Assignment1
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COMP3331/9331 Computer Networks and Applications
Assignment for Term 2, 2021
Version 1.0
Due: 11:59am (noon) Friday, 6 August 2021 (Week 10)
1. Change Log
Version 1.0 released on 21st June 2021.
2. Goal and learning objectives
For this assignment, you will be asked to implement a reliable transport protocol over the UDP
protocol. We will refer to the reliable transport protocol that you will be programming in this
assignment as Padawan Transport Protocol (PTP). PTP will include most (but not all) of the
features that are described in Sections 3.5.4 and 3.5.6 of the text Computer Networking (7th ed.).
Examples of these features include timeout, ACK, sequence numbers, etc. Note that these features
are commonly found in many transport protocols. Therefore, this assignment will give you an
opportunity to implement some of these basic features of a transport protocol. In addition, you may
have wondered why the designer of the TCP/IP protocol stack includes such feature-less transport
protocol as UDP. You will find in this assignment that you can design your own transport protocol
and run it over UDP. This is the case for some existing multimedia delivery services on the Internet,
where they have implemented their own proprietary transport protocol over UDP.
Note that it is mandatory that you implement PTP over UDP. Do not use TCP sockets. You
will not receive any mark for this assignment if you use TCP sockets.
2.1 Learning Objectives
On completing this assignment, you will gain sufficient expertise in the following skills:
1. Detailed understanding of how reliable transport protocols such as TCP function.
2. Socket programming for UDP transport protocol.
3. Protocol and message design.
Non-CSE Student: The rationale for this option is that students enrolled in a program that does not
include a computer science component have had very limited exposure to programming and in
particular working on complex programming assignments. A Non-CSE student is a student who is
not enrolled in a CSE program (single or double degree). Examples would include students enrolled
exclusively in a single degree program such as Mechatronics or Aerospace or Actuarial Studies or
Law. Students enrolled in dual degree programs that include a CSE program as one of the degrees
do not qualify. Any student who meets this criterion and wishes to avail of this option MUST email
.edu.au to seek approval before 5pm, 2nd July (Friday, Week 5). We will
assume by default that all students are attempting the CSE version of the assignment unless they
have sought explicit permission. No exceptions.
Updates to the assignment, including any corrections and clarifications, will be posted on the
subject website. Please make sure that you check the subject website regularly for updates.
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3. Assignment Specification
As part of this assignment, you will have to implement Padawan Transport Protocol (PTP), a piece
of software that consists of a sender and receiver component that allows reliable unidirectional
data transfer. PTP includes some of the features of the TCP protocol that are described in sections
3.5.4 and 3.5.6 of the textbook (7th edition). You will use your PTP protocol to transfer simple text
(ASCII) files (examples provided on the assignment webpage) from the sender to the receiver. You
should implement PTP as two separate programs: Sender and Receiver. You only have to
implement unidirectional transfer of data from the Sender to the Receiver. As illustrated in Figure
1, data segments will flow from Sender to Receiver while ACK segments will flow from Receiver
to Sender. Let us reiterate this, PTP must be implemented on top of UDP. Do not use TCP
sockets. If you use TCP, you will not receive any marks for your assignment.
You will find it useful to review sections 3.5.4 and 3.5.6 of the text. It may also be useful to review
the basic concepts of reliable data transfer from section 3.4.
NOTE: Section 3.5 of the textbook which covers the bulk of the discussion on TCP is available to
download on the assignment page.
3.1 File Names
The main code for the sender and receiver should be contained in the following files: sender.c,
or Sender.java or sender.py, and receiver.c or Receiver.java or receiver.py.
You are free to create additional files such as header files or other class files and name them as you
wish.
3.2 List of features provided by the Sender and Receiver
You are required to implement the following features in the Sender and Receiver:
1. A three-way handshake (SYN, SYN+ACK, ACK) for the connection establishment. The ACK
sent by the sender to conclude the three-way handshake should not contain any payload (i.e., data).
See Section 3.5.6 of the text for further details.
