Week 8

Chapter 4
(Week 8)
The Medium Access Control
Sublayer
(CONTINUATION)
ANDREW S. TANENBAUM
COMPUTER NETWORKS
FOURTH EDITION
PP. 292-338
BLM431 Computer Networks 1
Dr. Refik Samet
Networks can be divided into two
categories:
1) Those using point-to-point
connections and
2) Those using broadcast channels.
This chapter deals with broadcast

networks and their protocols.
Dr. Refik Samet
In any broadcast network, the key issue is
how to determine who gets to use the channel
when there is competition for it.
To make this point clearer, consider a

conference call in which six people, on six
different telephones, are all connected
together so that each one can hear and talk to
all the others.

Dr. Refik Samet
It is very likely that when one of them stops
speaking, two or more will start talking at
once, leading to chaos.
In a face-to-face meeting, chaos is avoided by

external means, for example, at a meeting,
people raise their hands to request permission
to speak.

Dr. Refik Samet
When only a single channel is available,
determining who should go next is much
harder.
Many protocols for solving the problem are

known and form the contents of this chapter.
In the literature, broadcast channels are

sometimes referred to as multi-access
channels or random access channels.
Dr. Refik Samet
The protocols used to determine who goes
next on a multi-access channel belong to a
sublayer of the data link layer called the
MAC (Medium Access Control) sublayer.
Technically, the MAC sublayer is the bottom

part of the data link layer.

Dr. Refik Samet
The MAC sublayer is especially important
in LANs, nearly all of which use a multi-
access channel as the basis of their
communication.
WANs, in contrast, use point-to-point links,

except for satellite networks.

Dr. Refik Samet
Because multi-access channels and LANs
are so closely related, in this chapter we will
discuss LANs in general, as well as satellite
and some other broadcast networks

Dr. Refik Samet
4.1. THE CHANNEL ALLOCATION
PROBLEM
4.2. MULTIPLE ACCESS PROTOCOLS
4.3. ETHERNET
4.4. WIRELESS LANS
4.5. BROADBAND WIRELESS
4.6. BLUETOOTH
4.7. DATA LINK LAYER SWITCHING
4.8. SUMMARY
Dr. Refik Samet
4.4. WIRELESS LANs (1)
Almost as soon as notebook computers
appeared, many people had a dream of
walking into an office and magically having
their notebook computer be connected to the
INTERNET.
Consequently, various groups began

working on ways to accomplish this goal.
Dr. Refik Samet
WIRELESS LANs (2)
The most practical approach is to equip both
the office and the notebook computers with
short-range radio transmitters and receivers
to allow them to communicate.
This work rapidly led to WIRELESS LANS

being marketed by a variety of companies.

Dr. Refik Samet
WIRELESS LANs (3)
Although Ethernet is widely used, it is about
to get some competition.
Wireless LANs are increasingly popular,

and more and more office buildings,
airports, and other public places are being
outfitted with them.

Dr. Refik Samet
IEEE 802 Standards

Dr. Refik Samet
WIRELESS LANs (4)
Wireless LANs can operate in one of two
configurations:
1)With a base station and
2)Without a base station
The IEEE 802.11 standard takes this into

account and makes provision for both
arrangements.
Dr. Refik Samet
WIRELESS LANs (5)
(a) Wireless networking with a base station.

(b) Ad hoc networking.
Dr. Refik Samet
WIRELESS LANs (6)
In (a), all communication was to go through
the base station, called an access point in
802.11 terminology.
In (b), the computers would just send to one

another directly. This mode is now
sometimes called ad hoc networking.

Dr. Refik Samet
WIRELESS LANs (7)
At the time the standardization process
started (1990), ETERNET had already come
to dominate local area networking, so the
committee decided to make 802.11
compatible with ETERNET above the data
link layer.

