Transport Layer

CS 640 1

Transport Layer

OutlineIntro to transportUDPReliability (stop and wait, sliding

window)

CS 640 2

To Boldly Go Where We Have Yet to Go

• Recall Internet Architecture– Layers used to define functionality– Our focus up to now has been layer 5

• Applications demand reliable transport• Application may demand predictable delays

• We are now going up to layer 4– This layer is tricky!– Goal at the end of the next few weeks is an

understanding of the Reno version of TCP

Application

Transport

Network

Link

Physical

5

4

3

2

1

CS 640 3

End-to-End Protocols• Underlying network is best-effort

– drop messages– re-orders messages– delivers duplicate copies of a given message– limits messages to some finite size– delivers messages after an arbitrarily long delay

• Common end-to-end services– guarantee message delivery– deliver messages in the same order they are sent– deliver at most one copy of each message– support arbitrarily large messages– support synchronization– allow the receiver to flow control the sender– support multiple application processes on each host

CS 640 4

Basic function of transport layer• How can processes on different systems get the right

messages?• Ports are numeric locators which enable messages to be

demultiplexed to proper process.– Ports are addresses on individual hosts, not across the Internet.

• Ports are established using well-know values first– Port 80 = http, port 53 = DNS

• Ports are typically implemented as message queues• Simplest function of the transport layer:

multiplexing/demultiplexing of messages– Enables processes on different systems to communicate– End-to-end since only processes on end hosts invoke this protocol

CS 640 5

Other transport layer functions

• Connection control– Setting up and tearing down communication between processes

• Error detection within packets – our first focus– Checksums

• Reliable, in order delivery of packets – our second focus– Acknowledgement schemes

• Flow control– Matching sending and receiving rates between end hosts

• Congestion control– Managing congestion in the network

CS 640 6

User Datagram Protocol (UDP)• Unreliable and unordered datagram service• Adds multiplexing/demultiplexing• Adds reliability through optional checksum• No flow or congestion control• Endpoints identified by ports

– servers have well-known ports– see /etc/services on Unix

• Header format

• Optional checksum– Computed over psuedo header + UDP header + data

SrcPort DstPort

Checksum Length

Data

0 16 31

CS 640 7

UDP Checksums

• Optional in current Internet• Psuedoheader consists of 3 fields from IP header:

protocol number (TCP or UDP), IP src, IP dst and UDP length field– Psuedoheader enables verification that message was

delivered between correct source and destination.– IP dest address was changed during delivery, checksum

would reflect this

• UDP uses the same checksum algorithm as IP– Internet checksum

CS 640 8

Basics of dealing with errors

• Bit errors can be introduced in packets

• This problem has been studied for a long time– Error detection (and correction) codes

– Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is a common error detection method

• Basic idea of any scheme is to add redundant data– Extreme example – send two identical copies of data

• Poor for many reasons

– A primary goal is to send minimal amount of redundant data• CRC used in Ethernet has 32 bits for each 1500 byte packet

– Another goal is to make generation of checksum fast

CS 640 9

Checksum basics contd.

• Simple parity is the most basic method for error detection– Odd/even parity

• Internet Checksum– Basic idea: sender adds up all words and transmit the sum

• Add using 16 bit one’s complement arithmetic then take one’s complement of the result to get checksum

– Receiver adds up all words and compares with checksum– It’s very simple and efficient to code this

• Reason that this is used instead of CRC

– Not really great detecting errors• CRC is much stronger

• Forward error correction is another possibility

CS 640 10

UDP in practice

• Minimal specification makes UDP very flexible– Any kind of end-to-end protocol can be implemented

• See programming assignment #1

• TCP can be implemented using UDP

• Examples– Most commonly used in multimedia applications

• These are frequently more robust to loss

– RPC’s

– Many others…

Reliability

• We’re heading toward TCP

• Baby steps first… lets start with looking at minimal support for reliability

CS 640 11

CS 640 12

Methods of Reliability

• Packets can be lost and/or corrupted during transmission– Bit level errors due to noise– Loss due to congestion

• Use checksums to detect bit level errors– Internet Checksum is optionally used to detect errors in UDP

• Uses 16 bits to encode one’s complement sum of data + headers

– When bit level errors are detected, packets are dropped

• Build reliability into the transmission protocol– Using acknowledgements and timeouts to signal lost or corrupt

frame

CS 640 13

Acknowledgements & Timeouts

• An acknowledgement (ACK) is a packet sent by one host in response to a packet it has received– Making a packet an ACK is simply a matter of changing a field in

the transport header

– Data can be piggybacked in ACKs

• A timeout is a signal that an ACK to a packet that was sent has not yet been received within a specified timeframe– A timeout triggers a retransmission of the original packet from the

sender

– How are timers set?

