Computer Network(CSC 503)

Shilpa Ingoley

Lecture 32
Transport Layer
• It is the heart of the whole protocol hierarchy
• It is located between the application layer and the network layer.
• It provides services to the application layer and receives services from
the network layer.
• Its task is to provide:
• Reliable, cost-effective data transport from the source machine to
the destination machine, independently of the physical network or
networks currently in use.
 Contd…
• The ultimate goal of the transport layer is to provide efficient, reliable, and cost-
effective service to its users.
• To achieve this goal, the transport layer makes use of the services provided by
the network layer.
• The hardware and/or software within the transport layer that does the work is
called the transport entity.
• There are two types of transport service.
• Connection Oriented Transport Service
• Connectionless Transport Service
• Connections have three phases: establishment, data transfer, and release.
• Addressing and flow control are also similar in both layers.
Need for Transport Layer

• If the transport layer service is so similar to the network layer service, why
are there two distinct layers?
• Why is one layer not adequate?
• The transport code runs entirely on the users' machines, but the network layer
mostly runs on the routers, which are operated by the carrier.
• What happens if the network layer offers inadequate service? Suppose that it
frequently loses packets? What happens if routers crash from time to time?
• The users have no real control over the network layer, so they cannot solve the
problem of poor service by using better routers or putting more error handling in
the data link layer
 Contd…
In a connection-oriented subnet:
• A transport entity is informed halfway through a long transmission that its network
connection has been abruptly terminated,
• What happens to the data currently in transit ?
• It can set up a new network connection to the remote transport entity.
• Using this new network connection, it can send a query to its peer asking which
data arrived and which did not, and then pick up from where it left off.
• In this case the existence of the transport layer makes it possible for the transport
service to be more reliable than the underlying network service.
• Lost packets and mangled data can be detected and compensated for by the
transport layer.
 Contd…

• Application programmers can write code according to a standard set of primitives and
have these programs work on a wide variety of networks, without having to worry
about dealing with different subnet interfaces and unreliable transmission
• These transport service primitives can be implemented as calls to library procedures
in order to make them independent of the network service primitives. The network
service calls may vary considerably from network to network
• The bottom four layers can be seen as the transport service provider, whereas the
upper layer are the transport service user
• Transport layer forms the major boundary between the provider and user of the
reliable data transmission service.
Transport Protocol Data Unit (TPDU)

• TPDUs exchanged by the transport layer are contained in packets

exchanged by the network layer.
• In turn, packets are contained in frames exchanged by the data link
layer.
• When a frame arrives, the data link layer processes the frame header
and passes the contents of the frame payload field up to the network
entity.
• The network entity processes the packet header and passes the
contents of the packet payload up to the transport entity.
• Nesting of TPDU, Packet and Frame
Transport Layer Service Primitives
• To allow users to access the transport service, the transport layer must provide
some operations to application programs, that is known as transport service
interface.
• Each transport service has its own interface
• Difference between transport service and network service:
• Transport Service is reliable whereas network service is un-reliable
• Network service is used only by the transport entities.
• Few users write their own transport entities, and thus few users or programs
ever see the bare network service. In contrast, many programs (and thus
programmers) see the transport primitives. Consequently, the transport service
must be convenient and easy to use.
 Contd…

Sr. Primitive Meaning

No
1. LISTEN When server is ready to accept request of incoming connection, it simply
put this primitive into action. Listen primitive simply waiting for incoming
connection request.

2. CONNECT This primitive is used to connect the server simply by creating or

establishing connection with waiting peer.

3. ACCEPT It simply accepts incoming connection form peer.

4. SEND It is put into action by the client to transmit its request that is followed by
putting receive primitive into action to get the reply. Send primitive simply
sends or transfer the message to the peer.

5. RECEIVE These primitive afterwards block the server. Receive primitive simply
waits for incoming message.
6. DISCONNECT It is simply used to terminate or end the connection after which no one
will be able to send any of the message.
Example of Transport Layer Service Primitive

• Consider an application with a server and a number of remote clients.

• Step-1: The server executes a LISTEN primitive, by calling a library procedure
that makes a system call to block the server until a client turns up.
• Step-2: When a client wants to talk to the server, it executes a CONNECT
primitive. The transport entity carries out this primitive by blocking the caller and
sending a packet to the server. The packet is encapsulated in the payload contains
a transport layer message for the server's transport entity.
 Contd…
• Step-3: The client's CONNECT call causes a CONNECTION REQUEST TPDU
to be sent to the server. When it arrives, the transport entity checks to see that the
server is blocked on a LISTEN It then unblocks the server and sends a
CONNECTION ACCEPTED TPDU back to the client. When this TPDU arrives,
the client is unblocked and the connection is established.

• Step-4: Data can now be exchanged using the SEND and RECEIVE primitives.
Either party can do a (blocking) RECEIVE to wait for the other party to do a SEND.
When the TPDU arrives, the receiver is unblocked. It can then process the TPDU
and send a reply
 Contd…
• Step-5: When a connection is no longer needed, it must be released to free up table
space within the two transport entities. Disconnection has two variants: asymmetric
and symmetric.

