Quadrature Amplitude Modulation - (QAM) A method for encoding digital data in an

analog signal in which each combination of phase and amplitude represents one of
sixteen four bit patterns. This is required for fax transmission at 9600 bits per second.

Like all modulation schemes, QAM conveys data by changing some aspect of a carrier
signal, or the carrier wave, (usually a sinusoid) in response to a data signal. In the case of
QAM, the amplitude of two waves, 90 degrees out-of-phase with each other (in
quadrature) are changed (modulated or keyed) to represent the data signal.

Phase modulation (analog PM) and phase-shift keying (digital PSK) can be regarded as a
special case of QAM, where the magnitude of the modulating signal is a constant, with
only the phase varying. This can also be extended to frequency modulation (FM) and
frequency-shift keying (FSK), for these can be regarded a special case of phase
modulation.

Frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) is a form of signal multiplexing(simultaneous

transmission of many messages on a single channel) where multiple baseband signals are
modulated(change) on different frequency carrier waves and added together to create a
composite signal.

[edit] Non telephone

FDM can also be used to combine multiple signals before final modulation onto a carrier
wave. In this case the carrier signals are referred to as subcarriers: an example is stereo
FM transmission, where a 38 kHz subcarrier is used to separate the left-right difference
signal from the central left-right sum channel, prior to the frequency modulation of the
composite signal. A television channel is divided into subcarrier frequencies for video,
color, and audio. DSL uses different frequencies for voice and for upstream and
downstream data transmission on the same conductors, which is also an example of
frequency duplex.

Where frequency division multiplexing is used as to allow multiple users to share a

physical communications channel, it is called frequency-division multiple access
(FDMA).

FDMA is the traditional way of separating radio signals from different transmitters.

In the 1860 and 70s, several inventors attempted FDM under the names of Acoustic
telegraphy and Harmonic telegraphy. Practical FDM was only achieved in the electronic
age. Meanwhile their efforts led to an elementary understanding of electroacoustic
technology, resulting in the invention of the telephone.
[edit] Telephone
For long distance telephone connections, 20th century telephone companies used L-
carrier and similar co-axial cable systems carrying thousands of voice circuits
multiplexed in multiple stages.

For short distances, cheaper balanced pair cables were used for various systems including
Bell System K- and N-Carrier. Those cables didn't allow such large bandwidths, so only
12 voice channels (Double Sideband) and later 24 (Single Sideband) were multiplexed
into four wires, one pair for each direction with repeaters every several miles,
approximately 10 km. By the end of the 20th Century, FDM voice circuits had become
rare. Modern telephone systems employ digital transmission, in which time-division
multiplexing (TDM) is used instead of FDM.

Since the late twentieth century Digital Subscriber Lines have used a Discrete multitone
(DMT) system to divide their spectrum into frequency channels.

The concept corresponding to frequency division multiplexing in the optical domain is

known as wavelength division multiplexing.

Cyclic redundancy check

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Cyclical redundancy checking)
Jump to: navigation, search

A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is a type of function that takes as input a data
stream of any length, and produces as output a value of a certain space, commonly a
32-bit integer. The term CRC is often used to denote either the function or the
function's output. A CRC can be used as a checksum to detect alteration of data during
transmission or storage. CRCs are popular because they are simple to implement in
binary hardware, are easy to analyze mathematically, and are particularly good at
detecting common errors caused by noise in transmission channels. The CRC was
invented by W. Wesley Peterson, and published in his 1961 paper[1]. The first appearance
of the CRC-32, now employed in Ethernet, other applications, and IEEE recommended,
in the literature was in the paper, Evaluation of Error Detection Polynomial Performance
on the AUTOVON Channel, K. Brayer, J.L. Hammond, IEEE National
Telecommunications Conference, New Orleans, LA, December 1975. It is the generator
polynomial of a Hamming code and was selected for its error detection performance.
Computer network
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

A computer network is a group of interconnected computers. Networks may be

classified according to a wide variety of characteristics. This article provides a general
overview of some types and categories and presents the basic components of a network.

Types of networks
Below is a list of the most common types of computer networks in order of scale.

[edit] Personal Area Network (PAN)

Main article: Personal area network

A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network used for communication among
computer devices close to one person. Some examples of devices that are used in a PAN
are printers, fax machines, telephones, PDAs or scanners. The reach of a PAN is typically
within about 20-30 feet (approximately 6-9 metres).