Dr. Refik Samet
WIRELESS LANs (8)
802.11a (1999) standard uses a wider
frequency band and runs at speed up to 54
Mbps.
802.11b (1999) standard uses the same

frequency band as 802.11, but uses a
different modulation technique to achieve 11
Mbps.
Dr. Refik Samet
WIRELESS LANs (9)
Some people see this as psychologically
important since 11 Mbps is faster than
original wired ETHERNET.
802.11g standard uses the modulation
technique of 802.11a but the frequency band
of 802.11b
Now is the time to take a closer look at the
technology of 802.11 standard.
Dr. Refik Samet
Wireless LANs (10)
• The 802.11 Protocol Stack

• The 802.11 Physical Layer
• The 802.11 MAC Sublayer Protocol
• The 802.11 Frame Structure
• Services

Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.11 Protocol Stack (1)
The protocols used by all 802 variants,
including Ethernet, have a certain
commonality of structure.
A partial view of the 802.11 protocol stack

is given in following figure.

Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.11 Protocol Stack (2)
Part of the 802.11 protocol stack.

FHSS - Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum
DSSS - Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum
OFDM - Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
HR-DSSS - High Rate DSSSBLM431 Computer Networks 22
Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.11 Physical Layer (1)
The 1997 802.11 standard specifies three
groups of transmission techniques
allowed in the physical layer.
1) Infrared method (1 technique )
2) Short – range radio method (2
techniques )
3) Higher bandwidth method (2+1
techniques )
Dr. Refik Samet
Each of the five permitted transmission
techniques makes it possible to send a MAC
frame from one station to another.
They differ, however, in the technology

used and speeds achievable.

Dr. Refik Samet
1) Infrared method
•This method uses much the same
technology as television remote controls do.
•The infrared option uses diffused (i.e., not
line of sight) transmission at 0.85 or 0.95
microns.
•Two speeds are permitted: 1 Mbps and 2
Mbps
Dr. Refik Samet
2) Short – range radio method (2 techniques )
a) FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum)
uses 79 channels, each 1-MHz wide, starting at
the low end of the 2.4-GHz ISM (Industrial,
Scientific, Medical) band.
A pseudorandom number generator is used to

produce the sequence of frequencies hopped to.
Dr. Refik Samet
b) DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum),
is also restricted to 1 or 2 Mbps.
•The scheme used has some similarities to the

CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access)
system.
•Each bit is transmitted as 11 chips, using
what is called a Barker Sequence.
Dr. Refik Samet
DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum)

Dr. Refik Samet
Both of these (FHSS and DSSS) use a part of
the spectrum that does not require licensing
(the 2.4-GHz ISM band). Radio-controlled
garage door openers also use this piece of the
spectrum, so your notebook computer may
find itself in competition with your garage
door.
Dr. Refik Samet
3) Higher bandwidth method (3 techniques )
a) 802.11a, OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing) is used to deliver up
to 54 Mbps in the wider 5 GHz ISM band.
Splitting the signal into many narrow bands

has some key advantages over using a
single wide band, including better immunity
to narrowband interference
Dr. Refik Samet
b) 802.11b, HR-DSSS (High Rate Direct
Sequence Spread Spectrum) uses 11 million
chips/sec to achieve 11 Mbps in the 2.4-
GHz band.
Although 802.11b is slower than 802.11a,

its range is about 7 times greater, which is
more important in many situations.
Dr. Refik Samet
c) 802.11g is an enhanced version of
802.11b. It uses the OFDM (Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing)
modulation method of 802.11a but operates
in the narrow 2.4-GHz ISM band along with
802.11b. In theory it can operate at up to 54
Mbps. It is not yet clear whether this speed
will be realized in practice.
Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.11 MAC Sublayer Protocol (1)
In 802.11,
•The MAC (Medium Access Control)
sublayer determines how the channel is
allocated, that is, who gets to transmit next.
•Above it is the LLC (Logical Link Control)
sublayer, whose job it is to hide the
differences between the different 802
variants and make them indistinguishable as
far as the network layer is concerned.
Dr. Refik Samet
•The 802.11 MAC sublayer protocol is quite
different from that of Ethernet due to
inherent complexity of the wireless
environment compared to that of a wired
system.
•With Ethernet, a situation just waits until
the ether goes silent and starts transmitting.
If it does not receive a noise burst back
within the first 64 bytes, the frame has
almost assuredly been delivered correctly.
Dr. Refik Samet
•With wireless, this situation does not hold.
•There is the hidden station problem.
•Station C is transmitting to station B. If A
sense the channel, it will not hear anything
and falsely concludes that it may now start
transmitting to B.

Dr. Refik Samet
(a) The hidden station problem.

