of repeaters, but also accommodate more nodes. They provide better network performance than repeaters. Because bridged networks have been divided, fewer computers compete for available resources on each segment. To look at it another way, if a large Ethernet network were divided into two segments connected by a bridge, each new network would carry fewer packets, have fewer collisions, and operate more efficiently. Although each network would be separate, the bridge would pass appropriate traffic between them. Implementing a bridge A bridge can be either a separate, stand-alone piece of equipment (an external bridge) or it can be installed in a server. If the network operating system (NOS) supports it, one or more network interface cards (NICs), making an internal bridge, can be installed. Network administrators like to use bridges because they are:

Simple to install and transparent to users. Flexible and adaptable. Relatively inexpensive.

Differentiating Between Bridges and Repeaters Bridges work at a higher OSI layer than repeaters. This means that bridges have more intelligence than repeaters and can take more data features into account. While bridges resemble repeaters in that they can regenerate data, bridges do this at the packet level. This means that bridges can send packets over long distances using a variety of longdistance media

Routers
In an environment that consists of several network segments with differing protocols and architectures, a bridge might be inadequate for ensuring fast communication among all segments. A network this complex needs a device that not only knows the address of each segment, but can also determine the best path for sending data and filtering broadcast traffic to the local segment. Such a device is called a "router." The term router always refers to a hardware or software device that connects two LANs at the network layer. Routers work at the network layer of the OSI reference model. This means they can switch and route packets across multiple networks. They do this by exchanging protocol-specific information between separate networks. Routers read complex network addressing information in the packet and, because they function at a higher layer in the OSI reference model than bridges, they have access to additional information. Routers can provide the following functions of a bridge:

Filtering and isolating traffic Connecting network segments

Routers have access to more of the information in packets than bridges have and use this information to improve packet deliveries. Routers are used in complex networks because they provide better traffic management. Routers can share status and routing information with one another and use this information to bypass slow or malfunctioning connections. How Routers Work Routers maintain their own routing tables, usually consisting of network addresses; host addresses can also be kept if the network architecture calls for it. To determine the destination address for incoming data, the routing table includes:

All known network addresses. Instructions for connection to other networks. The possible paths between routers. The costs of sending data over those paths.

As shown in Figure, a router uses its data-routing table to select the best route for the data based on costs and available paths. Routers require specific addresses. They understand only the network numbers that allow them to communicate with other routers and local NIC addresses. Routers do not talk to remote computers.

Figure : Routers talk to other routers, but not to remote computers

When routers receive packets destined for a remote network, they send them to the router that manages the destination network. In some ways this is an advantage because it means routers can:

Segment large networks into smaller ones. Act as safety barriers between segments. Prohibit broadcast storms, because broadcasts are not forwarded.

Because routers must perform complex functions on each packet, routers are slower than most bridges. As packets are passed from router to router, data-link layer source and destination addresses are stripped off and then re-created. This enables a router to route a packet from a TCP/IP Ethernet network to a server on a TCP/IP Token Ring network. Because routers read only addressed network packets, they do not allow corrupted data to get passed onto the network. Because they do not pass corrupted data or broadcast data storms, routers put little stress on networks. Routers do not look at the destination node address; they look only at the network address. Routers will pass information only if the network address is known. This ability to control the data passing through the router reduces the amount of traffic between networks and allows routers to use these links more efficiently than bridges. Using the router-addressing scheme, administrators can break one large network into many separate networks, and because routers do not pass or even handle every packet, they act as a safety barrier between network segments. This can greatly reduce the amount of traffic on the network and the wait time experienced by users. Types of Routers The two major types of routers are:

Static.

Static routers require an administrator to manually set up and configure the routing table and to specify each route.

Dynamic. Dynamic routers are designed to discover routes automatically and therefore require a minimal amount of setup and configuration. More sophisticated than static routers, they examine information from other routers and make packet-by-packet decisions about how to send data across the network.

Table Characteristics of the Two Types of Routers Static routers Dynamic routers

Manually set up and configure all Manually configure the first route. Automatically routes. detect additional networks and routes.

Always use the same route, determined Can choose a route based on factors such as cost by a routing table entry. and amount of link traffic.

Use a hard-coded route (designed to Can decide to send packets over alternate routes. handle only a specific situation), not necessarily the shortest route. Are considered more secure because the Can improve security by manually configuring administrator specifies each route. the router to filter out specific network addresses and prevent traffic from going there. Distinguishing Between Bridges and Routers Bridges and routers can be confusing even for engineers with LAN and WAN experience because they appear to do the same things: both forward packets between networks and send data across WAN links. A question often asked is how to decide when to use a bridge and when to use a router.