2. The four-segment connection termination (FIN, ACK, FIN, ACK). The Sender will initiate the
connection close once the entire file has been successfully transmitted. It is possible for the
Receiver to combine the ACK and FIN in one message. See Section 3.5.6 of the text for further
details. The Sender should terminate after connection closure.
Figure 1: The basic setup of your assignment. A file is to be transferred from the Sender to the Receiver.
Sender will run on the sender side while Receiver will run on the receiver side. Note that data segments will
flow from the sender to receiver, while ACK segments will flow from the receiver to sender.
Data
Ack Sender Receiver
UDP Socket1
Let OS pick the port number
UDP Socket 2
receiver_port specified as argument
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3. Sender must maintain a single timer for timeout operation (Section 3.5.4 of the text). You must
use a constant timeout in your program. The value of the timeout will be supplied to Sender as an
input argument.
4. Sender should implement all the features mentioned in Section 3.5.4 of the text, with the
exception of doubling the timeout. The PTP protocol must include the simplified TCP sender
(Figure 3.33 of the text) and fast retransmit (pages 247-248). You will need to use a number of
concepts that we have discussed in class, e.g., sequence numbers, cumulative acknowledgements,
timers, buffers, etc. for implementing your protocol.
5. Receiver should implement the features mentioned in Section 3.5.4 of the text. However, you do
not need to follow Table 3.2 (of text) for ACK generation. All segments should be immediately
acknowledged, i.e., you do not have to implement delayed ACKs.
6. PTP is a byte-stream oriented protocol. You will need to include sequence number and
acknowledgement number fields in the PTP header for each segment. The meaning of sequence
number and acknowledgment number are the same as TCP.
7. One of the command line arguments, MSS (Maximum segment size) is the maximum number of
bytes of data that your PTP segment can contain. In other words, MSS counts data ONLY and does
NOT include header. Sender must be able to deal with different values of MSS. The value of MSS
will be supplied to Sender as an input argument. You may safely assume that the MSS will be
smaller than the maximum possible size of a UDP segment (64Kbytes).
8. Another input argument for Sender is Maximum Window Size (MWS). MWS is the maximum
number of un-acknowledged bytes that the Sender can have at any time. MWS counts ONLY data.
Header length should NOT be counted as part of MWS.
Remarks: Note that TCP does not explicitly define a maximum window size. In TCP, the maximum
number of un-acknowledged bytes is limited by the smaller of receive window and the congestion
control window. Since you will not be implementing flow or congestion control, you will be limiting
the number of un-acknowledged bytes by using the MWS parameter. In other words, you will need
to ensure that during the lifetime of the connection, the following condition is satisfied:
LastByteSent – LastByteAcked ≤ MWS
10. Even though you will use UDP since the sender and receiver will mostly be running on the same
physical machine, there will be no real possibility of PTP segments being dropped. In order to test
the reliability of your protocol, it is imperative to introduce artificially induced packet loss. For this
purpose, you must also implement a Packet Loss (PL) Module as part of the Sender program. The
details for this module are explained later in the specification.
4.3 Features excluded
There are a number of transport layer features adopted by TCP that are excluded from this
assignment:
1. You do not need to use a random initial sequence number.
2. You do not need to implement timeout estimation. The timer value is provided as a command
line argument.
3. You do not need to double timeout interval.
4. You do not need to implement any flow nor congestion control.
5. PTP does not have to deal with corrupted packets. Packets will rarely be corrupted when the
sender and receiver are executing on the same machine. In short, it is safe for you to assume
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that packets are only lost.
6. You do not need to handle abnormal behaviour, i.e., Sender or Receiver program crashing. In
other words, you do not need to implement functionality like RST in TCP.
4.4 Packet header and MSS
In designing the segment header, you only need to include the fields that you think are necessary for
PTP. You can draw inspiration from TCP but the exact format of the PTP packet header is for you
to decide. The header portion can include as many fields as you think are necessary. Two important
fields that will be needed are the sequence number and acknowledgement number. You will also
need a number of flags for connection establishment and teardown.
