Data communication and

Computer networking

Chapter four Transport layer

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 OSI model
Layer Purpose PDU Device
Application Interface (API) Message

Presentation Formatting, Encryption, Message

Compression
Session Authentication, Authorization Message
Gateway
Transport End to end connection Segment/data gram
Firewall
Network Logical addressing Packet
Router
Data link Physical addressing Frame
Switch, Bridge, Access Point

Physical Transmission Bit

Hub, NIC, Cable, Wireless

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• The main role of the transport layer is to provide the communication services
directly to the application processes running on different hosts.
• It provides a logical communication between application processes running on
different hosts.
• Although application processes on different hosts are not physically connected,
application processes use the logical communication provided by the transport
layer to send messages to each other.
• The transport layer protocols are implemented in the end systems but not in the
network routers.
• TCP and UDP are two transport layer protocols that provide a different set of
services to the network layer.
• Each of the applications in application layer has the ability to send a message by
using TCP or UDP. Both TCP and UDP will then communicate with the internet
protocol in the internet layer. Applications can read and write to the transport layer.

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Transport Layer Services
• The services provided by the transport layer are similar to those of the data link
layer. The data link layer provides the services within a single network while the
transport layer provides the services across an internetwork made up of many
networks. The data link layer controls the physical layer while the transport layer
controls all the lower layers. Common services of transport layer are
• End-to-end delivery
• Addressing
• Reliable delivery
• Flow control
• Multiplexing

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• End to end delivery
• The transport layer transmits the entire message to the destination. Therefore,
it ensures the end-to-end delivery of an entire message from a source to the
destination.
• Reliable delivery:
• The transport layer provides reliability services by retransmitting the lost and
damaged packets.
• The reliable delivery has four aspects:
• Error control
• Sequence control
• Loss control
• Duplication control

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• Error Control
• The primary role of reliability is Error Control. In reality, no transmission
will be 100 percent error-free delivery. Therefore, transport layer protocols are
designed to provide error-free transmission.
• The data link layer also provides the error handling mechanism, but it ensures
only node-to-node error-free delivery. However, node-to-node reliability does
not ensure the end-to-end reliability.
• The data link layer checks for the error between each network. If an error is
introduced inside one of the routers, then this error will not be caught by the
data link layer. It only detects those errors that have been introduced between
the beginning and end of the link. Therefore, the transport layer performs the
checking for the errors end-to-end to ensure that the packet has arrived
correctly.

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• Sequence Control
• The second aspect of the reliability is sequence control which is implemented
at the transport layer.
• On the sending end, the transport layer is responsible for ensuring that the
packets received from the upper layers can be used by the lower layers. On the
receiving end, it ensures that the various segments of a transmission can be
correctly reassembled.
• Loss Control
• Loss Control is a third aspect of reliability. The transport layer ensures that all
the fragments of a transmission arrive at the destination, not some of them.
• On the sending end, all the fragments of transmission are given sequence
numbers by a transport layer. These sequence numbers allow the receiver’s
transport layer to identify the missing segment.

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• Duplication Control is the fourth aspect of reliability.
• The transport layer guarantees that no duplicate data arrive at the destination.
• Sequence numbers are used to identify the lost packets; similarly, it allows the
receiver to identify and discard duplicate segments.

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• Flow Control
• Flow control is used to prevent the sender from overwhelming the receiver. If
the receiver is overloaded with too much data, then the receiver discards the
packets and asking for the retransmission of packets. This increases network
congestion and thus, reducing the system performance.
• The transport layer is responsible for flow control. It uses the sliding window
protocol that makes the data transmission more efficient as well as it controls
the flow of data so that the receiver does not become overwhelmed. Sliding
window protocol is byte oriented rather than frame oriented.

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Multiplexing
• Multiplexing can occur in two ways:
• Upward multiplexing:
• Multiple transport layer connections use the same network connection. To make
more cost-effective, the transport layer sends several transmissions bound for the
same destination along the same path; this is achieved through upward
multiplexing.
• Downward multiplexing:
• One transport layer connection uses multiple network connections. Downward
multiplexing allows the transport layer to split a connection among several paths
to improve the throughput. This type of multiplexing is used when networks
have a low or slow capacity.

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Addressing
• According to the layered model, the transport layer interacts with the functions of
the session layer. Many protocols combine session, presentation, and application
layer protocols into a single layer known as the application layer. In these cases,
delivery to the session layer means the delivery to the application layer. Data
generated by an application on one machine must be transmitted to the correct
application on another machine. In this case, addressing is provided by the transport
layer.
• The transport layer provides the user address which is specified as a station or port.
• The port variable represents a particular TS user of a specified station known as a
Transport Service access point (TSAP). Each station has only one transport entity.
• The transport layer protocols need to know which upper-layer protocols are
communicating.

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Transport layer protocols
• The transport layer is represented by two major protocols: TCP and UDP. The IP protocol
in the network layer delivers a datagram from a source host to the destination host.
• An IP protocol is a host-to-host protocol used to deliver a packet from source host to the
destination host while transport layer protocols are port-to-port protocols that work on the
top of the IP protocols to deliver the packet from the originating port to the IP services,
and from IP services to the destination port.
• Each port is defined by a positive integer address, and it is of 16 bits.
• Most commonly used ports, along with their associated
networking protocol are:

Port 25: (SMTP)

Ports 20 and 21: (FTP)
Port 53 (DNS)
Port 22: Secure Shell (SSH)
Port 80: (HTTP)

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• UDP
• UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol.
• UDP is a simple protocol and it provides non-sequenced transport functionality.
• UDP is a connectionless protocol.
• It used when reliability and security are less important than speed and size.
• UDP is an end-to-end transport level protocol that adds transport-level addresses,
checksum error control, and length information to the data from the upper layer.
• The packet produced by the UDP protocol is known as a user datagram.
• The primary advantage of UDP are speed, efficiency and it allows data to be
sent to multiple recipients simultaneously.
• Disadvantages of UDP protocol
• It does not provide any sequencing or reordering functions and does not specify the
damaged packet when reporting an error.
• UDP can discover that an error has occurred, but it does not specify which packet has
been lost as it does not contain an ID or sequencing number of a particular data
segment.