(b) The exposed station problem.
Dr. Refik Samet
•There is inverse problem, the exposed
station problem.
•Station B wants to send to C so it listens to
the channel. When it hears a transmission, it
falsely concludes that it may not send to C,
even though A may be transmitting to D
(not shown).

Dr. Refik Samet
•In addition, most radios are half duplex,
meaning that they cannot transmit and listen
for noise bursts at the same time on a single
frequency.
•As a result of these problems, 802.11 does
not use CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple
Access Protocols with Collision Detection),
as Ethernet does.
Dr. Refik Samet
To deal with this problem, 80.11 supports
two modes of operation.
1) DCF (Distributed Coordination Function)
does not use any kind of central control
(in that respect, similar to Ethernet).
2) PCF (Point Coordination Function) uses
the base station to control all activity in
its cell.
Dr. Refik Samet
•When DCF is employed, 802.11 uses a
protocol called CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense
Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance)
•In this protocol, both physical channel
sensing and virtual channel sensing are
used.
•Two methods of operation are supported by
CSMA/CA
Dr. Refik Samet
•In the first method, when a station wants to
transmit, it senses the channel.
•If it is idle, it just starts transmitting.
•It does not sense the channel while
transmitting but emits its entire frame, which
may well be destroyed at the receiver due to
interference there.

Dr. Refik Samet
•If the channel is busy, the sender defers until
it goes idle and then starts transmitting.
•If a collision occurs, the colliding stations
wait a random time, using the Ethernet binary
exponential backoff algorithm, and then try
again later.

Dr. Refik Samet
•The other mode of CSMA/CA operation is
based on MACAW (Multiple Access with
Collision Avoidance for Wireless) and uses
virtual channel sensing, as illustrated in
following figure.
•In this example, A wants to send to B. C is
a station within range of A (and possibly
within range of B, but that does not matter).
D is a station within range of B but not
within range of A.
Dr. Refik Samet
The use of virtual channel sensing using CSMA/CA.

Dr. Refik Samet
•The protocol starts when A decides it wants
to send data to B. It begins by sending an
RTS (Request To Send) frame to B to
request permission to send it a frame.
•When B receives this request, it may decide
to grant permission, in which case it sends a
CTS (Clear To Send) frame back.
•Upon receipt of the CTS, A now sends its
frame and starts an ACK timer.
Dr. Refik Samet
•Upon correct receipt of the data frame, B
responds with an ACK frame, terminating
the exchange.
•If A’s ACK timer expires before the ACK
gets back to it, the whole protocol is run
again.

Dr. Refik Samet
•Now let us consider this exchange from the
viewpoints of C and D. C is within range of
A, so it may receive the RTS frame. If it
does, it realizes that someone is going to
send data soon, so for the good of all it
desists from transmitting anything until the
exchange is completed.

Dr. Refik Samet
•From the information provided in the RTS
request, it can estimate how long the
sequence will take, including the final ACK,
so it asserts a kind of virtual channel busy
for itself, including by NAV (Network
Allocation Vector).
•D does not hear the RTS, but it does hear
the CTS, so it also asserts the NAV signal
for itself.
Dr. Refik Samet
•To deal with the problem of noisy channel,
802.11 allows frames to be fragmented into
smaller pieces, each with its own checksum.
•The fragments are individually numbered
and acknowledged using a stop-and-wait
protocol (i.e., the sender may not transmit
fragment k+1 until it has received the
acknowledgment for fragment k)
Dr. Refik Samet
•Once the channel has been acquired using
RTS and CTS, multiple fragments can be
sent in row, sequence of fragments is called
a fragment burst.
•Fragmentation increase the throughput by
restricting retransmissions to the bad
fragments rather than the entire frame.

Dr. Refik Samet
A fragment burst.
Dr. Refik Samet
•PCF (in which the base station polls the
other stations, asking them if they have any
frames to send) and DCF (in which there is
no central control) can coexist within one
cell.
•At first it might seem impossible to have
central control and distributed control
operating at the same time, but 802.11
provides a way to achieve this goal.
Dr. Refik Samet
•It works by carefully defining the
interframe time interval.
•After a frame has been sent, a certain
amount of dead time is required before any
station may send a frame.
•Four different intervals are defined, each
for a specific purpose.

