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CMPE 148 Project Report

San José State University

Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering, CMPE 148 Computer Networks

Ekamjeet Singh Grewal

Date of Submission: 05/26/2022

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Project Topic: The functionality of the Wi-Fi 802.11 CSMA-CA

mechanisms – including random back off and contention window sizes

Introduction

This topic is regarding one of the most used things nowadays, Wi-Fi. People often think that the
term Wi-Fi from Wireless Fidelity but that is not correct. Wi-Fi in technical terms is called IEEE
802.11. The term Wi-Fi became famous when a brand name by the Wi-Fi Alliance was formed
and took on the responsibility of the promotion of the 802.11 wireless communications standard.
Wi-Fi is a wireless communications technology that allows devices such as computers,
smartphones, televisions, gaming consoles, and other electronic devices to connect to the internet
at fast speeds without requiring a direct cable connection.

This topic discusses about the components of a Wi-Fi router, what goes on inside a Wi-Fi router
when turned on and working properly, the steps a Wi-Fi router follows while communicating with
the internet and devices connected to it.

Project Topic Details

Wi-Fi 802.11, originally IEEE 802.11, is a family of wireless network protocols which allows
the devices to connect to each other and get connected to the internet to without any physical
wire connection. Wi-Fi works only in a limited geographical area. Wi-fi also incorporates other
features like power management and security mechanisms. The Wi-Fi 802.11 can be used to
establish a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN).

The key requirement to implement a Wi-Fi connection is a wireless router. A wireless router
comprises of 3 main parts:
a) Router: Routes the incoming and outgoing packets to their corresponding interfaces
based on the routing table.
b) Wireless access point: Allows the devices like smartphones and laptops to wirelessly
connect with the wireless router. This is what makes the router wireless.
c) Ethernet switch: Allows the devices to connect with the router with an ethernet cable.

The Wi-Fi has 23 overlapping channels because it uses the 5 GHz Radio Band (high frequency)
instead of the 2.4 GHz which has only 3 overlapping channels.
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Figure 1: Components of a wireless router [1]

The MAC protocol that Wi-Fi 802.11 follows is CSMA-CA which stands for Carrier Sense
Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance. Whereas Ethernet uses CSMA- CD. As suggested by
the name, in this protocol the router checks if the carrier wire directly in contact with is busy or
not. By busy I mean if the carrier is already carrying a signal or not. So, if the carrier is idle then
the router passes the signal for the destination (the data). If the carrier is busy, then it will hold
the data until the carrier is free. So, this the general idea of the CSMA protocol.

Now, talking about the Collison avoidance part, the primary premise of CSMA/CA is that a
station must be able to receive while transmitting to identify a collision between two stations.
The process diagram of CSMA-CA is given below.

Waits
𝑇! 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑠

Figure 2: CSMA-CA process [2}

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CSMA-CA process steps:

1. The process starts of by having a variable to count the number of attempts (K=0).
2. Then the router senses the carrier if it’s idle. If it’s not idle, then it comes back to
previous step and senses the carrier again.
3. If it finds the carrier idle, then it waits IFS time (Inter Frame Space time) just make sure
the other station hasn’t started transmission.
4. It chooses a random number between 0 to 2! − 1
5. Depending on the random number chosen, the station waits that many number of slots to
move to the next step.
6. After waiting, the station sends ‘Ready To Send’ signal which signifies that the station is
ready to transmit data.
7. It sets a timer by starting start interframe space (SIFS)
8. The router sends back the “Clear To Send (CTS)” signal to the station which tells it that
the Router is ready to receive data.
9. If the station receives the CTS before the timeout, then the station then again waits for
IFS time just in case there is already a transmission going on.
10. If the CTS is not received then the value of K is increased by 1, check if the value has
exceeded the maximum number of attempts. If yes then the process is aborted otherwise,
it waits for 𝑅𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑚 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑜𝑓𝑓 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 (𝑇" ) = 𝑅𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑚 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 (𝑅) ∗ 𝑆𝑙𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 (𝑇# ) and
starts from step 2 again.
11. If CTS received, then after waiting it sends the frames and waits for the ACK
(Acknowledgement).
12. If ACK received then the process is successful and breaks the loop, if ACK is not
received then the value of K is increased by 1, check if the value has exceeded the
maximum number of attempts. If yes then the process is aborted otherwise, it waits for
𝑅𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑚 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑜𝑓𝑓 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 (𝑇" ) = 𝑅𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑚 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 (𝑅) ∗ 𝑆𝑙𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 (𝑇# ) and starts from
step 2 again.