• In the asymmetric variant, either transport user can issue a DISCONNECT

primitive, which results in a DISCONNECT TPDU being sent to the remote
transport entity. Upon arrival, the connection is released.
• In the symmetric variant, each direction is closed separately, independently of the
other one. When one side does a DISCONNECT, that means it has no more data to
send but it is still willing to accept data from its partner.
• In this model, a connection is released when both sides have done a DISCONNECT
Example of Transport Layer Service Primitive
Berkeley Sockets
• It is another set of transport primitives known as the socket primitives
• These primitives are widely used for Internet programming or Socket Programming
• They follow the same model of but offer more features and flexibility
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)

• TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) was specifically designed to provide a

reliable end-to end byte stream over an unreliable internetwork.
• TCP service is obtained by both the sender and receiver creating end points,
called sockets
• Each socket has a socket number (address) consisting of the IP address of the host
and a 16-bit number local to that host, called a port.
• A port is the TCP name. For TCP service to be obtained, a connection must be
explicitly established between a socket on the sending machine and a socket on the
receiving machine
TCP Port numbers
TCP

• Every byte on a TCP connection has its own 32-bit sequence number
• The basic protocol used by TCP entities is the sliding window protocol.
• The sending and receiving TCP entities exchange data in the form of segments.
• A TCP segment consists of a fixed 20-byte header (plus an optional part) followed
by zero or more data bytes.
• The TCP software decides how big segments should be.
• It can accumulate data from several writes into one segment or can split data from
one write over multiple segments.
TCP segment
• A TCP segment encapsulates the data received from the application layer. The
TCP segment itself is encapsulated in an IP datagram, which in turn is
encapsulated in a frame at the data link layer.
• Two limits restrict the segment size:
• Each segment, including the TCP header, must fit in the 65,515-byte IP
payload.
• Each network has a maximum transfer unit, or MTU, and each segment must
fit in the MTU. In practice, the MTU is generally 1500 bytes (the Ethernet
payload size) and thus defines the upper bound on segment size.
TCP Header Format

• The segment consists of a header of 20 to 60 bytes, followed by data from the

application program.
• The header is 20 bytes if there are no options and up to 60 bytes if it contains
options.
• TCP segment
TCP Header
TCP Header Format
• Source port address- This is a 16-bit field that defines the port number of the
application program in the host that is sending the segment.
• Destination port address- This is a 16-bit field that defines the port number of the
application program in the host that is receiving the segment.
• Sequence number- This 32-bit field defines the number assigned to the first byte
of data contained in this segment.
• TCP is a stream transport protocol.
• To ensure connectivity, each byte to be transmitted is numbered.
• The sequence number tells the destination which byte in this sequence is the
first byte in the segment.
• During connection establishment each party uses a random number generator
to create an initial sequence number (ISN), which is usually different in each
direction
 Contd…
• Acknowledgment number- This 32-bit field defines the byte number that the
receiver of the segment is expecting to receive from the other party.

• Header length- This 4-bit field indicates the number of 4-byte words in the TCP
header.
• The length of the header can be between 20 and 60 bytes. Therefore, the value
of this field is always between 5 (5 × 4 = 20) and 15 (15 × 4 = 60).
• Reserved Bits:- This 6-bit field is reserved for future use. The value is set to 0
 Contd…

• Control- This field defines 6 different control bits or flags

• One or more of these bits can be set at a time.
• These bits enable flow control, connection establishment and termination, connection abortion,
and the mode of data transfer in TCP
 Contd…
• Window size- This field defines the window size of the sending TCP in bytes.
• Note that the length of this field is 16 bits, which means that the maximum
size of the window is 65,535 bytes.
• This value is normally referred to as the receiving window (rwnd) and is
determined by the receiver. The sender must obey the dictation of the receiver
in this case

• Checksum. This 16-bit field contains the checksum.

• Use of the checksum for TCP is mandatory.
 Contd…
• Urgent pointer- This 16-bit field, is valid only if the urgent flag is set
• It is used when the segment contains urgent data.
• It defines a value that must be added to the sequence number to obtain
the number of the last urgent byte in the data section of the segment.

• Options- There can be up to 40 bytes of optional information in the TCP

header.
Example
• Ex. 1 : The following is a dump of a TCP header in hexadecimal format :
• 05320017 00000001 00000000 500207FF 00000000
• (i) What is the source port number?
• (ii)What is the destination port number
• (iii) What is the length of the header?
• (iv) What is the type of segment?
• (v) What is the window size?

Soln. :
The dump of a TCP header in hexadecimal format : 05320017 00000001 00000000 500207FF 00000000
• 1) Source port number:- (2 byte) -> ) 0532(in hex) or 1330 (in decimal)
• 2) Destination port number:- (2 byte) -> 0017(in hex) or 23( in decimal))
• 3) Length of the header (4 bits) – 5 (in hex and decimal) Means 5 * 4 = 20 bytes header
• 4) Type of the segment - 0X02:-is control field and this indicates a SYN packet.
• 5) Window size - 07FF ((in hex) or 2047 (in decimal)