Chapter 3

Data Link Control

11.1
Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
 Figure A frame in a character-oriented protocol

11.2
 FLOW AND ERROR CONTROL

The most important responsibilities of the data link layer are

flow control and error control. Collectively, these functions are
known as data link control.
Topics discussed in this section:

11.3
 Flow control refers to a set of procedures used to restrict the
amount of data that the sender can send before waiting for
acknowledgment.
Error control in the data link layer is based on automatic repeat
request, (ARQ) which is the retransmission of data.

Data Link Layer has 2 sublayers:

- Logical Link Control (Data Link Control)
- Media Access Control

The data link control or LLC can combine framing, flow

control, and error control to achieve the delivery of data
from one node to another.

11.4
 Flow and Error Control

Flow control refers to a set of procedures used to restrict the

amount of data that the sender can send before waiting for
acknowledgment (ACK).

Error control in the data link layer is based on automatic repeat

request (ARQ), which is the retransmission of data.

Each receiving device has a block of memory, called a

buffer,reserved for storing incoming data until they are
processed.

If the buffer begins to fill up, the receiver must be able to tell
the sender to halt transmission until it is once again able to
receive.
11.5
 Taxonomy of protocols discussed in this chapter

11.6
 NOISELESS CHANNELS

Let us first assume we have an ideal channel in which

no frames are lost, duplicated, or corrupted. We
introduce two protocols for this type of channel.

Simplest Protocol - has no flow or error control

Stop-and-Wait Protocol - sender sends one frame, stops until
it receives agree from receiver and then sends the next frame

11.7
 The design of the simplest protocol with no flow or error control

11.8
 1-Simplest Protocol

• Our first protocol, which we call the Simplest Protocol, is one that

has no flow or error control. Like other protocols, it is a

unidirectional protocol in which data frames are traveling in only one

direction-from the sender to receiver.

• The receiver can immediately handle any frame it receives with a

processing time that is small enough to be negligible.

• The data link layer of the receiver immediately removes the header

from the frame and hands the data packet to network layer, which
 Flow diagram

The sender sends a sequence

of frames without even
thinking about the receiver.

Note that the data frames

are shown by tilted boxes;
the height of the box defines
the transmission time
difference between the first
bit and the last bit in the
frame.

11.10
 Algorithm 1.1 Sender-site algorithm for the simplest protocol

11.11
 Algorithm Receiver-site algorithm for the simplest protocol

11.12
 2. Stop-and-Wait Protocol

• If the data frames arrive at the receiver site faster than they can be

processed, the frames must be stored until their use. Normally, the

receiver does not have enough storage space, especially if it is

receiving data from many sources.

• We need to tell the sender to slow down. There must be feedback

from the receiver to the sender.

• The sender sends one frame, stops until it receives agreement the

receiver (okay to go ahead), and then sends the next frame. We

11.13
still have unidirectional communication for data frames, but
 Algorithm 3 Sender-site algorithm for Stop-and-Wait Protocol

11.14
 Algorithm Receiver-site algorithm for Stop-and-Wait Protocol

11.15
 Stop-and-Wait Protocol fig 1

Figure shows an example

of communication using
this protocol.

It is still very simple. The

sender sends one frame
and waits for feedback
from the receiver. When
the ACK arrives, the
sender sends the next
frame.

11.16
 NOISY CHANNELS

Although the Stop-and-Wait Protocol gives us an idea

of how to add flow control to its predecessor, noiseless
channels are nonexistent. We discuss three protocols
in this section that use error control.

Protocols discussed in this section:

Stop-and-Wait Automatic Repeat Request

Go-Back-N Automatic Repeat Request
Selective Repeat Automatic Repeat Request

11.17
 Error correction in Stop-and-Wait ARQ is done by
keeping a copy of the sent frame and retransmitting of
the frame when the timer expires.

In Stop-and-Wait ARQ, we use sequence numbers to

number the frames.
The sequence numbers are based on modulo-2
arithmetic.

Types of Errors:
- Frame Corrupted
- Frame Lost
- Acknowledgement Lost

11.18
 Design of the Stop-and-Wait ARQ Protocol

11.19
 Note

In Stop-and-Wait ARQ, the

acknowledgment number always
announces in modulo-2 arithmetic the
sequence number of the next frame
expected.

11.20
 Algorithm 5 Sender-site algorithm for Stop-and-Wait ARQ

(continued)
11.21
 Algorithm Sender-site algorithm for Stop-and-Wait ARQ (continued)

11.22
 Algorithm Receiver-site algorithm for Stop-and-Wait ARQ Protocol

11.23
 Figure Flow diagram for Example 2

11.24
 Example

Assume that, in a Stop-and-Wait ARQ system, the

bandwidth of the line is 1 Mbps, and 1 bit takes 20 ms to
make a round trip. What is the bandwidth-delay product?
If the system data frames are 1000 bits in length, what is
the utilization percentage of the link?