Discussion

The CSMA-CA protocol helps in preventing data collisions significantly and because of the
feedback, no data is lost unnoticeably. It also helps in avoiding the traffic by utilizing RTS and
CTS. But, the CSMA-CA is lengthier than the CSMA-CD protocol. The number of steps
involved in this process can bring down the throughput because of longer wait times. I believe
that every blessing comes with a curse. If we want to enjoy wireless internet access then we
would have to give up faster speeds available in the ethernet cable.
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References

1. Neso Academy. “IEEE 802.11 Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi),” Youtube, May 18,2020[Video
File]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3FVP5wuG4g [Accessed May 25,
2022].
2. Anonymous, “Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA),” GeeksforGeeks, 06-May-2022.
[Online]. Available: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/carrier-sense-multiple-access-
csma/#:~:text=Contention%20Window%20%E2%80%93%20It%20is%20the,successful
%20transmission%20of%20the%20frame. [Accessed: 26-May-2022].

Project Topic: The IPv6 address types, address assignment, packet

structure, routing, security, and DNS for IPv6 addresses (High Pass)

Introduction
In this topic we are going to talk about the internet protocol IPv6. A internet protocol is way of
identifying devices across the internet so that can be located by other devices. In order for
internet communication to operate, each device that accesses the internet has its unique IP
address. In that sense, it's similar to knowing the street number and zip codes needed to mail a
letter.

There are two types of internet protocols in practice: IPv4 and IPv6. The IPv4 is more widely
used whereas IPv6 is respectively new. IPv6 comprises of new and better features in addition to
all the IPv4 features. The use of IPv6 is slowly being increased in replacement of IPv4. As such,
IPv4 doesn’t have a problem since we have found solutions to overcome it’s limitations. We are
going to different aspects of IPv6.

Project Topic Details

The IPv4 specifications were first released in 1970, which makes it more than 50 years old. A
new internet protocol was invented in 1998 which is called IPv6. The IPv6 utilizes 128-bit IP
address fields which are written as 8 4 hexadecimal integers separated by colons which is
equivalent to 8 16-bit integers. For example: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. This
feature solves the main limitation of IPv4 protocol of having less number of IP addresses than
the total number of devices connected to the internet. With IPv6 we can generate 3.4 x 10^38
unique IP addresses.

There are three types of IPv6 addresses, which are are: unicast, anycast, and multicast.

1. Unicast address identifies a single interface.

2. Anycast address identifies a set of interfaces in such a way that a packet sent to an
anycast address is delivered to the specific member of the set.
3. Multicast address identifies a group of interfaces in such a way that a packet sent to a
multicast address is delivered to all the interfaces in the group.
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In IPv6, the IP header has been simplified and defined as a constant length of 40 bytes. Fields
from the IPv4 Header have been eliminated or renamed but still providing the same sort of
features or relocated to the new optional IPv6 Extension Headers in the design of the IPv6
Header. Although an IPv6 address is four times the size of an IPv4 address, the header of an IPv6
address is only two times the size of an IPv4 address. The IPv6 has One Fixed Header and zero
or more Optional Headers are present in IPv6 headers. In the Fixed Header, all of the relevant
information for a router is stored. Optional information in the Extension Header aids routers in
determining how to treat a packet/flow.

