EE534 Communication and Computer Network Simulation Lab 1: Ethernet - A Direct Link Network with Media Access Control

Name: Duong Le Due: 1/30/2012

I. Objective: This lab is designed to demonstrate the operation of the Ethernet network. The simulation in this lab will help you examine the performance of the Ethernet network under different scenarios. II. Over view: The Ethernet is a working example of the more general Carrier Sense, Multiple Access with Collision Detect (CSMA/CD) local area network technology. The Ethernet is a multiple-access network, meaning that a set of nodes sends and receives frames over a shared link. The carrier sense in CSMA/CD means that all the nodes can distinguish between an idle and a busy link. The collision detect means that a node listens as it transmits and can therefore detect when a frame it is transmitting has interfered (collided) with a frame transmitted by another node. The Ethernet is said to be a 1-persistent protocol because an adaptor with a frame to send transmits with probability 1 whenever a busy line goes idle. In this lab you will set up an Ethernet with thirty nodes connected via a coaxial link in a bus topology. The coaxial link is operating at a data rate of 10 Mbps. You will study how the throughput of the network is affected by the network load as well as the size of the packets. III. Implementation: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Create a New Project Create the Network Configure the Network Nodes Configure the Simulation Choose the Statistics Run the Simulation View the Results

V. Results:

IV. Exercises: 1.

Figure 1: The relationship between the received (throughput) and sent (load) packets.

Initially, the received (throughput) and sent (load) packets are positive related until the received reached maximum value (when the number sent packets is at about 600 packets/sec). When number of the sent packets is between 600-1100 packets/sec, number of the received packets slowly decreases. When number of the sent packets is over 1100, number of the received packets will decrease when the sent packets keep increasing. Therefore, in order to maximize the throughput in the network, the load must be chosen carefully. When the traffic on the network increases, there are more collisions occur causing retransmission of frames and consequently increasing their overall delay.

When the number of packets in the network increase, the length of the queues at each router also increase. With longer queues, in turn, the packets are delayed longer in the network so, the traffic received is dropped. 2.

Figure 2:Traffic Received

In Figure 2, we found that different exponential will affect the efficiency of the networks. An appropriate value of exponential is required.

Figure 3:Collision Count

The Figure 3 shows that the smaller number of exponential with the larger number of collision count.

3.

Figure 4: Collision of Coax_Q3 (15 nodes) and Coax_Q2c (30 nodes)

As we see from figure 4, Coax_Q3 has fewer collision than Coax_Q2c, it is because Coax_Q3 (15 nodes) has fewer node than COax_Q2c (30 nodes). So the number of nodes in the network is positive related with the number of collisions. 4.

Figure 5: Traffic Received (bits/sec) of Coax_Q2c and Coax_Q4

At first, the speed of Coax_Q4 is smaller than Coax_Q2c. However, as time goes by, the speed of Coax_Q4 is become greater than Coax_Q2c. The Coax_Q4 has smaller size of packet than Coax_Q2c, so Coax_Q4 send more packets than Coax_Q2c. The network with more sending packets will be more efficient. It is because the smaller size packet will make the collision count drop.