CS 640 14

Acknowledgements & TimeoutsSender Receiver

Frame

ACKTimeout

Time

Sender Receiver

Frame

ACKTimeout

Frame

ACKTimeout

Sender Receiver

Frame

ACKTimeout

Frame

ACKTimeout

Sender Receiver

Frame

Timeout

Frame

ACKTimeout

(a) (c)

(b) (d)

CS 640 15

Propagation Delay

• Propagation delay is defined as the delay between transmission and receipt of packets between hosts

• Propagation delay can be used to estimate timeout period

• How can propagation delay be measured?• What else must be considered in the measurement?

CS 640 16

Exponentially weighted moving average RTT estimation

• EWMA was original algorithm for TCP• Measure SampleRTT for each packet/ACK pair• Compute weighted average of RTT

– EstRTT = x EstimatedRTT + x SampleRTT– where + = 1 between 0.8 and 0.9 between 0.1 and 0.2

• Set timeout based on EstRTT– TimeOut = 2 x EstRTT

CS 640 17

Stop-and-Wait Process

• Sender doesn’t send next packet until he’s sure receiver has last packet• The packet/Ack sequence enables reliability• Sequence numbers help avoid problem of duplicate packets• Problem: keeping the pipe full• Example

– 1.5Mbps link x 45ms RTT = 67.5Kb (8KB)– 1KB frames imples 1/8th link utilization

Sender Receiver

CS 640 18

Solution: Pipelining via Sliding Window• Allow multiple outstanding (un-ACKed) frames• Upper bound on un-ACKed frames, called window

Sender Receiver

Tim

e

……

CS 640 19

Buffering on Sender and Receiver

• Sender needs to buffer data so that if data is lost, it can be resent• Receiver needs to buffer data so that if data is received out of order, it

can be held until all packets are received– Flow control

• How can we prevent sender overflowing receiver’s buffer?– Receiver tells sender its buffer size during connection setup

• How can we insure reliability in pipelined transmissions?– Go-Back-N

• Send all N unACKed packets when a loss is signaled• Inefficient

– Selective repeat• Only send specifically unACKed packets• A bit trickier to implement

CS 640 20

Sliding Window: Sender• Assign sequence number to each frame (SeqNum)• Maintain three state variables:

– send window size (SWS)– last acknowledgment received (LAR)– last frame sent (LFS)

• Maintain invariant: LFS - LAR <= SWS

• Advance LAR when ACK arrives • Buffer up to SWS frames

SWS

LAR LFS

… …

CS 640 21

Sliding Window: Receiver• Maintain three state variables

– receive window size (RWS)– largest frame acceptable (LFA)– last frame received (LFR)

• Maintain invariant: LFA - LFR <= RWS

• Frame SeqNum arrives:– if LFR < SeqNum < = LFA accept– if SeqNum < = LFR or SeqNum > LFA discarded

• Send cumulative ACKs – send ACK for largest frame such that all frames less than this have been received

RWS

LFR LFA

… …

CS 640 22

Sequence Number Space• SeqNum field is finite; sequence numbers wrap around• Sequence number space must be larger then number of outstanding

frames• SWS <= MaxSeqNum-1 is not sufficient

– suppose 3-bit SeqNum field (0..7)– SWS=RWS=7– sender transmit frames 0..6– arrive successfully, but ACKs lost– sender retransmits 0..6– receiver expecting 7, 0..5, but receives the original incarnation of 0..5

• SWS < (MaxSeqNum+1)/2 is correct rule• Intuitively, SeqNum “slides” between two halves of sequence

number space

CS 640 23

Stop & wait sequence numbersSender Receiver

Frame 0

ACK 0

Tim

eo

ut

Frame 0

ACK 0

Tim

eo

ut

Sender Receiver

Frame 0

ACK 0Tim

eo

ut

Frame 0

ACK 0Tim

eo

ut

(c) (d)

Sender Receiver

Frame 0

ACK 0

Frame 1

ACK 1

(e)

Frame 0

ACK 0

• Simple sequence numbers enable the client to discard duplicate copies of the same frame• Stop & wait allows one outstanding frame, requires two distinct sequence numbers

CS 640 24

Sliding Window Example

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

012

Sender Receiver

A3

3456

A4

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 140 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

CS 640 25

Sliding Window Summary

• Sliding window is best known algorithm in networking• First role is to enable reliable delivery of packets

– Timeouts and acknowledgements

• Second role is to enable in order delivery of packets– Receiver doesn’t pass data up to app until it has packets in

order

• Third role is to enable flow control– Prevents server from overflowing receiver’s buffer