Personal area networks may be wired with computer buses such as USB[1] and FireWire.
A wireless personal area network (WPAN) can also be made possible with network
technologies such as IrDA and Bluetooth..

[edit] Local Area Network (LAN)

Main article: Local Area Network

A network covering a small geographic area, like a home, office, or building. Current
LANs are most likely to be based on Ethernet technology. For example, a library may
have a wired or wireless LAN for users to interconnect local devices (e.g., printers and
servers) and to connect to the internet. On a wired LAN, PCs in the library are typically
connected by category 5 (Cat5) cable, running the IEEE 802.3 protocol through a system
of interconnection devices and eventually connect to the internet. The cables to the
servers are typically on Cat 5e enhanced cable, which will support IEEE 802.3 at 1
Gbit/s. A wireless LAN may exist using a different IEEE protocol, 802.11b or 802.11g.
The staff computers (bright green in the figure) can get to the color printer, checkout
records, and the academic network and the Internet. All user computers can get to the
Internet and the card catalog. Each workgroup can get to its local printer. Note that the
printers are not accessible from outside their workgroup.
Typical library network, in a branching tree topology and controlled access to resources

All interconnected devices must understand the network layer (layer 3), because they are
handling multiple subnets (the different colors). Those inside the library, which have only
10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet connections to the user device and a Gigabit Ethernet connection
to the central router, could be called "layer 3 switches" because they only have Ethernet
interfaces and must understand IP. It would be more correct to call them access routers,
where the router at the top is a distribution router that connects to the Internet and
academic networks' customer access routers.

The defining characteristics of LANs, in contrast to WANs (wide area networks), include
their higher data transfer rates, smaller geographic range, and lack of a need for leased
telecommunication lines. Current Ethernet or other IEEE 802.3 LAN technologies
operate at speeds up to 10 Gbit/s. This is the data transfer rate. IEEE has projects
investigating the standardization of 100 Gbit/s, and possibly 40 Gbit/s.

[edit] Campus Area Network (CAN)

Main article: Campus Area Network

A network that connects two or more LANs but that is limited to a specific and
contiguous geographical area such as a college campus, industrial complex, or a military
base. A CAN may be considered a type of MAN (metropolitan area network), but is
generally limited to an area that is smaller than a typical MAN. This term is most often
used to discuss the implementation of networks for a contiguous area. This should not be
confused with a Controller Area Network. A LAN connects network devices over a
relatively short distance. A networked office building, school, or home usually contains a
single LAN, though sometimes one building will contain a few small LANs (perhaps one
per room), and occasionally a LAN will span a group of nearby buildings. In TCP/IP
networking, a LAN is often but not always implemented as a single IP subnet.

[edit] Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)

Main article: Metropolitan Area Network

A Metropolitan Area Network is a network that connects two or more Local Area
Networks or Campus Area Networks together but does not extend beyond the boundaries
of the immediate town/city. Routers, switches and hubs are connected to create a
Metropolitan Area Network.

[edit] Wide Area Network (WAN)

Main article: Wide Area Network
A WAN is a data communications network that covers a relatively broad geographic area
(i.e. one city to another and one country to another country) and that often uses
transmission facilities provided by common carriers, such as telephone companies. WAN
technologies generally function at the lower three layers of the OSI reference model: the
physical layer, the data link layer, and the network layer.

[edit] Global Area Network (GAN)

Main article: Global Area Network

Global area networks (GAN) specifications are in development by several groups, and
there is no common definition. In general, however, a GAN is a model for supporting
mobile communications across an arbitrary number of wireless LANs, satellite coverage
areas, etc. The key challenge in mobile communications is "handing off" the user
communications from one local coverage area to the next. In IEEE Project 802, this
involves a succession of terrestrial Wireless local area networks (WLAN).[2]

[edit] Internetwork
Main article: Internetwork

Two or more networks or network segments connected using devices that operate at layer
3 (the 'network' layer) of the OSI Basic Reference Model, such as a router. Any
interconnection among or between public, private, commercial, industrial, or
governmental networks may also be defined as an internetwork.

In modern practice, the interconnected networks use the Internet Protocol. There are at
least three variants of internetwork, depending on who administers and who participates
in them:

• Intranet
• Extranet
• Internet

Intranets and extranets may or may not have connections to the Internet. If connected to
the Internet, the intranet or extranet is normally protected from being accessed from the
Internet without proper authorization. The Internet is not considered to be a part of the
intranet or extranet, although it may serve as a portal for access to portions of an extranet.