Dr. Refik Samet
Interframe spacing in 802.11.

Dr. Refik Samet
•SIFS (Short InterFrame Spacing) is used to
allow the parties in a single dialog the
chance to go first.
•PIFS (PCF InterFrame Spacing)
•DIFS (DCF InterFrame Spacing)
•EIFS (Extended InterFrame Spacing)

Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.11 Frame Structure (1)
•The 802.11 standards defines three
different classes of frames on the wire: data,
control and management.
•Each of these has a header with a variety of
fields used within the MAC sublayer.
•In addition, there are some headers used by
the physical layer but these mostly deal with
the modulation techniques used.
Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.11 Frame Structure (2)
The 802.11 data frame.

Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (1)
• The 802.11 standard states that each
conformant wireless LAN must provide
nine services.
• These services are divided into two
categories:
a) Five distribution services
b) Four station services.

Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (2)
• The distribution services relate to
managing cell membership and
interacting with stations outside the cell.
• The five distribution services are
provided by the base station and deal
with station mobility as they enter and
leave cells, attaching themselves to and
detaching themselves from base stations.
Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (3)
Distribution Services
• Association
• Disassociation
• Reassociation
• Distribution
• Integration

Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (4)
•Association
This service is used by mobile stations to
connect themselves to base stations. The
base station may accept or reject the
mobile station. If the mobile station is
accepted, it must then authenticate itself.

Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (5)
•Disassociation
Either the station or the base station may
disassociate, thus breaking the
relationship.
• Reassociation
A station may change its preferred base
station using this service
Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (6)
•Distribution
This service determines how to route frames
sent to the base station.
•Integration
If a frame needs to be sent through a non -
802.11 network with a different addressing
scheme or frame format, this service handles
the translation from the 802.11 format to the
format required by the destination network
Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (7)
•Station services relate to activity
within a single cell.
•They are used after association has
taken place and are as follows.

Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (8)
Intracell Services
• Authentication
• Deauthentication
• Privacy
• Data Delivery

Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (9)
•Authentication
Because wireless communication can easily be
sent or received by unauthorized station, a
station must authenticate itself before it is
permitted to send data.
•Deauthentication
When a previously authenticated station wants
to leave the network, it is deauthenticated.
Dr. Refik Samet
802.11 Services (10)
•Privacy
For information sent over a wireless LAN to be
kept confidential, it must be encrypted. This
service manages the encryption and decryption.
•Data Delivery
Finally, data transmission is what it is all about,
so 802.11 naturally provides a way to transmit
and receive data.
Dr. Refik Samet
4.5. BROADBAND WIRELESS (1)
• Let us now go outside and see if any
interesting networking is going on there.
• With the deregulation of the telephone
system in many countries, competitors to
the entrenched telephone company are
now often allowed to offer local voice
and high-speed Internet service.
• There is certainly plenty of demand.
Dr. Refik Samet
Broadband Wireless (2)
• The problem is that running fiber, coax, or even
category 5 twisted pair to millions of homes and
businesses is prohibitively expensive.
• What is a competitor to do?
• The answer is broadband wireless.
• Erecting a big antenna on a hill just outside of
town and installing antennas directed at it on
customers’ roofs is much easier and cheaper than
digging trenches and stringing cables.
Dr. Refik Samet
• In April 2002, IEEE completed the
802.16 Standard named “Air Interface
for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access
Systems”
• However, some people prefer to call it a
wireless MAN or a wireless local loop

Dr. Refik Samet
• Comparison of 802.11 and 802.16

• The 802.16 Protocol Stack
• The 802.16 Physical Layer
• The 802.16 MAC Sublayer Protocol
• The 802.16 Frame Structure

Dr. Refik Samet
• Comparison of 802.11 and 802.16

• The environments in which 802.11 and
802.16 operate are similar in some ways,
primarily in that they were designed to
provide high-bandwidth wireless
communications
• But they also differ in some major ways.

Dr. Refik Samet
• 802.16 provides service to buildings, and
buildings are not mobile. They do not
migrate from cell to cell often.
• 802.16 uses full-duplex communication
• 802.11 was designed to be mobile
Ethernet, whereas 802.16 was designed
to be wireless, but stationary, cable
television
Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.16 Protocol Stack
The 802.16 Protocol Stack.

