Connectivity in Computer Network (Cont'd)

Connectivity

Connectivity (Cont'd). A second way in which a set of computers can be indirectly connected is shown in Figure interconnection network. In this situation, a set of independent networks (clouds) are interconnected to form an internetwork, or internet for short. We adopt the Internet’s convention of referring to a generic internetwork of networks as a lowercase i internet, and the currently operational TCP/IP Internet as the capital I Internet. A node that is connected to two or more networks is commonly called a router or gateway, and it plays much the same role as a switch—it forwards messages from one network to another. Note that an internet can itself be viewed as another kind of network, which means that an internet can be built from an interconnection of internets. Thus, we can recursively build arbitrarily large networks by interconnecting clouds to form larger clouds.

Interconnection Networks

Just because a set of hosts are directly or indirectly connected to each other does not mean that we have succeeded in providing host-to-host connectivity. The final requirement is that each node must be able to say which of the other nodes on the network it wants to communicate with. This is done by assigning an address to each node. An address is a byte string that identifies a node; that is, the network can use a node’s address to distinguish it from the other nodes connected to the network. When a source node wants the network to deliver a message to a certain destination node, it specifies the address of the destination node. If the sending and receiving nodes are not directly connected, then the switches and routers of the network use this address to decide how to forward the message toward the destination. The process of determining systematically how to forward messages toward the destination node based on its address is called routing.

This brief introduction to addressing and routing has presumed that the source node wants to send a message to a single destination node (unicast). While this is the most common scenario, it is also possible that the source node might want to broadcast a message to all the nodes on the network. Or a source node might want to send a message to some subset of the other nodes, but not all of them, a situation called multicast. Thus, in addition to node-specific addresses, another requirement of a network is that it support multicast and broadcast addresses.

The main idea to take away from this discussion is that we can define a network recursively as consisting of two or more nodes connected by a physical link, or as two or more networks connected by a node. In other words, a network can be constructed from a nesting of networks, where at the bottom level, the network is implemented by some physical medium. One of the key challenges in providing network connectivity is to define an address for each node that is reachable on the network (including support for broadcast and multicast connectivity), and to be able to use this address to route messages toward the appropriate destination node(s).

Connectivity in Computer Network

Connectivity

Starting with the obvious, a network must provide connectivity among a set of computers. Sometimes it is enough to build a limited network that connects only a few select machines. In fact, for reasons of privacy and security, many private (corporate) networks have the explicit goal of limiting the set of machines that are connected. In contrast, other networks (of which the Internet is the prime example) are designed to grow in a way that allows them the potential to connect all the computers in the world. A system that is designed to support growth to an arbitrarily large size is said to scale. Using the Internet as a model, this book addresses the challenge of scalability. 

Links, Nodes, and Clouds

 Network connectivity occurs at many different levels. At the lowest level, a network can consist of two or more computers directly connected by some physical medium, such as a coaxial cable or an optical fiber. We call such a physical medium a link, and we often refer to the computers it connects as nodes. (Sometimes a node is a more specialized piece of hardware rather than a computer, but we overlook that distinction for the purposes of this discussion.) As illustrated in Figure , physical links are sometimes limited to a pair of nodes (such a link is said to be point-to-point), while in other cases, more than two nodes may share a single physical link (such a link is said to be multiple access). Whether a given link supports point-to-point or multipleaccess connectivity depends on how the node is attached to the link. It is also the case that multiple-access links are often limited in size, in terms of both the geographical distance they can cover and the number of nodes they can connect. The exception is a satellite link, which can cover a wide geographic area.

Point to Point

Multiple Access

If computer networks were limited to situations in which all nodes are directly connected to each other over a common physical medium, then either networks would be very limited in the number of computers they could connect, or the number of wires coming out of the back of each node would quickly become both unmanageable and very expensive. Fortunately, connectivity between two nodes does not necessarily imply a direct physical connection between them—indirect connectivity may be achieved among a set of cooperating nodes. Consider the following two examples of how a collection of computers can be indirectly connected.

Switched Network

Figure Switched Network shows a set of nodes, each of which is attached to one or more pointto- point links. Those nodes that are attached to at least two links run software that forwards data received on one link out on another. If organized in a systematic way, these forwarding nodes form a switched network. There are numerous types of switched networks, of which the two most common are circuit switched and packet switched. The former is most notably employed by the telephone system, while the latter is used for

the overwhelming majority of computer networks and will be the focus of this blog.

The important feature of packet-switched networks is that the nodes in such a network send discrete blocks of data to each other. Think of these blocks of data as corresponding to some piece of application data such as a file, a piece of email, or an image. We call each block of data either a packet or a message, and for now we use these terms interchangeably; we discuss the reason they are not always the same in next article. Packet-switched networks typically use a strategy called store-and-forward. As the name suggests, each node in a store-and-forward network first receives a complete packet over some link, stores the packet in its internal memory, and then forwards the complete packet to the next node. In contrast, a circuit-switched network first establishes a dedicated circuit across a sequence of links and then allows the source node to send a stream of bits across this circuit to a destination node. The major reason for using packet switching rather than circuit switching in a computer network is efficiency, discussed in the next subsection.

The cloud in Figure 1.3 distinguishes between the nodes on the inside that implement the network (they are commonly called switches, and their sole function is to store and forward packets) and the nodes on the outside of the cloud that use the network (they are commonly called hosts, and they support users and run application programs). Also note that the cloud in Figure 1.3 is one of the most important icons of computer networking. In general, we use a cloud to denote any type of network, whether it is a single point-to-point link, a multiple-access link, or a switched network. Thus, whenever you see a cloud used in  a figure, you can think of it as a placeholder for any of the networking technologies covered in this blog.

Requirements for Computer Network

Requirements 

We have just established an ambitious goal for ourselves: to understand how to build a computer network from the ground up. Our approach to accomplishing this goal will be to start from first principles, and then ask the kinds of questions we would naturally ask if building an actual network. At each step, we will use today’s protocols to illustrate various design choices available to us, but we will not accept these existing artifacts as gospel. Instead, we will be asking (and answering) the question of why networks are designed the way they are. While it is tempting to settle for just understanding the way it’s done today, it is important to recognize the underlying concepts because networks are constantly changing as the technology evolves and new applications are invented. It is our experience that once you understand the fundamental ideas, any new protocol that you are confronted with will be relatively easy to digest.

The first step is to identify the set of constraints and requirements that influence

network design. Before getting started, however, it is important to understand that the

expectations you have of a network depend on your perspective:

■ An application programmer would list the services that his or her application

needs, for example, a guarantee that each message the application sends will

be delivered without error within a certain amount of time.

■ A network designer would list the properties of a cost-effective design, for

example, that network resources are efficiently utilized and fairly allocated to

different users.

■ A network provider would list the characteristics of a system that is easy to

administer and manage, for example, in which faults can be easily isolated

and where it is easy to account for usage.

This post attempts to distill these different perspectives into a high-level introduction to the major considerations that drive network design, and in doing so, identifies the challenges addressed throughout the rest of this blog… happy reading^^..