Figure 3: IPv4 Header [1]

Figure 4: IPv6 Header [1]

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There are now six Extension Headers defined in the IPv6 specification:
1. Routing Header - This is similar to the IPv4 source routing choices. It was once used to
impose a specified route.
2. Authentication Header (AH) - A security header that ensures data integrity and
authentication.
3. Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) Header - An authentication and encryption
security header.
4. Fragmentation Header - The fragmentation options in IPv4 are identical to the
Fragmentation Header.
5. The Destination Options Header: It contains a collection of options that are only handled
by the ultimate destination node. It is an example of a mobile IPv6.
6. Hop-by-Hop Options Header: A list of options that routers require in order to conduct
particular administration or debugging operations.

Routing

The routing in IPv6 and IPv4 are very much the same under CIDR. The only difference is the bit
size. IPv6 extensions allows the users to utilize all of the IPv4 routing algorithms. Routing
protocols are divided into two types:

1) Distance Vector Routing Protocol: A router that uses the distance vector routing protocol
advertises its linked routes and learns new routes from its neighbors. The hops between
the source and destination are used to compute the routing cost to reach a destination.
Routing-by-rumors is when a router depends on its neighbor for the optimum path
selection. Distance Vector Protocols are RIP and BGP.

2) Link-State Routing Protocol: This protocol recognizes a Link's state and broadcasts it to
its neighbors. Peer routers provide information about new links. The Link-State Routing
Protocol utilizes its own method to compute the optimum path to all accessible links after
all routing information has been converged. Both OSPF and IS-IS employ Dijkstra's
Shortest Path First algorithm, which is a link state routing protocol.

Stateful and stateless auto-configuration of IP addresses is possible with IPv6. The stateful
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), in which static tables are maintained to identify
the IP address to be allocated to a newly connected node, is used for stateful auto-configuration.
Without the usage of DHCP, stateless auto-configuration is possible.

For IPv6, a new version of the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) has been created,
which is responsible for reporting faults and giving network information. The IPv6 standards
include ICMP for IPv6 (ICMPv6).
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DNS

There hasn't been a new version of DNS released, but it now supports extensions that allow it to
query IPv6 addresses. In response to IPv6 inquiry packets, a new AAAA (quad-A) record has
been introduced. The DNS may now respond to queries with both IPv4 and IPv6 without
changing the query syntax.

Security

IPsec is a protocol that is part of the IPv6 protocol suite and is mandatory to be implemented in
IPv6. IPsec is a collection of security protocols that were initially included in the IPv6
specification. IPsec was also modified for IPv4 due to the high demand for security in the
contemporary IPv4 Internet. IPsec functionality in IPv4 is, however, optional since there are
other options available. It is used to implement Virtual Proxy Networks (VPNs) in IPv4. IPsec in
IPv6 the data is encrypted from the originating workstation/host to the destination
workstation/host while travelling through the Internet's numerous routers and devices. So, it
provides end-to-end security in IPv6.

To offer security, IPsec uses the Authentication Header and the Encapsulating Security Payload
Header. To provide the appropriate security, the AH and ESP Headers can be utilized alone or in
combination. In the following modes, both the AH and ESP headers can be used:

- Tunnel mode - This option applies the protocol to the whole IP packet. This approach is
required to assure packet security by wrapping a new IPv6 header plus an AH or ESP header
around the original IP packet.

- Transport mode – Only applicable to the transport layer as an IPv6 header, AH or ESP header,
followed by the transport protocol data.

Discussion

In my opinion, the adoption rate of IPv6 should be increased. The benefits that IPv6 brings with
are not match to the solutions found to overcome the limitations of IPv4. It gets rid of the
requirement to use NAT since there’s enough unique IP addresses with IPv6 to cover all the
devices across the globe. The IPv6 protocol can better manage packets, enhance speed, and
improve security. It allows internet service providers to make their routing tables more
hierarchical, reducing the size of their routing tables.