Dr. Refik Samet
Modems
(a) QPSK.
(b) QAM-16.
(c) QAM-64.

Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.16 Physical Layer
The 802.16 transmission environment.

Dr. Refik Samet
Frames and time slots for time division duplexing.

Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.16 MAC Sublayer Protocol
Service Classes
• Constant bit rate service
• Real-time variable bit rate service
• Non-real-time variable bit rate service
• Best efforts service

Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.16 Frame Structure
(a) A generic frame. (b) A bandwidth request frame.

Dr. Refik Samet
4.6. BLUETOOTH (1)
• Bluetooth is a wireless standard for
interconnecting computing and communication
devices and accessories using short-range, low-
power, inexpensive wireless radios.
• In July 1999 the Bluetooth SIG issued a 1500
page specification of V1.0.
• Shortly thereafter, IEEE has designed 802.15 –
wireless personnel area networks

Dr. Refik Samet
Bluetooth (2)
• Bluetooth Architecture
• Bluetooth Applications
• The Bluetooth Protocol Stack
• The Bluetooth Radio Layer
• The Bluetooth Baseband Layer
• The Bluetooth L2CAP Layer
• The Bluetooth Frame Structure

Dr. Refik Samet
Bluetooth Architecture
Two piconets can be connected to form a scatternet.

Dr. Refik Samet
Bluetooth Applications
The Bluetooth profiles.

Dr. Refik Samet
The Bluetooth Protocol Stack
The 802.15 version of the Bluetooth protocol architecture.

Dr. Refik Samet
The Bluetooth Frame Structure
A typical Bluetooth data frame.

Dr. Refik Samet
4.7.DATA LINK LAYER SWITCHING
(1)
•Many organizations have multiple LANs and
wish to connect them.
•LANs can be connected by devices called

bridges, which operate in the data link layer.
•Bridges examine the data layer link addresses

to do routing

Dr. Refik Samet
Data Link Layer Switching (2)
•Since they are not supposed to examine the
payload field of the frames they route, they
can transport IPv4 (used in the Internet
now), IPv6 (will be used in the Internet in
the future), AppleTalk, ATM, OSI, or any
other kinds of packets.
•In contrast, routers examine the addresses in
packets and route based on them.
Dr. Refik Samet
Multiple LANs connected by a backbone to handle a total load higher

than the capacity of a single LAN.

Dr. Refik Samet
The technology of bridges
• Bridges from 802.x to 802.y
• Local Internetworking
• Spanning Tree Bridges
• Remote Bridges
• Repeaters, Hubs, Bridges, Switches,
Routers, Gateways
• Virtual LANs
Dr. Refik Samet
Bridges from 802.x to 802.y (1)
• Following figure illustrates the operation
of a simple two-port bridge.
• Host A on a wireless (802.11) LAN has a
packet to send to a fixed host, B, on an
(802.3) Ethernet to which the wireless
LAN is connected.
• Note that a bridge connecting k different
LANs will have k different MAC
sublayers and k different physical layers,
one for each type.
Dr. Refik Samet
Operation of a LAN bridge from 802.11 to 802.3.

Dr. Refik Samet
• There are many difficulties that one
encounters when trying to build a bridge
between the various 802 LANs (and
MANs)
• Each of the LANs uses a different frame
format

Dr. Refik Samet
The IEEE 802 frame formats. The drawing is not to scale.

Dr. Refik Samet
Some problems are :
• The first is any copying between different
LANs requires reformatting
• The second is data rate problem
• The third is different 802 LANs have
different maximum frame lengths.
• Another is the security problem
• Last is quality of service.
Dr. Refik Samet
Local Internetworking (1)
• The bridges should be completely
transparent (invisible to all the
hardware and software)
• A transparent bridge operates in
promiscuous mode, accepting every
frame transmitted on all the LANs to
which it is attached.

Dr. Refik Samet
A configuration with four LANs and two bridges.

