Network Protocols Sarah Diesburg Operating Systems CS 3430
Protocol An agreement between two parties as to how information is to be transmitted A network protocol abstracts packets into messages
Physical Reality vs. Abstraction Physical reality: packets Abstraction: messages Limited size Arbitrary size Unordered Ordered Unreliable Reliable Machine-to-machine Process-to-process Only on local area network Routed anywhere Asynchronous Synchronous Insecure Secure
Arbitrary-Size Messages Can be built on top of limited-size ones By splitting a message into fix-sized packets Checksum can be computed on each fragment or the whole message
Internet Protocol (IP) Provides unreliable, unordered, machine-tomachine transmission of arbitrary-size messages
Process-to-Process Communications Built on top of machine-to-machine communications through the use of port addresses Each message contains the destination port to talk to the correct process
Unreliable Data Protocol (UDP) Provides unreliable, unordered, user-to-user communication Built on the top of IP
Ordered Messages Built on top of unordered ones Use sequence numbers to indicate the order of arrival Specific to a connection If packet 3 arrives before packet 2, wait for packet 2. Always deliver packets in order, to user applications
Reliable Message Delivery Built on top of unreliable delivery Problem: Network infrastructure can garble messages Packets can be dropped if network buffers are full
Solution Checksum each message At a receiver, discard messages with mismatching checksums A receiver acknowledges if a packet is received properly A sender resends the same message after not hearing the acknowledgment for some time (a timeout period)
A Minor Problem A sender may send twice, if the first acknowledge is lost The receiver needs to discard duplicate packets
Implications A sender needs to buffer messages that are not yet acknowledged The receiver must track messages that could be duplicates
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Provides a reliable byte stream between two processes on different machines over the Internet sequence number: 1 checksum: fa73cd10
Transmission Control Protocol Fragments the byte stream into packets and hands them to IP
TCP Message Categories Sender Sent and acknowledged Sent and not acknowledged Not yet sent Receiver Forwarded to application Received and buffered Not yet received
More on the Sequence Number Need a way to recycle sequence numbers Each TCP packet has a time-to-live field If the packet is not delivered in X seconds The packet is dropped Sequence numbers can be reused An epoch number used to identify which set of sequence numbers is being used Incremented at each boot Stored on disk
Congestion Implications of timeout period at a sender Too long unnecessary waiting Too short a message is transmitted when an acknowledgement is in transit Network congestion delayed acknowledgement timeout data retransmission more congestion
TCP Solution Slow start: TCP starts by sending a small amount of data If no timeout, more data is sent If timeout, TCP reduces the amount of data being sent
The Byzantine Generals Problem Two generals are on the tops of two mountains They communicate only through messengers They need to coordinate the attack If they attack at the same time, they win If they attack at different times, they will die
The Byzantine Generals Problem Question: can they guarantee a synchronized attack?
The Byzantine Generals Problem Illustrated General X 11am OK? So, 11am it is. General Y 11am sounds good Yeah, what if you don t get this ack?
The Byzantine Generals Problem Over an unreliable network, we cannot guarantee that two computers will synchronize
Distributed Transaction Multiple machines agree to do something atomically, but not necessarily at exactly the same time Mechanism: two-phase commit
Two-Phase Commit Account X Phase 1: ask if each can commit 1. Begin transaction Ask Y for $1 Phase 2: commit 3. Write X = X + $1 4. Commit Ask Y to commit Account Y Enough cash 2. Write Y = Y - $1 Ready to commit 5. Commit
Scenarios If X crashes between 1 and 2 Y will wake up and do nothing X will timeout and abort the transaction If X crashes before step 4 X will wake up and abort the transaction If X crashes between 4 and 5 Y will timeout and ask X for the transaction
Scenarios If Y crashes between 2 and 5 Y will wake up and check the log When X sends Y the commit message, Y will commit Y can also timeout and ask X the current status