The data portion must not contain more than MSS bytes of data. You must use the same PTP
segment format for data transfer as well as for the acknowledgements flowing back from the
receiver to the sender. The only difference will be that the acknowledgement segments will not
contain any data. All information that is necessary for the proper functioning of your protocol must
be provided in the PTP headers. You may use the port number and IP address included within the
UDP datagram that encapsulates the PTP segments.
4.5 Sender
This section provides details on the Sender.
The Sender should accept the following eight (8) arguments (note that the last two arguments are
used exclusively by the PL module):
1. receiver_host_ip: the IP address of the host machine on which the Receiver is running.
2. receiver_port: the port number on which Receiver is expecting to receive packets from
the sender. This should match the command line argument of the same name for the Receiver.
3. FileToSend.txt: the name of the text file that has to be transferred from sender to
receiver using your reliable transport protocol. You may assume that the file included in the
argument will be available in the current working directory of the Sender with the correct
access permissions set (read).
4. MWS: the maximum window size used by your PTP protocol in bytes.
5. MSS: Maximum Segment Size which is the maximum amount of data (in bytes) carried in
each PTP segment. NOTE: In our tests we will ensure that MWS is exactly divisible by MSS.
6. timeout: the value of timeout in milliseconds.
The following two arguments are used exclusively by the PL module:
7. pdrop: the probability that a PTP data segment which is ready to be transmitted will be
dropped. This value must be between 0 and 1. For example if pdrop = 0.5, it means that
50% of the transmitted packets are dropped by the PL.
8. seed: The seed for your random number generator. The use of seed will be explained in
Section 4.5.2 of the specification.
The Sender should be initiated as follows:
If you use Java:
java Sender receiver_host_ip receiver_port FileToSend.txt MWS MSS timeout pdrop
seed
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If you use C:
./sender receiver_host_ip receiver_port FileToSend.txt MWS MSS timeout pdrop
seed
If you use Python:
python sender.py receiver_host_ip receiver_port FileToSend.txt MWS MSS timeout
pdrop seed
Note that, you should first execute the Receiver before initiating the Sender.
It is very likely that you will be executing the Sender and Receiver on the same machine. In this
case use 127.0.0.1 (localhost) for the receiver_host_ip.
4.5.1 The PL Module
The PL module should be implemented as part of your Sender program. The function of the PL is to
emulate packet loss on the Internet. Even though theoretically UDP datagrams will get lost, in our
test environment these events will occur very rarely. Further to test the reliability of your PTP
protocol we would like to be able to control the percentage of packets being lost. You can assume
that packets will not be delayed or corrupted in the network.
The following describes the sequence of steps that the PL should perform on receiving a PTP
segment:
1. If the PTP segment is for connection establishment or teardown, then pass the segment to
UDP, do not drop it.
Remark: In order to reduce the complexity of connection setup, the connection establishment
and teardown segments from the Sender can bypass the PL module and will not be dropped.
2. If the PTP segment is not for connection establishment or teardown, the PL module must do
one of the following:
(a) with probability pdrop drop the datagram.
(b) With probability (1-pdrop), forward the datagram.
To implement this simply generate a random number between 0 and 1. If the chosen number
is greater than pdrop transmit the packet, else the packet is dropped.
Remark: The file PingServer.java in Lab Exercise 2 contains an example of randomly
dropping packets.
Once the PL is ready to transmit a PTP segment, the Sender should encapsulate the PTP segment in
a UDP datagram (i.e., create a UDP datagram with the PTP segment as the payload). It should then
transmit this datagram to the Receiver through the UDP socket created earlier. (Use the
receiver_host_ip and receiver_port as the destination IP address and port number
respectively). Once the entire text file has been transmitted reliably (i.e., the sender window is
empty and the final ACK is received) the Sender can close the UDP socket and terminate.
Note that the ACK segments from the receiver must completely bypass the PL modules. In other
words, ACK segments are never lost.
4.5.2 Seed for random number generators
In order for us to check your results, we will be asking you to initialise your random number
generator with a specific seed in Section 8 of the spec so that we can repeat your experiments.