Dr. Refik Samet
As each frame arrives, this algorithm must be
applied (by using a big table inside the bridge
by special purpose VLSI chip):
•If destination and source LANs are the same,
discard the frame.
•If destination and source LANs are the
different, forward the frame.
•If destination LAN is unknown, use
flooding. BLM431 Computer Networks 97
Dr. Refik Samet
Spanning Tree Bridges (1)
•To increase reliability, some sites use two
or more bridges in parallel between pairs of
LANs.
•This arrangement, however, also introduces

some additional problems because it creates
loops in the topology.

Dr. Refik Samet
Two parallel transparent bridges.

Dr. Refik Samet
•Let us see how a frame, F, with unknown
destination is handled.
•Each bridge uses flooding, which in this
example just means copying it to LAN 2.
•Shortly thereafter, bridge 1 sees F2, a frame
with an unknown destination, which it
copies to LAN 1, generating F3 (not shown)
•Similarly, bridge 2 copies F1 to LAN 1
generating F4 (also not shown) ….
Dr. Refik Samet
•This problem can be solved by using a
spanning tree that reaches every LAN.
•The following configuration can be abstracted
into a graph with the LANs as the nodes.
•An arc connects any two LANs that are
connected by a bridge
•This graph can be reduced to a spanning tree
by dropping the arcs shown as dotted lines
Dr. Refik Samet
(a) Interconnected LANs. (b) A spanning tree covering the

LANs. The dotted lines are not part of the spanning tree.
Dr. Refik Samet
Remote Bridges (1)
• All the LANs belonging to a company
should be interconnected, so the complete
system acts like one large LAN.
• This goal can be achieved by putting a
bridge on each LAN and connecting the
bridges pairwise with point-to-point lines
(e.g., lines leased from a telephone
company).
Dr. Refik Samet
Remote Bridges (2)
Remote bridges can be used to interconnect distant LANs.

Dr. Refik Samet
Repeaters, Hubs, Bridges, Switches,
Routers and Gateways (1)
• So far in this book we have looked at a

variety of ways to get frames and packets
from one cable segment to another.
• We have mentioned repeaters, bridges,
switches, hubs, routers, and gateways.
• These devices operate in different layers.

Dr. Refik Samet
(a) Which device is in which layer.

(b) Frames, packets, and headers.
Dr. Refik Samet
(a) A hub. (b) A bridge. (c) a switch.

Dr. Refik Samet
• Repeaters are analog devices that are
connected to two cable segments. A signal
appearing on one of them is amplified and
put out on the other.
• Hubs have a number of inputs lines that it
joins electrically. Frames arriving on any
of the lines are sent out on all the others.

Dr. Refik Samet
• Bridges connect two or more LANs.
When a frame arrives, software in the
bridge extracts the destination address
from the frame header and looks it up in a
table to see where to send the frame.
• Switches are similar to bridges in that
both route on frame addresses. The main
difference is that a switch is most often
used to connect individual computers.
Dr. Refik Samet
• Routers are different from all of the
above. When a packet comes into a router,
the frame header and trailer are stripped
off and the packet located in the frame’s
payload field is passed to the routing
software. This software uses the packet
header to choose an output line.

Dr. Refik Samet
• Transport gateways connect two computers
that use different connection – oriented
transport protocols. The transport gateway
can copy the packets from one connection
to the other, reformatting them as need be.
• Application gateways understand the
format and contents of the data and
translate messages from one format to
another. BLM431 Computer Networks
Dr. Refik Samet
111
Virtual LANs (1)
• With the advent of 10Base-T and hubs in
the 1990s, buildings were rewired to rip
out all the yellow garden hoses and install
twisted pairs from every office to central
wiring closets at the end of each corridor
or in a central machine room.

Dr. Refik Samet
Virtual LANs (2)
A building with centralized wiring using hubs and a switch.

