DATA LINK LAYER

DATA COMMUNICATIONS
ENGR. JOVETTE A. PECAYO
INSTRUCTOR 6

Data-link Layer Introduction

Data Link Layer is second layer of OSI Layered
Model. This layer is one of the most complicated
layers and has complex functionalities and
liabilities. Data link layers hides the details of
underlying hardware and represents itself to
upper layer as the medium to communicate.

Data-link Layer Introduction

Data link layer works between two hosts which are
directly connected in some sense. This direct
connection could be point to point or broadcast.
Systems on broadcast network are said to be on
same link. The work of data link layer tends to get
more complex when it is dealing with multiple
hosts on single collision domain.

Data-link Layer Introduction

Data link layer is responsible for converting data
stream to signals bit by bit and to send that over
the underlying hardware. At the receiving end,
Data link layer picks up data from hardware which
are in the form of electrical signals, assembles
them in a recognizable frame format, and hands
over to upper layer.

Data-link Layer Introduction

Data link layer has two sub-layers:
Logical Link Control: Deals with protocols,
flow-control and error control
Media Access Control: Deals with actual
control of media

Data-link Layer Introduction

Functionality of Data-link Layer
Data link layer does many tasks on behalf of upper layer.
These are:
Framing:
Data-link layer takes packets from Network Layer and
encapsulates them into Frames. Then, sends each Frame
bit-by-bit on the hardware. At receivers end Data link
layer picks up signals from hardware and assembles them
into frames.

Data-link Layer Introduction

Functionality of Data-link Layer
Addressing:
Data-link
layer
provides
layer-2
hardware
addressing mechanism. Hardware address is
assumed to be unique on the link. It is encoded into
hardware at the time of manufacturing.
Synchronization:
When data frames are sent on the link, both
machines must be synchronized in order to transfer
to take place.

Data-link Layer Introduction

Error Control:
Sometimes signals may have encountered problem in
transition and bits are flipped. These error are detected and
attempted to recover actual data bits. It also provides error
reporting mechanism to the sender.
Flow Control:
Stations on same link may have different speed or capacity.
Data-link layer ensures flow control that enables both
machine to exchange data on same speed.

Data-link Layer Introduction

Multi-Access:
Hosts on shared link when tries to transfer data, has great
probability of collision. Data-link layer provides mechanism
like CSMA/CD to equip capability of accessing a shared
media among multiple Systems

Error Detection and Correction

Introduction
There are many reasons such as noise, cross-talk etc.,
which may help data to get corrupted during transmission.
The upper layers works on some generalized view of
network architecture and are not aware of actual
hardware data processing. So, upper layers expect errorfree transmission between systems. Most of the
applications would not function expectedly if they
receives erroneous data. Applications such as voice and
video may not be that affected and with some errors they

Error Detection and Correction

Data-link layer uses some error control mechanism
to ensure that frames (data bit streams) are
transmitted with certain level of accuracy. But to
understand how errors is controlled, it is essential
to know what types of errors may occur.

Error Detection and Correction

There may be three types of errors:
Single bit error:

In a frame, there is only one bit, anywhere though, which is corrupt.

Error Detection and Correction

Multiple bits error:

Frame is received with more than one bits in corrupted state.

Error Detection and Correction

Burst error:

Frame contains more than1 consecutive bits corrupted.

Error Detection and Correction

Error control mechanism may involve two
possible ways:
Error detection
Error correction

Error Detection and Correction

Error Detection
Errors in the received frames are detected by
means of Parity Check and CRC (Cyclic
Redundancy Check). In both scenario, few extra
bits are sent along with actual data to confirm
that bits received at other end are same as they
were sent. If the checks at receivers end fails,
the bits are corrupted.

Error Detection and Correction

Error Detection
Parity Check
One extra bit is sent along with the original bits to make
number of 1s either even, in case of even parity or odd,
in case of odd parity.
The sender while creating a frame counts the number of
1s in it, for example, if even parity is used and number
of 1s is even then one bit with value 0 is added. This way
number of 1s remain even. Or if the number of 1s is odd,
to make it even a bit with value 1 is added.

Error Detection and Correction

Even Parity

The receiver simply counts the number of 1s in a frame. If the count of 1s

is even and even parity is used, the frame is considered to be notcorrupted and is accepted. If the count of 1s is odd and odd parity is used,
the frame is still not corrupted.
If a single bit flips in transit, the receiver can detect it by counting the
number of 1s. But when more than one bits are in error it is very hard for
the receiver to detect the error

Error Detection and Correction

Error Detection
Cyclic Redundancy Check
CRC is a different approach to detect if the frame
received contains valid data. This technique involves
binary division of the data bits being sent. The divisor is
generated using polynomials. The sender performs a
division operation on the bits being sent and calculates
the remainder. Before sending the actual bits, the sender
adds the remainder at the end of the actual bits. Actual
data bits plus the remainder is called a codeword. The

Error Detection and Correction

Error Detection
Cyclic Redundancy Check

Error Detection and Correction

Error Detection
Cyclic Redundancy Check
At the other end, the receiver performs
division operation on codewords using the
same CRC divisor. If the remainder contains
all zeros the data bits are accepted,
otherwise there has been some data
corruption occurred in transit.