If you have not learnt about the principles behind random number generators, you need to know that
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random numbers are in fact generated by a deterministic formula by a computer program.
Therefore, strictly speaking, random number generators are called pseudo-random number
generators because the numbers are not truly random. The deterministic formula for random
number generation in Python, Java and C uses an input parameter called a seed. If the same seed is
used, then the same sequence of random numbers will be produced.
The following code fragment in Python, Java and C will generate random numbers between 0 and 1
using a supplied seed.
1. In Python, you initialise a random number generator (assuming the seed is 50) by using
random.seed(50);. After that you can generate a random floating point number between
(0,1) by using random.random();
2. In Java, you initalise a random number generator (assuming the seed is 50) by using Random
random = new Random(50);. After that, you can generate a random floating point
number between (0,1) by using float x = random.nextFloat();
3. In C, you initalise a random number generator (assuming the seed is 50) by using
srand(50);. After that, you can generate a random floating point number between (0,1) by
using float x = rand()/((float)(RAND_MAX)+1); Note that, RAND_MAX is the
maximum value returned by the rand() function.
You will find that if you specify different seeds, a different sequence of pseudo-random numbers
will be produced.
4.5.3 Additional requirements for Sender
Your Sender will receive acknowledgements from the Receiver through the same socket, which the
sender uses to transmit data. The Sender must first extract the PTP acknowledgement from the UDP
datagram that it receives and then process it as per the operation of your PTP protocol. The format
of the acknowledgement segments should be exactly the same as the data segments except that they
should not contain any data. Note that these acknowledgements should bypass the PL module.
The sender should maintain a log file titled Sender_log.txt where it records the information
about each segment that it sends and receives. You may assume that the sender program will have
permission to create files in its current working directory. Information about dropped segments
packets should also be included. Start each entry on a new line. The format should be as follows:
where
tab separated.
For example, the following shows the log file for a Sender that transmits 112 bytes of data. The
MSS used here is 56 bytes and the timeout interval is 100msec. Notice that the second data packet
is dropped and is hence retransmitted after a timeout interval of 100msec.
snd 34.335 S 121 0 0
rcv 34.40 SA 154 0 122
snd 34.54 A 122 0 155
snd 34.57 D 122 56 155
drop 34.67 D 178 56 155
rcv 36.56 A 155 0 178
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snd 134.67 D 178 56 155
rcv 137.65 A 155 0 234
snd 138.76 F 234 0 155
rcv 140.23 FA 155 0 235
snd 141.11 A 235 0 156
Once the entire file has been transmitted reliably the Sender should initiate the connection closure
process by sending a FIN segment (refer to Section 3.5.6 of the text). The Sender should also print
the following statistics at the end of the log file (i.e., Sender_log.txt):
• Amount of (original) Data Transferred (in bytes)
• Number of Data Segments Sent (excluding retransmissions)
• Number of (all) Packets Dropped (by the PL module)
• Number of Retransmitted Segments
• Number of Duplicate Acknowledgements received
NOTE: Generation of this log file is very important. It will help your tutors in understanding the
flow of your implementation and marking. So, if your code does not generate any log files, you will
only be graded out of 25% of the marks.
The Sender should not print any output to the terminal. If you are printing output to the terminal for
debugging purposes, make sure you disable it prior to submission.
4.6 Receiver
The Receiver should accept the following two arguments:
1. receiver_port: the port number on which the Receiver will open a UDP socket for
receiving datagrams from the Sender.
2. FileReceived.txt: the name of the text file into which the text sent by the sender
should be stored (this is the file that is being transferred from sender to receiver).
The Receiver should be initiated as follows:
If you use Java:
java Receiver receiver_port FileReceived.txt
If you use C:
./receiver receiver_port FileReceived.txt
If you use Python:
python receiver.py receiver_port FileReceived.txt
Note that, you should first start the Receiver before initiating the Sender.
The Receiver should generate an ACK immediately after receiving a data segment. This is the only
ACK generation rule you need. You do not need to follow Table 3.2 of the text. In other words, you
must not implement delayed ACKs. The format of the acknowledgement segment must be exactly
similar to the PTP data segment. It should however not contain any payload.