The bridge, which works at the MAC sublayer of the OSI data-link layer, sees only a node address. To be more specific, a bridge looks for a node's MAC-sublayer address in each packet. If the bridge recognizes the address, it keeps the packet local or forwards it to the appropriate segment. If the bridge does not recognize the address, it forwards the packet to all segments except the one through which the packet arrived. The bridge first either recognizes the packet's MAC-sublayer address, or it does not, and then it forwards the packet appropriately. Figure 7.16 shows a bridge and a router and how they relate to the OSI reference model.

Figure : Bridges work at the data-link layer MAC sublayer, and routers work at the network layer

Gateways
Gateways enable communication between different architectures and environments. They repackage and convert data going from one environment to another so that each environment can understand the other environment's data. A gateway repackages information to match the requirements of the destination system. Gateways can change the format of a message so that it conforms to the application program at the receiving end of the transfer. For example, electronicmail gateways, such as the X.400 gateway, receive messages in one format, translate it, and forward it in X.400 format used by the receiver, and vice versa. A gateway links two systems that do not use the same:

Communication protocols.

Data-formatting structures. Languages. Architecture.

Gateways interconnect heterogeneous networks; for example, they can connect Microsoft Windows NT Server to IBM's Systems Network Architecture (SNA). Gateways change the format of the data to make it conform to the application program at the receiving end. How Gateways Work Gateways are task-specific, which means that they are dedicated to a particular type of transfer. They are often referred to by their task name (Windows NT Server to SNA gateway). As shown in Figure 7.18, a gateway takes the data from one environment, strips off its old protocol stack, and repackages it in the protocol stack from the destination network. To process the data, the gateway:

Disassembles incoming data through the network's complete protocol stack. Encapsulates the outgoing data in the complete protocol stack of the other network to allow transmission.

Gateway Considerations Typically, gateways are dedicated servers on a network. They can use a significant percentage of a server's available bandwidth because they are carrying out resource-intensive tasks such as protocol conversion. If a gateway server is used for multiple tasks, adequate RAM and CPU bandwidth needs to be allocated or performance of the server functions will be degraded. Gateways are considered as choices for implementation because they do not put a heavy load on internetwork communication circuits, and they perform specific tasks efficiently

Modem
A modem is a device that makes it possible for computers to communicate over a telephone line.

When computers are too far apart to be joined by a standard computer cable, a modem can enable communication between them In a network environment, modems serve as a means of communication between networks and as a way to connect to the world beyond the local network. Basic Modem Functions Computers cannot simply be connected to each other over a telephone line, because computers communicate by sending digital electronic pulses (electronic signals), and a telephone line can send only analog waves (sound). Figure shows the difference between digital computer communication and analog telephone communication.

Figure : Digital signals versus analog waves

As shown in Figure below, the modem at the sending end converts the computer's digital signals into analog waves and transmits the analog waves onto the telephone line. A modem at the receiving end converts the incoming analog signals back into digital signals for the receiving computer. In other words, a sending modem MOdulates digital signals into analog signals, and a receiving modem DEModulates analog signals back into digital signals.

Figure : Modems convert digital signals to analog waves, and convert analog waves to digital signals

Modem Hardware Modems are known as data communications equipment (DCE) and share the following characteristics:

A serial (RS-232) communications interface An RJ-11 telephone-line interface (a four-wire telephone plug)

Modems are available in both internal and external models. An internal modem, as shown in Figure below, is installed in a computer's expansion slot like any other circuit board.

Figure : Internal modem installed in an expansion slot

An external modem, as shown in Figure below, is a small box that is connected to the computer by a serial (RS-232) cable running from the computer's serial port to the modem's computer cable connection. The modem uses a cable with an RJ-11C connector to connect to the wall.

Figure : External modem connects through the RS-232 cable to the computer serial port

Modem Performance Initially, a modem's speed was measured in either bps or something called the "baud rate," and most people mistakenly assumed the two were identical. "Baud" refers to the speed at which the sound wave that carries a bit of data over the telephone lines oscillates. The term derives from the name of French telegrapher and engineer JeanMaurice-Emile Baudot. Several of the newer modems feature industry standards, such as V.42bis/MNP5 data compression, and have transmission speeds of 57,600 bps; and some modems go up to 76,800 bps. Types of Modems There are different types of modems because different types of communication environments require different methods of sending data. These environments can be divided roughly into two areas related to the timing of communications:

Asynchronous Synchronous

The type of modem a network uses depends on whether the environment is asynchronous or synchronous.

Block diagram of Modem

Interface circuit
From DTE

Modulator circuit

Filter & O/P Amplifier

To telephone line

Power suply

Control & timing

From Telephone Line

To DTE

Filter & O/P Amplifier

Demodulator circuit

Interface circuit