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Tutorial : Answers are compiled by GS Umair Ahmadh, the author shall not be responsible for any
mistakes occur using this as reference.

CS 53001 - Computer Networks

1. Compare the Datagram and Virtual circuit routing.

 Datagram is a connectionless packet switching routing while the Virtual Circuit Routing is in a
process of making connection based routing.
 A router failure in transmission makes all of the Virtual Circuits passing through the router lost,
while in Datagram it is only the packets buffered in that router will be lost. Other packets are
fine. Thus, the datagram is more robust to network failure.
 Each packet must contain Full source and destination address in Datagram. But in Virtual Circuit, Each
Packet shall contain only the Virtual Circuit ID as it is a fixed path.
 Datagram requires the routers to make decisions at every transaction to choose the right path,
while the Virtual Circuit doesn’t do that way. Thus Virtual circuits are faster.
 As the packets are transmitted in and received on order in Virtual Circuits there is no need of
resequencing of packets at receiver as in Datagram where the packets are transmitted not in order.
 Each packet takes best path – Quicker Delivery in Datagram, while in Virtual Circuit as the path
is fixed, the speed is depending on other factors.
 Virtual Circuit is Ideal for real time applications and streams (Eg: VoIP, Live Video), And
Datagram is suitable for Request and Response type applications.
 Quality of Service and Congestion Control is Difficult in Datagram while Virtual circuit allows
an easy way to do it because the pre-allocation of resources.
2. Discuss the working of distance vector routing algorithm.
 Each router maintains a table (a vector) that stores the best known distances to each destination
and the lines to use for each destination. The tables are updated exchanging information with
neighbors.
 The table of a router stores an entry for each of the routers in the subnet (the routers are the
indexes). The entries store the preferred departure line and an estimate of the time or distance
to the destination. You can use different metrics (jumps, delays, etc.).
 Each router has to measure the distances to its neighbors. For example, if the metric is the delay,
the router can measure it using echo packets.
 Each Tmsegs the routers exchange their tables with their neighbors. A router uses the tables of
its neighbors and its measurements of distances to its neighbors to calculate a new table.
3. Explain the working of leaky bucket algorithm with the help of suitable example.
Suppose we have a bucket in which we are pouring water in a
random order but we have to get water in a fixed rate, for this we
will make a hole at the bottom of the bucket. It will ensure that
water coming out is in a fixed rate, and also if bucket will full we
will stop pouring in it.
The input rate can vary, but the output rate remains constant.
Similarly, in networking, a technique called leaky bucket can
smooth out bursty traffic. Bursty chunks are stored in the bucket
and sent out at an average rate.
4. Compare the Distance Vector and Link State Routing
 Bellman-Ford algorithm is used for performing distance vector routing whereas Dijsktra is used
for performing the link state routing.
 In distance vector routing the routers receive the topological information from the neighbour
point of view. On the contrary, in link state routing the router receive complete information on
the network topology.
 Distance vector routing calculates the best route based on the distance (fewest number of hops).
As against, Link state routing calculates best route on the basis of least cost.
 Link state routing updates only the link state while Distance vector routing updates full routing
table.
 The frequency of update in both routing technique is different distance vector update
periodically whereas link state update frequency employs triggered updates.
 The utilization of CPU and memory in distance vector routing is lower than the link state
routing.
 The distance vector routing is simple to implement and manage. In contrast, the link state
routing is complex and requires trained network administrator.
 The convergence time in distance vector routing is slow, and it usually suffers from count to
infinity problem. Conversely, the convergence time in link state routing is fast, and it is more
reliable.
 Distance vector doesn’t have hierarchical structure while in link state routing the nodes can
have a hierarchical structure.
 5. Write short notes on the Congestion Control and Flow Control
Flow control is controlled by the receiving side. It ensures that the sender only sends what the receiver
can handle. Think of a situation where someone with a fast fiber connection might be sending to
someone on dialup or something similar. The sender would have the ability to send packets very
quickly, but that would be useless to the receiver on dialup, so they would need a way to throttle what
the sending side can send. Flow control deals with the mechanisms available to ensure that this
communication goes smoothly.
Congestion control is a method of ensuring that everyone across a network has a "fair" amount of
access to network resources, at any given time. In a mixed-network environment, everyone needs to be
able to assume the same general level of performance. A common scenario to help understand this is
an office LAN. You have a number of LAN segments in an office all doing their thing within the LAN,
but then they may all need to go out over a WAN link that is slower than the constituent LAN segments.
Picture having 100mb connections within the LAN that ultimately go out through a 5mb WAN link.
Some kind of congestion control would need to be in place there to ensure there are no issues across
the greater network.
6. What is CIDR and explain the requirement for CIDR
With the classful routing system, individual networks were either limited to 256 host identifiers or
overburdened with 65,536 identifiers. For many network enterprises, 256 identifiers were not
enough and 65,536 were too burdensome to be used efficiently.
CIDR reduced the problem of wasted address space by providing a new and more flexible way to
specify network addresses in routers. Using CIDR, each IP address has a network prefix that
identifies either one or several network gateways. The length of the network prefix in IPv4 CIDR
is also specified as part of the IP address and varies depending on the number of bits needed,
rather than any arbitrary class assignment structure.
 7. Write a brief description on the Classful network design
The 32 bit IP address is managed in Classful network design by dividing the bits of the address into
network part and Host part. Depending on the number of hosts, the network prefix bits are chosen.
The default network prefix bits are 8, 16 and 24 and they are named as Class A, B and C respectively.
Class A network can accommodate 128 hosts while B has 65536 and C has 16,777,216 hosts in the
network. And no other number of network prefix bits were not allowed in this design.
8. Compare and explain the IPv4 and IPv6 with the examples for the needful of IPv6
IPv4 stands for Internet Protocol version 4. IPv4 uses 32 bits for its Internet addresses. That
means it can support 2^32 IP addresses in total — around 4.29 billion. Each and every devices in
the Internet are assigned with an IP address. With the growth of the number of devices that are
connected to the Internet, this IPv4 addressing scheme is running out of addresses.
To overcome this issue, IPv6 – the 6th version of IP is introduced. IPv6 utilizes 128-bit Internet
addresses. Therefore, it can support 2^128 Internet addresses of them to be exact. That's a lot of
addresses, so many that it requires a hexadecimal system to display the addresses. In other
words, there are more than enough IPv6 addresses to keep the Internet operational for a very,
very long time.
9. Write short notes on IGP and EGP with examples on routing protocols in each
 10. A network uses DVR (Distance Vector Routing). The router D has the following table

A 5 A
B 4 B
C 7 B
D 0 ‐
E 2 E
F
7 B
G
3 G

D receives the following tables from it four (04) neighbors

From A From B From E From G

A 0 3 7 8
B
3 0 6 7
C
6 3 3 4
D
5 4 2 3
E
7 6 0 1
F
6 3 2 3
G
8 7 1 0

Compute the new routing table of D

  From the given data, the following graph is visualized and used for reconstruction of the table

A
3
5
3 4 3
G D B C

1 2 3

2
E F
3

Analyzing the graph, the following table for D is computed by assigning the shortest paths received
from the neighbors.

A 5 A
B 4 B
C 5 E
D 0 ‐
E 2 E
F 4 E
G 3 G