The receiver is expected to buffer out-of-order arrival segments.
The receiver should first open a UDP listening socket on receiver_port and then wait for
segments to arrive from the Sender. The first segment to be sent by the Sender is a SYN segment
and the receiver is expected to reply a SYNACK segment.
After the completion of the three-way handshake, the receiver should create a new text file called
FileReceived.txt. You may assume that the receiver program will have permission to create
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files in its current working directory. All incoming data should be stored in this file. The Receiver
should first extract the PTP segment from the arriving UDP datagrams and then extract the data
(i.e., payload) from the PTP segment. Note that, the Receiver should examine the header of the
UDP datagram that encapsulates the PTP segment to determine the UDP port and IP address that
the Sender is using. This information is needed to send the ACK segment to the Sender. The ACK
should be encapsulated in an UDP datagram and sent to the Sender.
The data should be written into FileReceived.txt. At the end of the transfer, the Receiver
should have a duplicate of the text file sent by the Sender. You can verify this by using the diff
command on a Linux machine (diff FileReceived.txt FileToSend.txt). When
testing your program, if you have the Sender and Receiver executing in the same working directory
then make sure that the file name provided as the argument to the Receiver is different from the file
name used by the sender.
The Receiver should also maintain a log file titled Receiver_log.txt where it records the
information about each segment that it sends and receives. The format should be exactly similar to
the sender log file as outlined in the Sender specification – tab separated fields.
The Receiver should terminate after the connection closure procedure initiated by the sender
concludes. The Receiver should also print the following statistics at the end of the log file (i.e.,
Receiver_log.txt):
• Amount of (original) Data Received (in bytes) – do not include retransmitted data
• Number of (original) Data Segments Received
• Number of duplicate segments received (if any)
NOTE: Generation of this log file is very important. It will help your tutors in understanding the
flow of your implementation and marking. So, if your code does not generate any log files, you will
only be graded out of 25% of the marks.
The Receiver should not print any output to the terminal. If you are printing output to the terminal
for debugging purposes, make sure you disable it prior to submission.
4.7 Overall structure
The overall structure of your protocol is depicted in Figure 2. The PL module is only at the Sender.
Figure 2: The overall structure of your assignment
Transmit ACK packet
FileToSend.txt
read file and create
PTP segment(s)
PTP segment Start/Stop/Check
timer
Timeout
UDP socket
UDP socket
create and transmit
UDP datagram
receive UDP datagram
FileReceived.txt
Write text into file
PTP segment
Sender Receiver
ACK packet PL module
PTP protocol
PTP protocol
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Receiver Design
The Receiver program logic is straightforward. Upon receive of a UDP segment through the socket,
the Receiver should extract the PTP segment which is encapsulated within the UDP segment. It
should then execute the PTP protocol logic (outlined in Section 4.6 of the spec). This includes the
connection setup, data transmission and finally connection teardown. During the data transmission
phase an ACK segment should be generated for each received PTP segment. Each PTP segment
sent by the Receiver must be encapsulated in a UDP datagram and sent to the Sender. The Receiver
may have to buffer the PTP segment (if out of order) or else write the data contained in the PTP
segment to the file.
To summarise, the key steps are:
1. Connection setup
2. Data Transmission (repeat until end of file)
a. Receive PTP segment
b. Send ACK segment
c. Buffer data or write data into file
3. Connection teardown
Sender Design
The Sender program logic is a little more complicated. The Sender must first execute connection
setup, followed by data transmission and finally correction teardown. During data transmission, the
Sender should transmit a number of PTP segments (based on the MWS and MSS), all of which
need to be buffered (in case of retransmissions) and wait for the corresponding ACKs. A timer
should be started for the oldest unacknowledged segment. Each data segment should also be passed
through the PL module which determines if the segment should be dropped or forwarded. Each PTP
segment to be transmitted must be encapsulated in a UDP datagram and sent to the Receiver. The
Sender should also process incoming ACK segments from the Receiver. In the case of a timeout,
the Sender should transmit the oldest unacknowledged segment. Given the complexity and the need
to deal with multiple events, there are two options you may consider for the design of the Sender:
(i) using multiple threads to manage the various events (ii) non-blocking or asynchronous I/O by
using polling, i.e., select().
