Question

2. A university computer science department has 3 Ethernet segments, connected by two transparent bridges into a linear network. One day, the network administrator quits and is hastily replaced by someone from the computer center, which is a token ring shop. The new administrator, noticing that the ends of the network are not connected, quickly orders a new transparent bridge and connects both loose ends to it, making a closed ring. What happens next. Explain your answer.

3. Let's assume the following situation: In principle, we may have two acknowledgment strategies when a file is transferred between two computers. One is to segment the file into packets, that are individually acknowledged by the receiver, but the file transfer as a whole is not acknowledged. In the other one, packets are not acknowledged individually, but the entire file is acknowledged when it arrives. Discuss these two approaches in terms of pros and cons.

Answer 1

2) Bridges operate in the data link layer and split the network into a collection of LANs. The data that bridge does forward and the data it doesn't can be programmed. The received addresses in the hash table can also be looked by someone. So, the transparent bridge would build it's own hash table in the connected state and another bridge would enter the standby mode to provide backup.

3) There are a couple of possibilities. If the network has packet loss tendency, separate acknowledgement for every packet is better as the lost packets can be sent again.

If the network is reliable the acknowledgement should be sent after the entire transmission. This approach can save bandwidth, but even for a single packet loss the entire file need to be resent.

Hope this helps