Chapter 3

LAN component and LAN Technology

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Introduction
 LANs do not normally operate in isolation. They are connected
to one another or to the Internet.
 To connect LANs, or segments of LANs, we use connecting
devices.
 Connecting devices (Intermediary devices )can operate in
different layers of the Internet model.
 LAN Component
 Repeater
 Hub
 Bridge
 Switch

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Repeater
 A repeater receives a signal, regenerates it, and passes it on.
 It can regenerate signals at the bit level to allow them to travel a longer
distance on the media.
 It operates at Physical Layer of OSI
 No more than four repeaters can be used between hosts on a LAN.
 This rule is used to limit latency added to frame travel by each
repeater.
 A repeater does not actually connect two LANs; it connects two segments
of the same LAN.
 A repeater can be used to increase the length of the network
by eliminating the effect of attenuation on the signal.
 A repeater forwards every frame; it has no filtering capability.

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Repeater

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HUB
 Hubs are used to connect multiple nodes to a single physical
device, which connects to the network. Hubs are actually
multiport repeaters.
 Using a hub changes the network topology from a linear bus, to a
star.
 With hubs, data arriving over the cables to a hub port is
electrically repeated on all the other ports connected to the same
network segment.

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Types of Hubs
1. Passive hubs. The signal pass through a passive hub without
regeneration or amplification. It is just a connector, It connects the
wires coming from different branches.
2. Active hubs. They regenerate or amplify the signal before they are
retransmitted.Some people use the terms concentrator when referring
to a passive hub and multiport repeater when referring to an active
hub.
 Some hubs have an additional interface port that connects to another
hub, thus increasing the size of the network.
 Hubs operate at the physical layer of the OSI model.
 Hubs propagate signals through the network
 They cannot filter network traffic
 They cannot determine best path

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Bridge
 Bridges are used to logically separate network segments within the same
network.
 They operate at the OSI physical and data link layer and are independent of
higher-layer protocols.
 As a data link layer device, the bridge can check the physical (MAC) addresses
(source and destination) contained in the frame.
 As a PHYSICAL layer device , it regenerates the signal it receives
 The function of the bridge is to make intelligent decisions about whether or not to
pass signals on to the next segment of a network.
 When a bridge receives a frame on the network, the destination MAC address is
looked up in the bridge table to determine whether to filter, flood, or copy the
frame onto another segment.
 Broadcast Packets are forwarded to all directions

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Bridge
 Filtering: A bridge has filtering capability. It can check the
destination address of a frame and decide if the frame
should be forwarded or dropped. If the frame is to be
forwarded, the decision must specify the port. A bridge has
a table that maps addresses to ports.

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Bridge
 In the previous figure, if a frame destined for station
712B13456142 arrives at port 1, the bridge consults its table
to find the departing port. According to its table, frames for
712B13456142 leave through port 1; therefore, there is no
need for forwarding, and the frame is dropped.
 On the other hand, if a frame for 712B13456141 arrives at
port 2, the departing port is port 1 and the frame is
forwarded.
 In the first case, LAN 2 remains free of traffic; in the second
case, both LANs have traffic.

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How Bridges Work
 Bridges work at the Media Access Control Sub-layer of
the OSI model.
 Routing table is built to record the segment no. of
address.
 If destination address is in the same segment as the
source address, stop transmit.
 Otherwise, forward to the other segment.

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Function of bridge

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Cont.…
Routing Tables
• Contains one entry per station of network to which bridge is connected.
• Is used to determine the network of destination station of a received
packet.
Filtering
• Is used by bridge to allow only those packets destined to the remote
network.
• Packets are filtered with respect to their destination and multicast
addresses
Forwarding
• The process of passing a packet from one network to another.
Learning Algorithm
• The process by which the bridge learns how to reach stations on the
internetwork

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MAC Address Learning
 Bridges MAC table can be static or dynamic.
 To make a table dynamic, we need a bridge that gradually
learns from the frame movements. To do this, the bridge
inspects both the destination and the source addresses. The
destination address is used for the forwarding decision
(table lookup); the source address is used for adding entries
to the table and for updating purposes.