[edit] Intranet
Main article: Intranet

An intranet is a set of interconnected networks, using the Internet Protocol and uses IP-
based tools such as web browsers and ftp tools, that is under the control of a single
administrative entity. That administrative entity closes the intranet to the rest of the
world, and allows only specific users. Most commonly, an intranet is the internal network
of a company or other enterprise. A large intranet will typically have its own web server
to provide users with browseable information.

[edit] Extranet
Main article: Extranet

An extranet is a network or internetwork that is limited in scope to a single organization

or entity but which also has limited connections to the networks of one or more other
usually, but not necessarily, trusted organizations or entities (e.g. a company's customers
may be given access to some part of its intranet creating in this way an extranet, while at
the same time the customers may not be considered 'trusted' from a security standpoint).
Technically, an extranet may also be categorized as a CAN, MAN, WAN, or other type of
network, although, by definition, an extranet cannot consist of a single LAN; it must have
at least one connection with an external network.

[edit] Internet
Main article: Internet

A specific internetwork, consisting of a worldwide interconnection of governmental,

academic, public, and private networks based upon the Advanced Research Projects
Agency Network (ARPANET) developed by DARPA of the U.S. Department of Defense
– also home to the World Wide Web (WWW) and referred to as the 'Internet' with a
capital 'I' to distinguish it from other generic internetworks.

Participants in the Internet use the Internet Protocol Suite and IP Addresses allocated by
address registries. Service providers and large enterprises exchange information about the
reachability of their address ranges through the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
TCP/IP Architecture Model: 4-Layers vs. OSI 7 Layers
TCP/IP architecture does not exactly follow the OSI model. Unfortunately, there is no
universal agreement regarding how to describe TCP/IP with a layered model. It is
generally agreed that TCP/IP has fewer levels (from three to five layers) than the seven
layers of the OSI model. We adopt a four layers model for the TCP/IP architecture.

TCP/IP architecture omits some features found under the OSI model, combines the
features of some adjacent OSI layers and splits other layers apart. The 4-layer structure of
TCP/IP is built as information is passed down from applications to the physical network
layer. When data is sent, each layer treats all of the information it receives from the upper
layer as data, adds control information (header) to the front of that data and then pass it to
the lower layer. When data is received, the opposite procedure takes place as each layer
processes and removes its header before passing the data to the upper layer.

The TCP/IP 4-layer model and the key functions of each layer is described below:

Application Layer

The Application Layer in TCP/IP groups the functions of OSI Application, Presentation
Layer and Session Layer. Therefore any process above the transport layer is called an
Application in the TCP/IP architecture. In TCP/IP socket and port are used to describe the
path over which applications communicate. Most application level protocols are
associated with one or more port number.

Transport Layer

In TCP/IP architecture, there are two Transport Layer protocols. The Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) guarantees information transmission. The User Datagram
Protocol (UDP) transports datagram switch out end-to-end reliability checking. Both
protocols are useful for different applications.

Network Layer

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the primary protocol in the TCP/IP Network Layer. All upper
and lower layer communications must travel through IP as they are passed through the
TCP/IP protocol stack. In addition, there are many supporting protocols in the Network
Layer, such as ICMP, to facilitate and manage the routing process.

Network Access Layer

In the TCP/IP architecture, the Data Link Layer and Physical Layer are normally grouped
together to become the Network Access layer. TCP/IP makes use of existing Data Link
and Physical Layer standards rather than defining its own. Many RFCs describe how IP
utilizes and interfaces with the existing data link protocols such as Ethernet, Token Ring,
FDDI, HSSI, and ATM. The physical layer, which defines the hardware communication
properties, is not often directly interfaced with the TCP/IP protocols in the network layer
and above.

TCP/IP Architecture Model: 4-Layers vs. OSI 7 Layers

High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC) is a bit-oriented synchronous data link layer
protocol developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The
original ISO standards for HDLC were:

• ISO 3309 — Frame Structure

• ISO 4335 — Elements of Procedure
• ISO 6159 — Unbalanced Classes of Procedure
• ISO 6256 — Balanced Classes of Procedure

The current standard for HDLC is ISO 13239, which replaces all of those standards.

HDLC provides both connection-oriented and connectionless service.

