Data Communications and

Networking

Chapter 1

Data Communications, Data Networks,

Reading:
Book Chapter 1
Data and Computer Communications, 8th edition
By William Stallings
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Outline
• Section 1: Data Communications and
Networking for Today’s Enterprise
• Section 2: A Communications Model
• Section 3: Data Communications
• Section 4: Networks
• Section 5: The Internet
• Summary: Key Points

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Section 1

Data Communications and Networking

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What are the trends?
• Three forces are driving the evolution of data communications and
networking
1. Growth of communication traffic
— Voice traffic
• telephone
— Data traffic
• Internet access, video conferencing
— Challenges (to the network service providers):
• how to maximize the capacity and minimize the cost?
2. Development of new services
— Refer to the figure on the next page
3. Advances in technology
— Faster and cheaper computing and communications
— Networks are more intelligent: quality of service (QoS)
— Internet, Web, intranets, extranets, etc.
— Pervasive computing/ubiquitous computing

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Figure 1: Service versus Throughput Rates

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Case Studies:
• What networking services do we use today?
— Phone service (mainly for voice)
— Internet service (mainly for data)
• Example of Mobile Phone Service:
— Warid, Jazz, etc
• Example of Broadband Internet Access:
— Ptcl, nayatel etc.
• Questions
— Why mobile phone service is charged based on time (i.e., number of
minutes)?
— why Internet access service is charged based on the data rate (i.e.,
number of MB/s)?

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What lessons can we learn?
• Internet is an important infrastructure of our
society.
• Reliability is a critical factor, especially for
businesses that rely on networking technology.
• Question: If you are a network manager for a
company, how will you increase the reliability of
your company’s network connection?

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Section 2

A Communications Model

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Human Communications

• A transmitter: mouth
• A receiver: ear
• The media: air
— Question: Can you talk at outer space?
• The protocol: a common human language
— Question: why do we learn English?

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A Communications Model
• What is the purpose of communications?
— Exchange of information between two parties
• Key elements
• Source: Generates data to be transmitted. E.g., telephones,
PCs.
• Transmitter: A transmitter transforms and encodes the information
in such a way as to produce electromagnetic signals that can be
transmitted across some sort of transmission system.
• Transmission System
− It can be a single transmission line or a complex network
connecting source and destination.
• Destination: Takes incoming data from the receiver
• Receiver: The receiver accepts the signal from the transmission
system and converts it into a form that can be handled by the
destination device.

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Simplified Communications Model

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Section 3

Data Communications

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 Simplified Data
Communications Model
Assume the source and destination are PCs.
The source wishes to send a message m to the destination.

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 Simplified Data
Communications Model
•The simple narrative of data communication
conceals a wealth of technical complexity.

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Transmission of Information
• One basic choice facing a business user is the
selection of transmission medium.
—Within the business premise
• Completely up to the business
—Long-distance communications
• Up to the long-distance carrier
—New technologies
• Optical fiber transmission
• Wireless transmission
• How to improve the efficiency of the use of
network facilities?
—Multiplexing and compression

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Section 4

Networks

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 Why do we need a network?
• Point to point
communication is not
always practical
— Devices are too far
apart
— Large set of devices
would need impractical
number of connections

Telegraph wires in late 19th century

A telephone switch in 1960s

Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches

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At Ancient Time
• How to achieve long-distance communications?
• Solution 1
— Signal fires
— Example
• See the movie segment in “The Lord Of The Rings –
Return Of The King” directed by Peter Jackson.
• Solution 2
— Messengers, horses, post houses
— How efficient is it?
• In both solutions, the concept of “relay” is very
important, and it forms the basic principle of
today’s Internet.

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Wide Area Networks
• Cover a large geographical area
—Consists of a set of interconnected switching nodes
• Alternative technologies
—I. Circuit switching
• Telephone network
—II. Packet switching
• X.25: popular in 1980s
• Frame relay: to replace X.25
• Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM): an evolution from
frame relay
• Internet: the dominant global network today

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(I) Circuit Switching
• Dedicated communications path established for
the duration of the conversation
• Three steps:
1. Setup the circuit: allocate dedicated resources.
2. Transmit the data: utilize resources.
3. Terminate the circuit: release resources.
• E.g. telephone network
— Now, can you answer the question on Slide 6?

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(II) Packet Switching
• Data are sent out in a sequence of small
chunks, called packets.
• Each Packet is passed through the network from
node to node along some path leading from
source to destination
• At each node, the entire packet is received,
stored, and then transmitted to the next node
—Store-and-forward: buffering
• What’s the impact?

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Local Area Networks
• Smaller scope
—Office, Building, Campus
• Usually owned by the same organization that
owns the attached devices
• Internal data rates are high
—10Mbps  100Mbps  1Gbps  10Gbps
• Wireless LANs become more and more popular
—Data rates of wireless LANs are increasing: 11Mbps
 54Mbps  hundreds of Mbps

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Section 5

The Internet

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Internet Elements
• The purpose of the Internet is to interconnect end systems, called
hosts
— Such as PCs, servers, notebooks, PDAs, smart phones, etc.
• Most hosts that use the Internet are connected to a network, such
as a LAN or a WAN
• Networks are in turn connected by routers. Each router attaches
to two or more networks.
• A host may send data to another host anywhere on the Internet:
— The source host breaks the data into a sequence of packets, called IP
packets, or IP datagrams.
— Each packet includes the unique numeric addresses of the source host
and destination host, called IP addresses.
— Based on the destination IP address, each packet travels through a
series of routers and networks from source to destination.
• Each router, upon receiving an IP packet, makes a routing decision and
forwards the packet along its way to the destination.

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Internet Elements

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Internet Architecture
• Today’s Internet is made up of thousands of overlapping
hierarchical networks.
• Individual hosts and LANs are connected to an Internet
Service Provider (ISP) through a Point of Presence
(POP).
— Customer Premises Equipment (CPE): the communications
equipment located onsite with the host, such as the modem.
• Different levels of ISPs
— Local ISP, Regional ISP, Backbone ISP
• Backbone ISPs may be connected through the Network
Access Point (NAP).

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Internet Architecture

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KEY POINTS
• Data communications deals with the
transmission of signals in a reliable and efficient
manner. Topics covered include signal
transmission, transmission media, signal
encoding, interfacing, and data link control.
• Networking deals with the technology and
architecture of the communications networks
used to interconnect communicating devices.
This field is generally divided into the topics of
local area networks (LANs) and wide area
networks (WANs).

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