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Learning Process – Example

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Learning Process – Example
1. When station A sends a frame to station D, the bridge does not have
an entry for either D or A. The frame goes out from all three ports; the
frame floods the network. However, by looking at the source address,
the bridge learns that station A must be located on the LAN connected
to port 1. This means that frames destined for A, in the future, must be
sent out through port 1. The bridge adds this entry to its table. The
table has its first entry now.
2. When station E sends a frame to station A, the bridge has an entry for
A, so it forwards the frame only to port 1. There is no flooding. In
addition, it uses the source address of the frame, E, to add a second
entry to the table.
3. When station B sends a frame to C, the bridge has no entry for C, so
once again it floods the network and adds one more entry to the table.
4. The process of learning continues as the bridge forwards frames.

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Advantage and disadvantage of Bridge
Advantages of using a bridge
 Extend physical network
 Reduce network traffic with minor segmentation
 Creates separate collision domain
 Reduce collisions
 Connect different architecture
Disadvantages of using bridges
 Slower than repeaters due to filtering
 Do not filter broadcasts
 More expensive than repeaters

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Switch
 Switches are Multiport Bridges.
 Switches operate at both the physical layer and the data link layer of the OSI
Model
 Switches provide a unique network segment on each port, thereby separating
collision domains.
 A switch must be able to read the MAC address of each frame it receives.
 Today, network designers are replacing hubs in their wiring closets with switches
to increase their network performance and bandwidth while protecting their
existing wiring investments.
 Like bridges, switches learn certain information about the data packets that are
received from various computers on the network.
 Switches use this information to build forwarding tables to determine the
destination of data being sent by one computer to another computer on the
network.

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Switch
 Hosts have direct connection to switch
 Full Duplex: No collisions
 Switching: A-to-A’ and B-to-B’ simultaneously, no collisions
 Switches can be cascaded to expand the network

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Cont…
Three possible forwarding approaches: Cut-through, Collision-free and
Fully-buffered as briefly explained below.
 Cut-through: A switch forwards a frame immediately after receiving
the destination address. As a consequence, the switch forwards the
frame without collision and error detection.
 Collision-free: In this case, the switch forwards the frame after
receiving 64 bytes or partially, which allows detection of collision.
However, error detection is not possible because switch is yet to
receive the entire frame.
 Fully buffered: In this case, the switch forwards the frame only after
receiving the entire frame. So, the switch can detect both collision and
error free frames are forwarded

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Cont…
 The difference between hubs and switches is in how the
devices deal with the data that they receive. Where as a hub forwards the data
it receives to all of the ports on the device, a switch forwards it only to the port
that connects to the destination device. It does this by learning the MAC
address of the devices attached to it, and then by matching the destination
MAC address in the data it receives.

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Broadcast domain
 Broadcast domain is the extend of the network where
a broadcast frame can be heard.
 Switches forward broadcast frames to all ports.
Therefore switches don’t break broadcast domains
 All ports of a switch (with its default configuration)
belong to the same broadcast domain
 If two or more switches are connected, broadcasts will
be forward to all ports of all switches (except for the
port that originally received the broadcast)
 Routers break broadcast domains

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Cont…

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Router
 Routes packets based on their logical addresses (host-to-host
addressing).
 A router normally connects LANs and WANs in the
Internet and has a routing table that is used for
making decision about the route
 The routing tables are normally dynamic and are
updated using routing protocols.
 Routers can increase network efficiency by filtering
out broadcast traffic between networks, thus reducing
unnecessary traffic between networks.

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Router versus Bridge
• Addressing
 Routers are explicitly addressed.
 Bridges are not addressed.

• Availability
 Routers can handle failures in links, stations, and other routers.
 Bridges use only source and destination MAC address, which does not
guarantee delivery of frames.

• Message Size
 Routers can perform fragmentation on packets and thus handle
different packet sizes.
 Bridges cannot do fragmentation and should not forward a frame
which is too big for the next LAN.