To summarise, the key steps are:
1. Connection setup
2. Data Transmission (repeat until end of file)
a. Read file
b. Create PTP segment
c. Start Timer if required (retransmit oldest unacknowledged segment on expiry)
d. Send PTP segment to PL module
e. If PTP segment is not dropped, transmit to Receiver
f. Process ACK if received
3. Connection teardown
6. Additional Notes
• This is NOT group assignment. You are expected to work on this individually.
• Tips on getting started: The best way to tackle a complex implementation task is to do it in
stages. A good starting point is to implement the file transfer using the simpler stop-and-wait
protocol (version rdt3.0 from the textbook and lectures). First, make sure that your program
works without implementing the PL module. Next, implement the packet drop functionality of
the PL and test your protocol. Once you can verify that this works, extend your code to handle
transmission of a window of packets (i.e., MWS). Send a window of packets and wait for all
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acknowledgements to come back before sending another window worth of data. As before, test
the no loss case first. Then, extend your program to handle packet losses. Once you have the
complete PTP protocol implemented run comprehensive tests to ensure that your program
works correctly. It is imperative that you rigorously test your code to ensure that all possible
(and logical) interactions can be correctly executed. Test, test and test.
• You are free to design your own format and data structure for the messages. Just make sure your
program handles these messages appropriately.
• Backup and Versioning: We strongly recommend you to back-up your programs frequently.
CSE backups all user accounts nightly. If you are developing code on your personal machine, it
is strongly recommended that you undertake daily backups. We also recommend using a good
versioning system so that you can roll back and recover from any inadvertent changes. There
are many services available for this, which are easy to use. We will NOT entertain any requests
for special consideration due to issues related to computer failure, lost files, etc.
• Language and Platform: You are free to use C, JAVA or Python to implement this
assignment. Please choose a language that you are comfortable with. The programs will be
tested on CSE Linux machines. So please make sure that your entire application runs correctly
on these machines (i.e., your lab computers) or using VLAB. This is especially important if you
plan to develop and test the programs on your personal computers (which may possibly use a
different OS or version or IDE). Note that CSE machines support the following: gcc version
8.2, Java 11, Python 2.7 and 3.7. If you are using Python, please clearly mention in your
report which version of Python we should use to test your code. You may only use the basic
socket programming APIs providing in your programming language of choice. You may not use
any special ready-to-use libraries or APIs that implement certain functions of the spec for you.
• You are encouraged to use the course discussion forum to ask questions and to discuss different
approaches to solve the problem. However, you should not post your solution or any code
fragments on the forum.
• We will arrange for additional consultations in Weeks 7-10 to assist you with assignment
related questions. Information about the consults will be announced via the website.
7. Assignment Submission
Please ensure that you use the mandated file name. You may of course have additional header files
and/or helper files. If you are using C, then you MUST submit a makefile/script along with your
code (not necessary with Java or Python). This is because we need to know how to resolve the
dependencies among all the files that you have provided. After running your makefile we should
have the following executable files: sender and receiver. In addition, you should submit a
small report, report.pdf (no more than 5 pages) describing the program design, a brief
description of how your system works and your message design. Also discuss any design tradeoffs
considered and made. Describe possible improvements and extensions to your program and indicate
how you could realise them. If your program does not work under any particular circumstances,
please report this here. Also indicate any segments of code that you have borrowed from the Web or
other books. Further details about what should be included in the report are provided in Section 8.
You are required to submit your source code and report.pdf. You can submit your assignment using
the give command through VLAB. Make sure you are in the same directory as your code and
report, and then do the following:
1. Type tar -cvf assign.tar filenames
e.g., tar -cvf assign.tar *.java report.pdf
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2. When you are ready to submit, at the bash prompt type 3331
3. Next, type: give cs3331 Assign assign.tar (You should receive a message stating the
result of your submission). The same command should be used for 3331 and 9331.
