Practical/DataLink Flashcards
What is the physical layer concerned with?
Concerned with the formation of bits to transmit and receive them between adjacent devices.
What does the physical layer offer in terms of reliability?
Unreliable bit pipe service.
What do the following stand for?
BER
NEXT
Bit Error Rate
Near-End Cross-talk
Explain cross-talk noise.
A signal on one line is picked up by adjacent lines as a small noise signal. Particularly troublesome in NEXT when a strong transmitter output signal interferes with a much weaker incoming receiver signal.
Explain impulse noise.
Caused by external activity or equipment. Electrical impulses on the line which cause large signal distortion for their duration.
Explain Thermal Noise. Give common name.
Caused by the thermal agitation of electrons in the device or transmission line material. Always present.
White noise.
How can Thermal noise be reduced?
Freezing components will reduce.
How does digital transmission combat noise?
All data transmitted as very different values of voltage for either zero or one. Noise would have to be extremely drastic to drop voltage from one to zero. Decision isn’t made if voltage drops to an in-between value.
Give the average probability of bit error for each of the following.
- Fibre optic cables
- Coaxial cables
- Radio
- 10^-9
- 10^-6
- 10^-3 to 10^-6
Distinguish between p and p sub b. What is L in the formula?
p sub b is probability of bit error at physical layer.
p is probability of frame error at datalink layer.
The number of bits in the frame.
Give the formula for the probability of frame error.
Give the approximation formula and the condition.
p = 1 - (1 - p sub b)^L
When p «_space;1%
p = L * p sub b
Explain different type of transmission modes for physical layer.
Simplex: Only one way ever, no return path.
Half-duplex: Can go either way but not at the same time.
Full duplex: Can use both ways at the same time.
What is multiplexing in the physical layer? Name three types.
Sharing a physical link among multiple transmissions.
FDM - frequency division multiplexing
TDM - Time Division Multiplexing
Statistical Multiplexing
Explain FDM.
Each user only utilizes a portion of the bandwidth but can have it for the full time. Signals are multiplexed to different frequencies.
Explain TDM.
Each user gets to utilize the full available bandwidth but can only use it for allocated time slots. NO CROSSTALK as only one transmission at a time.
Explain statistical multiplexing.
Both FDM and TDM divide the link into independent channels (inefficient if traffic is bursty) but in statistical multiplexing the link will never be idle.
T or F. TDM is better for bursty traffic than statistical multiplexing.
False.
What is the disadvantage of statistical multiplexing over TDM and FDM?
- Frames have an additional overhead to indicate which input stream they belong to
- Packet queuing delay is variable.
What does it mean for a device to be “adjacent”?
Means physically connected by a communication channel, assumed to deliver bits in the right order by physical layer.
List three functions of datalink layer.
- Determining how bits in physical layer are framed.
- Dealing with transmission errors
- Controlling the flow of frames so that receiver is not overwhelmed by sender.
What is a codeword?
Is a frame consisting of data bits and redundancy bits (for error detection)
Why is a single parity check bad?
Can’t tell how many errors
Where those bits are
Can’t detect even number of bit errors.
Why is a 2-dimensional parity check bad?
Can correct <= 3 errors
Can only correct any single bit
What is the Hamming Distance?
Is the number of bit positions that differ between two codewords W1 and W2.
What is the minimum hamming distance?
The smallest number of bits to change one valid codeword into another.
General rule for n bit parity check.
Can Detect <= n - 1 errors
Can correct n/2 errors
What operation is used in a 7-4 hamming code?
Exclusive OR
What does CRC stand for?
CRC - Cyclic Redundancy Check
How does data link layer error check?
Adds redundancy bits that check the accuracy of the transmission.
Formula for CRC
Divide Transmitted data (add on n zeros where n is length of CRC) by G a known value. The remainder should be the CRC added on. Output is what is transmitted.
How does CRC known if there is no error?
Remainder is 0.
T or F. IPv6 supports flows unlike IPv4 that does not.
True.
T or F. IPv6 is not compatible with TCP or UDP but is compatible with FTTP.
False.