• Forwarding
 Routers forward a message to a specific destination.
 Bridges forward a message to an outgoing network

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LAN Technologies
 Ethernet
 Fast Ethernet
 Gigabit Ethernet
 10 Gig Ethernet

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Ethernet
 Developed by Xerox in 1976
 Eventually became an IEEE standard (IEEE 802.3)
 Has been modified for wireless applications (IEEE 802.11)
 And for higher speeds (IEEE 802.3ae for 10 Gigabit Ethernet)
 Ethernet is based on the Datagram and functions at the
physical and data link layer

6 bytes 46 to 1500
8 bytes
bytes
Source
Preamble
Address Data

6 bytes 2 bytes 4 bytes Frame

Destination Address Type Field Check Sequence
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Ethernet Datagram Structure
 Preamble: Repeating Flag that ID’s the sequence as an
Ethernet datagram
 Destination Address: Unique identifier found nowhere else
but on the Network Interface Card to whom the datagram is
being sent
 Source Address: Who originated the datagram
 Type Field: Tells the recipient what kind of datagram is
being received (IP, UDP, etc)
 Data: What it is that you are trying to send (text, JEPG,
MP3, etc)
 Frame Check Sequence: Detects and corrects errors

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Ethernet
 If a message has less than 46 bytes of data, “padding” is
added
 Ethernet is often referred to as 100 Base T
 First digit is the speed of the system in Mbps
 Base refers to a cable or wire system
 T refers to the system is UTP: Unshielded Twisted Pair
 What is: 10 Base 5? 10 Mbps on a cable that can go
500 m

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Ethernet Address
 End nodes are identified by their Ethernet Addresses (MAC
Address or Hardware Address) which is a unique 6 Byte address.
 MAC Address is represented in Hexa Decimal format e.g
00:05:5D:FE:10:0A (48 bits)
 The first 3 bytes identify a vendor (also called prefix) and the last
3 bytes are unique for every host or device
 The least significant bit of the first byte defines the type of
address. If the bit is 0, the address is unicast; otherwise, it is
multicast.
 The broadcast destination address is a special case of the
multicast address in which all bits are 1s.

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Standard Ethernet
 10 Base 5 (Thicknet) (Bus Topology)
 10 Base 2 (Thinnet) (Bus Topology)
 10 Base T (UTP) (Star/Tree Topology)
 10 Base FL (Fiber) (Star/Tree Topology)

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Standard Ethernet
 Physical Media :-
 10 Base5 - Thick Co-axial Cable with Bus Topology
 10 Base2 - Thin Co-axial Cable with Bus Topology
 10 BaseT - UTP Cat 3/5 with Tree Topology
 10 BaseFL - Multimode/Singlemode Fiber with Tree Topology
 Maximum Segment Length
 10 Base5 - 500 m with at most 4 repeaters (Use Bridge to extend the
network)
 10 Base2 - 185 m with at most 4 repeaters (Use Bridge to extend the
network)
 10 BaseT - 100 m with at most 4 hubs (Use Switch to extend the
network)

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Fast Ethernet
 100 Mbps bandwidth
 Uses same CSMA/CD media access protocol and packet
format as in Ethernet.
 100BaseTX (UTP) and 100BaseFX (Fiber) standards
 Physical media :-
 100 BaseTX - UTP Cat 5e
 100 BaseFX - Multimode / Singlemode Fiber
 Full Duplex/Half Duplex operations.

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Fast Ethernet
 Provision for Auto-Negotiation of media speed:
10 Mbps or 100Mbps (popularly available for copper media
only).
 Maximum Segment Length
 100 Base TX - 100 m
 100 Base FX - 2 Km (Multimode Fiber)
 100 Base FX - 20 km (Singlemode Fiber)

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Gigabit Ethernet
 1 Gbps bandwidth.
 Uses same CSMA/CD media access protocol as in Ethernet
and is backward compatible (10/100/100 modules are
available).
 1000BaseT (UTP), 1000BaseSX (Multimode Fiber) and
1000BaseLX (Multimode/Singlemode Fiber) standards.
 Maximum Segment Length
 1000 Base T - 100m (Cat 5e/6)
 1000 Base SX - 275 m (Multimode Fiber)
 1000 Base LX - 512 m (Multimode Fiber)
 1000 Base LX - 20 Km (Singlemode Fiber)
 1000 Base LH - 80 Km (Singlemode Fiber)

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10 Gig Ethernet
 10 Gbps bandwidth.
 Uses same CSMA/CD media access protocol as in
Ethernet.
 Maximum Segment Length
 10GBase-T - Not available
 10GBase-LR - 10 Km (Singlemode Fiber)
 10GBase-ER - 40 Km (Singlemode Fiber)

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