References
1) “Security Features in IPv6.” [Online]. Available:
https://www.giac.org/paper/gsec/2158/security-features-ipv6/103684. [Accessed: 27-
May-2022].
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Project Topic: 3G and 4G Architecture and their radio access

mechanism (High Pass)

Introduction
This topic is regarding 3G and 4G mobile networks. The “G” stands for generation. 3G and 4G
are the third and fourth generation of the wireless mobile telecommunication technology. Each of
the following technologies with radio frequency spectrum in any band that may be utilized to
permit or assist transmission of audio-visual material to Mobile Devices is referred to as Mobile
Telecommunications Technology. For example, the Global System for Mobile Communications
(GSM), Long Term Evolution (LTE).

Project Topic Details

3G

The Universal Mobile Telecommunications Technology (UMTS) is a third generation (3G)

mobile cellular system for GSM-enabled networks. The 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership
Project) maintains and develops the 3G mobile cellular system.

The three major aspects of the UMTS network architecture are:

User Equipment (UE): The mobile phone, often known as a cellphone, is referred to as User
Equipment (UE). The new name was selected due to the UE's potential for far more
functionality. It might also be anything from a talking mobile phone to a data terminal connected
to a computer that lacks vocal capabilities. [1]

Radio Network Subsystem (RNS): It is also known as the UMTS Radio Access Network
(UTRAN) and offers and administers the overall network's air interface. It's the GSM counterpart
of the earlier BSS (Base Station Subsystem).

Core Network: It is responsible for all of the system's central processing and management. It's
the GSM Network Switching Subsystem's (NSS) counterpart. The core network is the
overarching entity that connects with external networks such as the public telephone network and
other cellular telecommunications networks.
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Figure 5: The main UMTS network blocks

The 3G UMTS core network architecture is a adaptation of the GSM core network architecture
with extra pieces added to allow the UMTS-specific functionality. Because of the various ways
in which data may be sent, the UMTS core network can be divided into two areas:

1. Circuit switched elements: These are generally GSM network entities that convey data in
a circuit switched way, i.e., a permanent channel for the length of the call.

2. Packet switching elements: They are network entities that are designed to transport data
in packets. Because capacity may be shared and data is conveyed as packets that are
routed according to their destination, this allows for substantially higher network
utilization.

Figure 6: UMTS architecture

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Circuit Switched elements

The following network entities make up the circuit switching components of the UMTS core
network architecture:

1. The mobile switching center (MSC): It is similar to the GSM MSC in that it controls the
circuit switched calls in progress. This is the interface to the external networks.

2. This is the interface to the external networks.

Packet Switched elements

The following network entities make up the packet switching components of the 3G UMTS core
network architecture:

1) SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node): This entity was created in response to the
introduction of GPRS, and its use has been carried over into the UMTS network design.
Within the UMTS network architecture, the SGSN performs a variety of duties.

• Mobility management: When a UE joins the UMTS Core Network's Packet

Switched domain, the SGSN creates MM data depending on the mobile's current
position.

• Session management: The SGSN is in charge of managing data sessions to provide

the needed level of service, as well as the PDP (Packet Data Protocol) contexts, or
the pipes through which the data is transported.

• Interaction with other network areas: The SGSN can only manage its network
elements by connecting with other network areas, such as the MSC and other circuit
switched areas.

• Billing is also the responsibility of the SGSN. It accomplishes this by monitoring

user data flow via the GPRS network. The SGSN generates CDRs (Call Detail
Records) before transferring them to the charging entities (CGF).

