UNIVERSITI TENAGA NASIONAL College of Information Technology

BACHELOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE (HONS.)

MIDTERM EXAMINATION SEMESTER III 2011/2012 ADVANCED COMPUTER NETWORKS (CSNB314)

26 March 2012

Time allowed: 2 hours

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES 1. The total marks for this exam is 70 marks. 2. Answer ALL questions in the answer booklet provided. 3. When answering questions involving any kind of calculation, please show your work.

DO NOT OPEN THIS QUESTION PAPER UNTIL YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO DO SO THIS QUESTION PAPER CONSISTS OF 8 PRINTED PAGES INCLUDING THIS PAGE

Question 1 Fill in the blanks for each statement below. (a) (b) (c) (d) Devices connected to the Internet are called __________. The body that develops and maintains Internet standards is the __________. The Internet standard documents are called __________. Companies that provide Internet access service are called __________. [4 marks] Answer: (a) (b) (c) (d) Hosts / end systems IETF RFCs ISPs

Question 2 Name the THREE (3) categories of access networks. For each category, give an example of a network technology that falls under the category. [6 marks] Answer: Residential access network. Example: ADSL. Company access network. Example: Ethernet. Wireless access network. Example: WiFi.

Question 3 Explain the differences between circuit switching and packet switching in terms of: (a) (b) The use of network resources. Transmission rate. [6 marks] Answer: (a) Circuit switching: Network resources are reserved for each connection. Packet switching: Network resources are shared. (b) Circuit switching: Transmission rate is constant. Packet switching: Transmission rate varies depending on network condition.

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Question 4 A file of size 650 MB is downloaded in 2 hours and 15 minutes. What is the average throughput in bits per second? [4 marks] Answer: File size = 650 x 106 x 8 = 5,200,000,000 bits Time = 135 x 60 = 8,100 seconds Average throughput = 5,200,000,000 / 8,100 = 641975.3 bits per second.

Question 5 You are planning to develop a new network application. The application requires that at least 85% of the data transmitted must be correctly received. It also requires data to be transmitted with the data rate of at least 100 Kbps. Once a piece of data is transmitted, it must arrive within 150 milliseconds for the transmitted data to be useful. (a) If TCP is used, which of the application requirements can be fulfilled? Give a reason for your answer. [3 marks] (b) If UDP is used, which of the application requirements can be fulfilled? Give a reason for your answer. [3 marks] (c) Which transport layer protocol would you choose? Justify your choice. [2 marks] Answer: (a) TCP can fulfill the requirement regarding 85% of the data transmitted must be received correctly. This is because since TCP provides a fully reliable data transfer, it can guarantee 100% of data transmitted to be received. UDP cannot guarantee anything on data reception. (b) UDP can fulfill the requirement regarding data must be transmitted with the rate of at least 100 Kbps. This is because UDP does not have congestion control mechanism. Therefore, the application can control the data rate. TCP cannot fulfill this requirement because the congestion control mechanism will control the data rate instead of the application.

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(c)

Both protocols can fulfill only one of the three requirements. However, the third requirement (data must arrive within 150 milliseconds) will have a higher chance to be fulfilled by UDP. Therefore, UDP should be a better choice.

Question 6 A web page contains THREE (3) images and ONE (1) java object. How many TCP connections need to be established and how many RTTs are required in order to view the web page if: (a) Non-persistent connection is used. [2 marks] (b) Persistent connection without pipelining is used. [2 marks] (c) Persistent connection with pipelining is used. [2 marks] Answer: (a) (b) (c) TCP connections: 5, RTTs: 10 TCP connections: 1, RTTs: 6 TCP connections: 1, RTTs: 3

Question 7 (a) The HTTP protocol is stateless. What do you understand by this statement? [2 marks] (b) What is the HTTP mechanism that can be used to enable a web site to serve content as a function of user identify? [1 mark] (c) If the mechanism in (b) above is implemented, what should the web server do when it receives an HTTP request message from a first-time user? [3 marks] Answer: (a) (b) It means the HTTP server does not store user information. Cookies.

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(c)

Creates a unique identification number, creates an entry for the user in the back-end database and include the Set-cookie: header in the response message

Question 8 Even though both HTTP and FTP can be used to transfer a file between two computers, they use different connection architecture. HTTP uses the in-band architecture while FTP uses the out-of-band architecture. What is the difference between the two? [2 marks] Answer: In-band: Only one TCP connection is created. Both data and control messages are transmitted using this one connection. Out-of-band: Two TCP connections are created, one for control messages and one for data messages.

Question 9 MIME (Multipurpose Mail Extension) is an important enhancement made to the email application. (a) MIME enables email users today to do something that is not possible to be done by email users in the early days of the Internet. What is it? [1 mark] (b) MIME overcomes one of the limitations of the SMTP protocol. What is this limitation? [1 mark] (c) To use MIME, one of the headers that need to be included is the header Content-Transfer-Encoding. How does the receiving email client use the information provided by this header? [2 marks] Answer: (a) (b) (c) Send an attachment through email. Email content must be in 7-bit ASCII. The header specifies the algorithm that needs to be used to decode the content sent with this email. Page 5 of 8
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Question 10 An organization must have at least one local DNS server and one authoritative DNS server. Define these two types of DNS servers. [4 marks] Answer: Local DNS server: The DNS server directly queried by the clients in the organization. Authoritative DNS server: The DNS server that contains the mapping for publicly accessible hosts that belong to the organization.

Question 11 Define the following terms related to the BitTorrent protocol. (a) (b) (c) (d) Torrent Tracker Chunk Seed [4 marks] Answer: (a) (b) (c) (d) The groups of peers participating in a file distribution. A node that keeps track of the peers participating in a torrent. A piece of the file to be distributed. A node that has the complete copy of the file to be distributed.

Question 12 Name TWO (2) services provided by TCP but not provided by UDP. [2 marks] Answer: Reliable data transfer Congestion control

Question 13 The following data is received from the network. Using the CRC method, check whether the received data contains error or not. Use G = 11001.

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Data: 1010011011110110 [4 marks] Answer: The division should give a remainder of 100. Therefore, the received data contains error.

Question 14 The following mechanisms are used to provide reliable data transfer: error detection, acknowledgement, retransmission, sequence number, timer. Identify the mechanism used to provide each of the following function. (a) (b) (c) (d) Tell the sender whether the data is received correctly or not. Recover from packet error. Identify duplicate packets. Detect packet loss. [4 marks] Answer: (a) (b) (c) (d) Acknowledgement Retransmission Sequence number Timer

Question 15 A sender transmits EIGHT (8) packets, P0 P7. During transmission, P4 and P6 are lost. Assume that when the last packet is received, the timer has not yet timeout. (a) If Go-back-N is used, how would the receiver acknowledge when P5 is received? [1 mark] (b) If Go-back-N is used, how would the receiver acknowledge when P7 is received? [1 mark] (c) If Selective Repeat is used, how would the receiver acknowledge when P5 is received? [1 mark]

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(d)

If Selective Repeat is used, how would the receiver acknowledge when P7 is received? [1 mark]

(e)

If Go-back-N is used, which packets need to be retransmitted when timeout occurs? [1 mark]

(f)

If Selective Repeat is used, which packets need to be retransmitted when timeout occurs? [1 mark]

Answer: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) ACK3 ACK3 ACK5 ACK7 P4, P5, P6, P7 P4 and P6

---End of Questions---

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