Error Detection and Correction

Error Correction
In digital world, error correction can be done in two ways:
Backward Error Correction: When the receiver detects
an error in the data received, it requests back the sender
to retransmit the data unit.
Forward Error Correction: When the receiver detects
some error in the data received, it uses an errorcorrecting code, which helps it to auto-recover and
correct some kinds of errors.

Error Detection and Correction

Error Correction
The first one, Backward Error Correction, is simple
and can only be efficiently used where
retransmitting is not expensive, for example fiber
optics. But in case of wireless transmission
retransmitting may cost too much. In the latter
case, Forward Error Correction is used.

Error Detection and Correction

Error Correction
To correct the error in data frame, the receiver
must know which bit (location of the bit in the
frame) is corrupted. To locate the bit in error,
redundant bits are used as parity bits for error
detection. If for example, we take ASCII words (7
bits data), then there could be 8 kind of
information we need. Up to seven information to
tell us which bit is in error and one more to tell

Error Detection and Correction

Error Correction
For m data bits, r redundant bits are used. r bits
can provide 2r combinations of information. In m+r
bit codeword, there is possibility that the r bits
themselves may get corrupted. So the number of r
bits used must inform about m+r bit locations plus
no-error information, i.e. m+r+1.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Introductioin
Data-link layer is responsible for implementation
of point-to-point flow and error control
mechanism.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Flow Control
When data frames (Layer-2 data) is sent from one host to
another over a single medium, it is required that the
sender and receiver should work on same speed. That is,
sender sends at a speed on which the receiver can process
and
accept
the
data.
What
if
the
speed
(hardware/software) of the sender or receiver differs? If
sender is sending too fast the receiver may be overloaded
(swamped) and data may loss.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Flow Control
Two types of mechanism can be deployed in the scenario to control
the flow:
Stop and Wait
This flow control mechanism forces the sender after transmitting a
data frame to stop and wait until the acknowledgement of the dataframe sent is received.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Flow Control
Stop and Wait

Data-link Control and Protocols

Flow Control
Sliding Window
In this flow control mechanism both sender and receiver
agrees on the number of data-frames after which the
acknowledgement should be sent. As we have seen, stop and
wait flow control mechanism wastes resources, this protocol
tries to make use of underlying resources as much as
possible.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Error Control
When data-frame is transmitted there are probabilities
that data-frame may be lost in the transit or it is
received corrupted. In both scenarios, the receiver does
not receive the correct data-frame and sender does not
know anything about any loss. In these types of cases,
both sender and receiver are equipped with some
protocols which helps them to detect transit errors like
data-frame lost. So, either the sender retransmits the
data-frame or the receiver may request to repeat the
previous data-frame.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Requirements for error control mechanism:
Error detection: The sender and receiver, either both or any,
must ascertain that theres been some error on transit.
Positive ACK: When the receiver receives a correct frame, it
should acknowledge it.
Negative ACK: When the receiver receives a damaged frame or a
duplicate frame, it sends a NACK back to the sender and the
sender must retransmit the correct frame.
Retransmission: The sender maintains a clock and sets a timeout
period. If an acknowledgement of a data-frame previously
transmitted does not arrive in the timeout period, the sender

Data-link Control and Protocols

There are three types of techniques
available which Data-link layer may
deploy to control the errors by
Automatic Repeat Requests (ARQ):
Stop-and-wait ARQ

Data-link Control and Protocols

The following transition may occur in Stop-and-Wait ARQ:
The sender maintains a timeout counter.
When a frame is sent the sender starts the timeout counter.
If acknowledgement of frame comes in time, the sender transmits
the next frame in queue.
If acknowledgement does not come in time, the sender assumes
that either the frame or its acknowledgement is lost in transit.
Sender retransmits the frame and starts the timeout counter.
If a negative acknowledgement is received, the sender retransmits
the frame.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Go-Back-N ARQ
Stop and wait ARQ mechanism
does not utilize the resources
at their best. For the
acknowledgement is received,
the sender sits idle and does nothing.
In Go-Back-N ARQ method, both
sender and receiver maintains a
window.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Go-Back-N ARQ
The sending-window size enables the sender to
send multiple frames without receiving the
acknowledgement of the previous ones. The
receiving-window enables the receiver to receive
multiple frames and acknowledge them. The
receiver keeps track of incoming frames
sequence number.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Go-Back-N ARQ
When the sender sends all the frames in window, it checks
up to what sequence number it has received positive ACK.
If all frames are positively acknowledged, the sender sends
next set of frames. If sender finds that it has received
NACK or has not receive any ACK for a particular frame, it
retransmits all the frames after which it does not receive
any positive ACK.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Selective Repeat ARQ
In Go-back-N ARQ, it is
assumed that the receiver
does not have any buffer
space for its window size
and has to process each
frame as it comes.
This enforces the sender to
retransmit all the frames
which are not acknowledged.

Data-link Control and Protocols

Selective Repeat ARQ
In Selective-Repeat ARQ, the receiver while keeping
track of sequence numbers, buffers the frames in
memory and sends NACK for only frame which is
missing or damaged.
The sender in this case, sends only packet for which
NACK is received.