Dr. Refik Samet
Virtual LANs (3)
• In response to user requests for more
flexibility, network vendors began
working on a way to rewire buildings
entirely in software.
• The resulting concept is called a VLAN
(Virtual LAN) and has even been
standardized by the 802 committee.
• VLANs are based on specially – designed
VLAN – aware switches
Dr. Refik Samet
Virtual LANs (4)
(a) Four physical LANs organized into two VLANs, gray and white,
by two bridges. (b) The same 15 machines organized into two
VLANs by switches. BLM431 Computer Networks 115
Dr. Refik Samet
The IEEE 802.1Q Standard (1)
•In VLAN the actually matters is the VLAN
of the frame itself, not the VLAN of the
sending machine.
•If there were some way to identify the
VLAN in the frame header, then the need to
inspect the payload would vanish.
•For a new LAN, such as 802.11 or 802.16, it
would have been easy enough to just add a
VLAN field in the header.
Dr. Refik Samet
•In fact, the Connection Identifier field in
802.16 is somewhat similar in spirit to a
VLAN identifier.
•But what to do about Ethernet, which is the
dominant LAN, and does not have any spare
fields lying around for the VLAN identifier?
•This problem was solved by changing the
Ethernet header and the new format was
published in IEEE Standard 802.1Q.
Dr. Refik Samet
•The new format contains a VLAN tag; we
will examine it shortly.
•During the transition process, many
installations will have some legacy machines
(typically classic or fast Ethernet) that are not
VLAN aware and others (typically gigabit
Ethernet) that are.

Dr. Refik Samet
Transition from legacy Ethernet to VLAN-aware Ethernet. The shaded

symbols are VLAN aware. The empty ones are not.
Dr. Refik Samet
•When a legacy PC sends a frame to a VLAN-
aware switch, the switch builds a new tagged
frame based on its knowledge of the sender’s
VLAN (using the port, MAC address, or IP
address).
•From that point on, it no longer matters that the
sender was a legacy machine.
•Similarly, a switch that needs to deliver a tagged
frame to a legacy machine has to reformat the
frame in the legacy format before delivering it.
Dr. Refik Samet
The 802.3 (legacy) and 802.1Q Ethernet frame formats.

Dr. Refik Samet
•The only change is the addition of a pair of
2-byte fields.
•The first one is the VLAN protocol ID . It
always has the value 0x8100. Since this
number is greater than 1500, all Ethernet
cards interpret it as a type rather than a
length.
•What a legacy card does with such a frame
is moot since such frames are not supposed
to be sent to legacy cards.
Dr. Refik Samet
•The second 2-byte field contains three
subfields.
•The main one is the VLAN identifier,
occupying the low-order 12 bits. This is what
the whole thing is about – which VLAN does
the frame belong to?
•The 3-bit Priority field has nothing to do
with VLANs at all. This field makes it
possible to distinguish hard real-time traffic
from soft real-time traffic .
Dr. Refik Samet
•The last bit, CFI (Canonical Format
Indicator) should have been called the CEI
(Corporate Ego Indicator)
•It was originally intended to indicate little-
endian MAC addresses versus big-endian
MAC addresses, but that use got lost in other
controversies.

Dr. Refik Samet
Summary

Channel allocation methods and systems
Dr. Refik Samet
for a common channel.

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Chapter 4

This chapter deals with broadcast

To make this point clearer, consider a

BLM431 Computer Networks 3

In a face-to-face meeting, chaos is avoided by

BLM431 Computer Networks 4

Many protocols for solving the problem are

In the literature, broadcast channels are

Technically, the MAC sublayer is the bottom

BLM431 Computer Networks 6

WANs, in contrast, use point-to-point links,

BLM431 Computer Networks 7

BLM431 Computer Networks 8

Consequently, various groups began

This work rapidly led to WIRELESS LANS

BLM431 Computer Networks 11

Wireless LANs are increasingly popular,

BLM431 Computer Networks 12

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The IEEE 802.11 standard takes this into

(a) Wireless networking with a base station.

In (b), the computers would just send to one

BLM431 Computer Networks 16

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802.11b (1999) standard uses the same

• The 802.11 Protocol Stack

BLM431 Computer Networks 20

A partial view of the 802.11 protocol stack

BLM431 Computer Networks 21

Part of the 802.11 protocol stack.

They differ, however, in the technology

BLM431 Computer Networks 24

A pseudorandom number generator is used to

•The scheme used has some similarities to the

BLM431 Computer Networks 28

Splitting the signal into many narrow bands

Although 802.11b is slower than 802.11a,

BLM431 Computer Networks 35

(a) The hidden station problem.

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The use of virtual channel sensing using CSMA/CA.

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Interframe spacing in 802.11.

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The 802.11 data frame.

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• Comparison of 802.11 and 802.16

BLM431 Computer Networks 71

• Comparison of 802.11 and 802.16