• A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that is designed for a limited geographic area such as a building or a campus. Although a LAN can be used as an isolated network to connect computers in an organization for the sole purpose of sharing resources, most LANs today are also linked to a wide area network (WAN) or the Internet.




• In 1985, the Computer Society of the IEEE started a project, called Project 802, to set standards to enable intercommunication among equipment from a variety of manufac- turers. Project 802 does not seek to replace any part of the OSI or the Internet model.




• The relationship of the 802 Standard to the traditional OSI model is shown in below figure




• The IEEE has subdivided the data link layer into two sublayers: logical link control (LLC) and media access control (MAC). IEEE has also created several physicallayer standards for different LAN protocols.




• In IEEE Project 802, flow control, error control, and part of the framing duties are collected into one sublayer called the logical link control. Framing is handled in both the LLC sublayer and the MAC sublayer.




• The LLC provides one single data link control protocol for all IEEE LANs. In this way, the LLC is different from the media access control sub layer, which provides differ- ent protocols for different LANs.

• The original Ethernet has gone through four generations: Standard Ethernet (10 Mbps), Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps), Gigabit Ethernet (l Gbps), and Ten-Gigabit Ethernet (l0 Gbps).




• In Standard Ethernet, the MAC sublayer governs the operation of the access method. It also frames data received from the upper layer and passes them to the physical layer.




• The Ethernet frame contains seven fields: preamble, SFD, DA, SA, length or type of protocol data unit (PDU), upper-layer data, and the CRe. Ethernet does not provide any mechanism for acknowledging received frames, making it what is known as an unreliable medium. Acknowledgments must be implemented at the higher layers.

• Preamble : The first field of the 802.3 frame contains 7 bytes (56 bits) of alternating Os and 1s that alerts the receiving system to the coming frame and enables it to synchronize its input timing. The pattern provides only an alert and a timing pulse. The 56-bit pattern allows the stations to miss some bits at the beginning of the frame. The preamble is actually added at the physical layer and is not (formally) part of the frame.




• Start frame delimiter (SFD) : The second field (l byte: 10101011) signals the beginning of the frame. The SFD warns the station or stations that this is the last chance for synchronization. The last 2 bits is 11 and alerts the receiver that the next field is the destination address.




• Destination address (DA) : The DA field is 6 bytes and contains the physical address of the destination station or stations to receive the packet.




• Source address (SA) : The SA field is also 6 bytes and contains the physical address of the sender of the packe




• Length or type : This field is defined as a type field or length field. The original Ethernet used this field as the type field to define the upper-layer protocol using the MAC frame. The IEEE standard used it as the length field to define the number of bytes in the data field. Both uses are common today.




• Data : This field carries data encapsulated from the upper-layer protocols. It is a minimum of 46 and a maximum of 1500 bytes




• CRC : The last field contains error detection information.





• An Ethernet frame needs to have a minimum length of 512 bits or 64 bytes. Part of this length is the header and the trailer. If we count 18 bytes of header and trailer (6 bytes of source address, 6 bytes of destination address, 2 bytes of length or type, and 4 bytes of CRC), then the minimum length of data from the upper layer is 64 - 18 = 46 bytes. If the upper-layer packet is less than 46 bytes, padding is added to make up the difference.




• The standard defines the maximum length of a frame (without preamble and SFD field) as 1518 bytes. If we subtract the 18 bytes of header and trailer, the maximum length of the payload is 1500 bytes.




• The maximum length restriction has two historical reasons. First, memory was very expensive when Ethernet was designed: a maximum length restriction helped to reduce the size of the buffer. Second, the maximum length restriction prevents one station from monopolizing the shared medium, blocking other stations that have data to send.




• Each station on an Ethernet network (such as a PC, workstation, or printer) has its own network interface card (NIC). The NIC fits inside the station and provides the station with a 6-byte physical address. The Ethernet address is 6 bytes (48 bits), normally written in hexadecimal notation, with a colon between the bytes.





• A source address is always a unicast address-the frame comes from only one station. The destination address, however, can be unicast (only one recipient), multicast (a group of addresses), or broadcast (the recipients are all the stations on the LAN).




• 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. A broadcast destination address is forty-eight 1's.

Q. Define the type of the following destination addresses:

• To find the type of the address, we need to look at the second hexadecimal digit from the left. If it is even, the address is unicast. If it is odd, the address is multicast. If all digits are F's, the address is broadcast.




• 4A:30:1O:21:1O:1A : This is a unicast address because A in binary is 1010 (even).




• 47:20:1B:2E:08:EE : This is a multicast address because 7 in binary is 0111 (odd).




• FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF : This is a broadcast address because all digits are F's.




• The way the addresses are sent out on line is different from the way they are written in hexadecimal notation. The transmission is left-to-right, byte by byte; however, for each byte, the least significant bit is sent first and the most significant bit is sent last. This means that the bit that defines an address as unicast or multicast arrives first at the receiver.

• In an Ethernet network, the round-trip time required for a frame to travel from one end of a maximum-length network to the other plus the time needed to send the jam sequence is called the slot time.




• Slot time = round-trip time + time required to send the jam sequence




• The slot time in Ethernet is defined in bits. It is the time required for a station to send 512 bits. This means that the actual slot time depends on the data rate; for traditional 10-Mbps Ethernet it is 51.2 microseconds.




• The choice of a 512-bit slot time was not accidental. To demonstrate this, We assume that the sender sends a minimum-size packet of 512 bits. Before the sender can send the entire packet out, the signal travels through the network and reaches the end of the network.




• If there is another signal at the end of the network (worst case), a collision occurs. The sender has the opportunity to abort the sending of the frame and to send a jam sequence to inform other stations of the collision.




• The round-trip time plus the time required to send the jam sequence should be less than the time needed for the sender to send the minimum frame, 512 bits. The sender needs to be aware of the collision before it is too late, that is, before it has sent the entire frame.




• In the second case, the sender sends a frame larger than the minimum size (between 512 and 1518 bits). In this case, if the station has sent out the first 512 bits and has not heard a collision, it is guaranteed that collision will never occur during the transmission of this frame.




• The reason is that the signal will reach the end of the network in less than one-half the slot time. If all stations follow the CSMA/CD protocol, they have already sensed the existence of the signal (carrier) on the line and have refrained from sending.




• If they sent a signal on the line before one-half of the slot time expired, a collision has occurred and the sender has sensed the collision. In other words, collision can only occur during the first half of the slot time, and if it does, it can be sensed by the sender during the slot time. This means that after the sender sends the first 512 bits, it is guaranteed that collision will not occur during the transmission of this frame.

Relationship between the slot time and the maximum length of the network (collision domain)

• It is dependent on the propagation speed of the signal in the particular medium.




• n most transmission media, the signal propagates at 2 x 10⁸ m/s (two-thirds of the rate for propagation in air). For traditional Ethernet, we calculate




• \( \text{MaxLength} = \text{Propagation Speed } * \frac{\text{Slot time}}{2} \)




• \( \text{MaxLength} = \text{2 * 10^8 } * \frac{51.2 * 10^{-6}}{2} = 5120 m \)




• Practically we need to consider the delay times in repeaters and interfaces, and the time required to send the jam sequence. These reduce the maximum-length of a traditional Ethernet network to 2500 m, just 48 percent of the theoretical calculation.

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