2) The Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN): It was introduced into the GPRS network at
the same time as the SGSN. Within the UMTS packet switching network, the Gateway
GPRS Support Node (GGSN) is the essential element. It is a sophisticated router that
manages external packet switched networks and inter-working between the UMTS packet
switched network. When the GGSN gets data directed to a specific user, it checks to see
if the user is active before forwarding it to the SGSN that serves that UE.
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Random Access Network (RAN)

A RAN offers access to and facilitates resource management among radio stations. The
backbone, or core network, is linked wirelessly by a handset or other device, and the RAN
distributes its signal to multiple wireless endpoints so that it can travel with traffic from other
networks. Dual-mode phones allow a single UE to be linked to several RANs at the same time.
A RAN consists of three key components:

1. Antennas: They are devices that transform electrical impulses into radio waves.

2. Radios: They convert digital data into wireless signals and guarantee that broadcasts are
made in the appropriate frequency ranges and at the appropriate power levels.

3. BBUs: Wireless communication is made feasible by baseband units (BBUs), which

provide a set of signal processing operations. Traditional baseband enables wireless
communication by combining bespoke electronics with several lines of code, which is
normally done across licensed radio bandwidth. BBU processing identifies mistakes,
protects the wireless transmission, and assures efficient use of wireless resources.

In 3G UMTS the RAN controller is in charge of all of the nodes that are linked to it. Depending
on the kind of RAN, the network controller links to the circuit-switched core network or the
packet-switched core network to manage radio resources, mobility, and data encryption

4G

Mobile services based on high-speed wireless connections, World Wide Web-type services, IP
mobility, and intelligent terminals will be available on the fourth generation (4G) of mobile
networks. The most probable service and content providers to adopt various types of radio access
technologies are 4G operators.

Figure 7: 4G Network Architecture [2]

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Every site that allows visitors has a visitor SIP proxy (Outbound proxy), which is similar to the
VLR in a GSM network. If a visitor on a foreign network wants to be reached, they must register
with the home SIP redirect server. This registration can be completed in a variety of ways. Only
outbound proxy intercept and user-initiated proxy registrations should be used, according to our
proposal. Outbound proxy is used in both of these registration techniques to forward SIP
registration messages. Terminals transmit registration signals to their home network in the event
of Outbound proxy intercept, but Outbound proxy intercepts these messages and alters the visitor
address to link to itself. The terminal identifies it is visiting a foreign network and sends
registration messages to the Outbound proxy, which subsequently passes the messages to the
terminal's home network. As a result, all inbound and outbound SIP proxy calls involving a
visiting user are routed through the outgoing SIP proxy.

Network operators can collect data and possibly billing information while simultaneously
reducing the number of SIP registrations by using Outbound proxy for all registrations. Several
location regions can be integrated into a single 4G service area in this fashion (4GSA). The home
location area SIP redirect server is only updated when a terminal transfers from one service area
to another via hierarchical registration. The SIP redirects server routes SIP calls to the Outbound
proxy, which routes calls to the terminal in the visiting network's current location. Users may be
accessed all around the world via SIP. Mobile IP [5] may do the same result, however the
triangular routing causes issues. The data sent from a server to a user's terminal is routed through
a home agent, which is inefficient. Direct point-to-point data transport is possible using SIP.

Radio Access Network 4G

An Evolved Packet Core (EPC) is at the heart of a contemporary 4G network's RAN core
network. LTE is more complicated than simpler wireless technologies like WiFi since it requires
an EPC, but it has several advantages, such as seamless roaming and comprehensive user
management.

The user plane and the control plane are separated in the RAN design. A software-defined
networking switch and a control-based interface are used by the RAN controller to exchange one
set of user data messages. The RAN can be more versatile as a result of this split.

References
1. “3G UMTS Network Architecture,” Electronics Notes. [Online]. Available:
https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/connectivity/3g-umts/network-architecture.php.
[Accessed: 26-May-2022].

2. K. Ikkelä, M. Myllynen, J. Heinanen, and O. Martikainen, “4G mobile network architecture,”

Emerging Personal Wireless Communications, pp. 183–195.