HDLC can be used for point to multipoint connections, but is now used almost
exclusively to connect one device to another, using what is known as Asynchronous
Balanced Mode (ABM). The original master-slave modes Normal Response Mode
(NRM) and Asynchronous Response Mode (ARM) are rarely used.

HDLC Protocol Description

HDLC [High-level Data Link Control] is a group of protocols for transmitting
[synchronous] data [Packets] between [Point-to-Point] nodes. In HDLC, data is organized
into a frame. HDLC protocol resides with Layer 2 of the OSI model, the data link layer.
HDLC uses zero insertion/deletion process [bit stuffing] to ensure that the bit pattern of
the delimiter flag does not occur in the fields between flags. The HDLC frame is
synchronous and therefore relies on the physical layer to provide method of clocking and
synchronizing the transmission and reception of frames.

HDLC Frame Structure

HDLC uses the term "frame" to indicate an entity of data(or a protocol data unit)
transmitted from one station to another. Figure 3 below is a graphical
representation of a HDLC frame with an information field.

Figure 3 An HDLC frame with an information field.

Field Name Size(in bits)
Flag Field( F ) 8 bits
Address Field( A ) 8 bits
Control Field( C ) 8 or 16 bits
Information Field( I ) Variable; Not used in some frames
Frame Check Sequence( FCS ) 16 or 32 bits
Closing Flag Field( F ) 8 bits

HDLC Framing
Frame Synchronisation

Once an HDLC link has been started, bits are transmitted continuously, even when the
link is idle, in which case the flag sequence - 01111110 (or 0x7E) is transmitted. Frames
are transmitted within the gaps between flags, so the receiver can determine when a
frame starts and stops by synchronising with the flags.

To ensure transparency, a 0 bit is inserted by the transmitter after 5 continuous 1s within

the frame contents, and removed by the receiver whenever it detects 5 continuous 1s
followed by a 0. This prevents data within the frame being confused with the flags, and is
known as "bit-stuffing".

Normal frames are terminated with a flag - any frame which terminates with 7 1s or more
is assumed to be aborted, and discarded. The transmitter can deliberately abort a frame if
it chooses - this can sometimes happen if frames need to be retransmitted, and the
transmitter knows that the frame currently being sent will be discarded by the receiver.

Only a single flag is necessary between frames - the ending flag of one frame can be the
starting flag of the next. The flag is therefore not actually part of the HDLC frame itself.

HDLC Frame Structure

The HDLC Frame (before transmission - i.e. before bit-stuffing and wrapping with flags)
consists of the following fields:

Address field
Control field
Information field
 Frame Check Sequence

The frame is transmitted with the lowest order bit of each byte first - and indeed the
frame structure within the X.25 specification shows the field encodings such that the
lowest order bit is on the left, which can be rather confusing to those used to normal
computing notation. Since all the fields are in reality byte-aligned, this guide uses
standard ordering of each byte - for example, the LAPB Address fields are described as
0x03 and 0x01.

Address Field

The Address field in theory can be number of bytes; if the byte value is even, that means
that another address byte follows.

The Address field for LAPB is always a single byte, and takes the value 0x01 or 0x03, as
follows:

Command frames DCE to DTE

0x03
Response frames DTE to DCE
Command frames DTE to DCE
0x01
Response Frames DCE to DTE

Note that the different address field values mean that a LAPB link is not symmetrical -
one end must be a DTE and one a DCE, and thus the link will not work if misconfigured.
To get round this, the FarSync X.25 software employs rather clever algorithm which
causes one end of the link to reconfigure itself if it encounters the situation in which both
ends of the link are configured in the same way, but this only happens if Auto Link Role
is enabled.

Control Field

The Control Field is usually 1 byte, but can be 2 bytes long for LAPB. This depends on
the frame type, and whether normal (modulo-8) or extended (modulo-128) sequence
numbers are used. Modulo-8 sequence numbers are used most of the time, in which case
the Control Field is always 1 byte.

Information Field

The Information Field contains the higher layer data being carried by the Link Layer - for
X.25, this is typically the X.25 Packet.
Frame Check Sequence (CRC)

The Frame Check Sequence is 16-bits long for LAPB (a 32-bit FCS is possible for other
types of HDLC). It contains a Cyclic Redundancy Check sequence, and thus is often
referred to as the CRC instead of the FCS.

The FCS is generated when a frame is transmitted (before any bit-stuffing) and is
checked when a frame is received. If one or more bits have been modified during
transmission by a line error, then the CRC check should fail, in which case the entire
frame is discarded.