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• User Datagram Format

• Where,
• Source port address: defines address of the application process that has
delivered a message.
• Destination port address: It defines the address of the application process
that will receive the message.
• Total length: It defines the total length of the user datagram in bytes.
• Checksum: The checksum is a 16-bit field which is used in error detection.

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Transmission control protocol /TCP
• It provides full transport layer services to applications.
• It is a connection-oriented protocol means the connection established between
both ends of the transmission. For creating the connection, TCP generates a
virtual circuit between sender and receiver for the duration of a transmission.
Suppose process A wants to send and receive data from process B. The following
steps occur:
• Establish a connection between two TCPs.
• Data is exchanged in both the directions.
• The Connection is terminated.

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• Advantages of TCP
• Data retransmission
• Congestion Control
• Unique Identification
• In order delivery
• Error Detection
• Disadvantages of TCP
• It does not support broadcast or multicast transmission.
• TCP offers several features that we may not want. These features may result in
a waste of bandwidth, time, or effort.
• While establishing a connection, TCP performs a handshake between the
sender and the receiver.

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• Features Of TCP protocol
• Stream data transfer: TCP transfers the data in the form of contiguous stream of
bytes. TCP groups the bytes in the form of segments and passed it to the IP layer
for transmission to the destination.
• Reliability: TCP assigns a sequence number to each byte transmitted and expects
a positive acknowledgement from the receiving TCP. If ACK is not received
within a timeout interval, then the data is retransmitted to the destination. The
receiving TCP uses the sequence number to reassemble the segments if they arrive
out of order or to eliminate the duplicate segments.
• Flow Control: When receiving TCP sends an acknowledgement back to the
sender indicating the number the bytes it can receive without overflowing its
internal buffer. The number of bytes is sent in ACK in the form of the highest
sequence number that it can receive without any problem. This mechanism is also
referred to as a window mechanism.

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 • Cont…
• Multiplexing: TCP accepts the data from different applications and forwards to
different applications on different computers. At the receiving end, the data is
forwarded to the correct application. This process is known as demultiplexing.
TCP transmits the packet to the correct application by using the logical channels
known as ports.
• Logical Connections: The combination of sockets, sequence numbers, and
window sizes, is called a logical connection. Each connection is identified by the
pair of sockets used by sending and receiving processes.
• Full Duplex service: To achieve Full Duplex service, each TCP should have
sending and receiving buffers so that the segments can flow in both directions.
TCP is a connection-oriented protocol.

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• TCP segment format

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• Where,
• Source port address: It is used to define the address of the application program in a source
computer. It is a 16-bit field.
• Destination port address: It is used to define the address of the application program in a
destination computer. It is a 16-bit field.
• Sequence number: A stream of data is divided into two or more TCP segments. The 32-bit
sequence number field represents the position of the data in an original data stream.
• Acknowledgement number: A 32-field acknowledgement number acknowledge the data from
other communicating devices. If ACK field is set to 1, then it specifies the sequence number that
the receiver is expecting to receive.
• Header Length (HLEN): It specifies the size of the TCP header in 32-bit words. The minimum
size of the header is 5 words, and the maximum size of the header is 15 words. Therefore, the
maximum size of the TCP header is 60 bytes, and the minimum size of the TCP header is 20 bytes.
• Reserved: It is a six-bit field which is reserved for future use.
• Control bits: Each bit of a control field functions individually and independently. A control bit
defines the use of a segment or serves as a validity check for other fields.

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There are total six types of flags in control field:
• URG: The URG field indicates that the data in a segment is urgent.
• ACK: When ACK field is set, then it validates the acknowledgement number.
• PSH: The PSH field is used to inform the sender that higher throughput is needed if
possible, data must be pushed with higher throughput.
• RST: The reset bit is used to reset the TCP connection when there is any confusion
occurs in the sequence numbers.
• SYN: The SYN field is used to synchronize the sequence numbers in three types of
segments: connection request, connection confirmation ( with the ACK bit set ), and
confirmation acknowledgement.
• FIN: The FIN field is used to inform the receiving TCP module that the sender has
finished sending data. It is used in connection termination in three types of
segments: termination request, termination confirmation, and acknowledgement of
termination confirmation.

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 • Cont…
• Window Size: The window is a 16-bit field that defines the size of the window.
• Checksum: The checksum is a 16-bit field used in error detection.
• Urgent pointer: If URG flag is set to 1, then this 16-bit field is an offset from the
sequence number indicating that it is a last urgent data byte.
• Options and padding: It defines the optional fields that carry additional
information to the receiver.

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 Differences b/w TCP & UDP
Basis for TCP UDP
Comparison
Circuit establishment establishes a virtual circuit before transmits data directly to the destination
transmitting the data. computer without verifying whether the
receiver is ready to receive or not.
Connection Type It is a Connection-Oriented It is a Connectionless protocol
protocol
Speed slow high
Reliability It is a reliable protocol. It is an unreliable protocol.
Header size 20 bytes 8 bytes
acknowledgement It waits for the acknowledgement It neither takes the acknowledgement, nor
of data and has the ability to it retransmits the damaged packets.
resend the lost packets.

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