Solution
The bandwidth-delay product is

11.25
 Example (continued)

The system can send 20,000 bits during the time it takes
for the data to go from the sender to the receiver and then
back again. However, the system sends only 1000 bits. We
can say that the link utilization is only 1000/20,000, or 5
percent.

For this reason, for a link with a high bandwidth or long

delay, the use of Stop-and-Wait ARQ wastes the capacity
of the link.

11.26
 Example

What is the utilization percentage of the link in Example if we

have a protocol that can send up to 15 frames before stopping
and worrying about the acknowledgments?

Solution
The bandwidth-delay product is still 20,000 bits. The
system can send up to 15 frames or 15,000 bits during a
round trip.

This means the utilization is 15,000/20,000, or 75 percent.

Of course, if there are damaged frames, the utilization
percentage is much less because frames have to be resent.
11.27
Pipelining
• In networking and in other areas, a task is often begun
before the previous task has ended. This is known as
pipelining. There is no pipelining in Stop-and-Wait ARQ
because we need to wait for a frame to reach the
destination and be acknowledged before the next frame
can be sent.

• Pipelining improves the efficiency of the transmission if

the number of bits in transition is large with respect to
the bandwidth-delay .
Sliding Window Protocols
 - Go Back N (Retransmit all frames from the corruptedframe)
 - Selective Repeat (Retransmit only the corrupted frame)
 Terminology:
 Sequence numbers, Window, Window size
Go-Back-N Automatic Repeat Request
 In the Go-Back-N Protocol, the sequence numbers are
modulo 2m, where m is the size of the sequence
number field in bits.

In the Go-Back-N Protocol size of the sequence

number field in bits.

For example, if m is 4, the only sequence numbers are

0 through 15 inclusive. However, we can repeat the
sequence.

11.31
 Figure Send window for Go-Back-N ARQ

11.32
 The send window is an abstract concept defining an
imaginary box of size 2m − 1 with three variables: Sf,
Sn, and Ssize.

The send window can slide one or more slots when a

valid acknowledgment arrives.

The receive window is an abstract concept defining an

imaginary box of size 1 with one single variable Rn.
The window slides when a correct frame has arrived;
sliding occurs one slot at a time.

11.34
 Figure Receive window for Go-Back-N ARQ

11.35
 Figure Design of Go-Back-N ARQ

11.36
 Figure Window size for Go-Back-N ARQ

11.37
 In Go-Back-N ARQ, the size of the send
window must be less than 2m;
the size of the receiver window
is always 1.

11.38
 Algorithm Go-Back-N sender algorithm

(continued)
11.39
 Algorithm Go-Back-N sender algorithm (continued)

11.40
 Algorithm Go-Back-N receiver algorithm

11.41
 Example
• Figure shows an example of Go-Back-N. This is an example of a
case where the forward channel is reliable, but the reverse is not.
No data frames are lost, but some ACKs are delayed and one is
lost.

• The example also shows how cumulative acknowledgments can

help if acknowledgments are delayed or lost. After initialization,
there are seven sender events.

• Request events are triggered by data from the network layer;

arrival events are triggered by acknowledgments from the
physical layer.

• There is no time-out event here because all outstanding frames

are acknowledged before the timer expires. Note that although
ACK 2 is lost, ACK 3 serves as both ACK 2 and ACK 3.
11.42
 Figure Flow diagram for Example 4

11.43
 Example 5

Figure 5 shows what happens when a frame is lost.

Frames 0, 1, 2, and 3 are sent. However, frame 1 is lost.
The receiver receives frames 2 and 3, but they are
discarded because they are received out of order. The
sender receives no acknowledgment about frames 1, 2, or
3. Its timer finally expires. The sender sends all
outstanding frames (1, 2, and 3) because it does not know
what is wrong. Note that the resending of frames 1, 2, and
3 is the response to one single event. When the sender is
responding to this event, it cannot accept the triggering of
other events. This means that when ACK 2 arrives, the
sender is still busy with sending frame 3.
11.44
 Example 5 (continued)

The physical layer must wait until this event is completed

and the data link layer goes back to its sleeping state. We
have shown a vertical line to indicate the delay. It is the
same story with ACK 3; but when ACK 3 arrives, the
sender is busy responding to ACK 2. It happens again
when ACK 4 arrives. Note that before the second timer
expires, all outstanding frames have been sent and the
timer is stopped.

11.45
 Figure 11.17 Flow diagram for Example 5

11.46
 Note

Stop-and-Wait ARQ is a special case of

Go-Back-N ARQ in which the size of the
send window is 1.

11.47
 Figure Send window for Selective Repeat ARQ

11.48
 Figure Receive window for Selective Repeat ARQ

11.49
 Figure Design of Selective Repeat ARQ

11.50
 Figure 21 Selective Repeat ARQ, window size

11.51
 Note

In Selective Repeat ARQ, the size of the

sender and receiver window
must be at most one-half of 2m.

11.52