Alternately, you can also submit the tar file via the WebCMS3 interface on the assignment page.
Important notes
• The system will only accept assign.tar submission name. All other names will be rejected.
• Ensure that your program/s are tested in the VLAB environment before submission. In
the past, there were cases where tutors were unable to compile and run students’
programs while marking. To avoid any disruption, please ensure that you test your
program in the VLAB environment before submitting the assignment. Note that, we will
be unable to award any significant marks if the submitted code does not run during
marking.
• You may submit as many times as you wish before the deadline. A later submission will
override the earlier submission, so make sure you submit the correct file. Do not leave until the
last moment to submit, as there may be technical, or network errors and you will not have time
to rectify it.
Late Submission Penalty: Late penalty will be applied as follows:
• 1 day after deadline: 10% reduction
• 2 days after deadline: 20% reduction
• 3 days after deadline: 30% reduction
• 4 days after deadline: 40% reduction
• 5 or more days late: NOT accepted
NOTE: The above penalty is applied to your final total. For example, if you submit your assignment
1 day late and your score on the assignment is 10, then your final mark will be 10 – 1 (10% penalty)
= 9.
8. Report
In addition, you should submit a small report, report.pdf (no more than 5 pages), plus appendix
section (appendix need not be counted in the 5-page limit). Your report must contain the following:
1. A brief discussion of how you have implemented the PTP protocol. Provide a list of features
that you have successfully implemented. In case you have not been able to get certain features
of PTP working, you should also mention that in your report.
2. A detailed diagram of your PTP header and a quick explanation of all fields (similar to the
diagrams that we have used in the lectures to understand TCP/UDP headers).
3. Answer the following questions:
(a) Use the following parameter setting: pdrop = 0.1, MWS = 500 bytes, MSS = 50 bytes,
seed = 300. Explain how you determine a suitable value for timeout. Note that you may
need to experiment with different timeout values to answer this question. Justify your
answer.
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With the timeout value that you have selected, run an experiment with your PTP programs
transferring the file test1.txt (available on the assignment webpage). Show the sequence of
PTP packets that are observed at the receiver. It is sufficient to just indicate the sequence
numbers of the PTP packets that have arrived. You do not have to indicate the payload
contained in the PTP packets (i.e., the text). Run an additional experiment with pdrop =
0.3, transferring the same file (test1.txt). In your report, discuss the resulting packet
sequences of both experiments indicating where dropping occurred. Also, in the appendix
section show the packet sequences of all the experiments.
(b) Let Tcurrent represent the timeout value that you have chosen in part (a). Set pdrop =
0.1, MWS = 500 bytes, MSS = 50 bytes, seed = 300 and run three experiments with the
following different timeout values:
i. Tcurrent
ii. 4 × Tcurrent
iii. Tcurrent/4
and transfer the file test2.txt (available on the assignment webpage) using PTP. Show a
table that indicates how many PTP packets were transmitted (this should include
retransmissions) in total and how long the overall transfer took. Discuss the results.
9. Plagiarism
You are to write all of the code for this assignment yourself. All source codes are subject to strict
checks for plagiarism, via highly sophisticated plagiarism detection software. These checks may
include comparison with available code from Internet sites and assignments from previous
semesters. In addition, each submission will be checked against all other submissions of the current
semester. Do not post this assignment on forums where you can pay programmers to write code for
you. We will be monitoring such forums. Please note that we take this matter quite seriously. The
LIC will decide on appropriate penalty for detected cases of plagiarism. The most likely penalty
would be to reduce the assignment mark to ZERO. We are aware that a lot of learning takes place in
student conversations, and don’t wish to discourage those. However, it is important, for both those
helping others and those being helped, not to provide/accept any programming language code in
writing, as this is apt to be used exactly as is, and lead to plagiarism penalties for both the supplier
and the copier of the codes. Write something on a piece of paper, by all means, but tear it up/take it
away when the discussion is over. It is OK to borrow bits and pieces of code from sample socket
code out on the Web and in books. You MUST however acknowledge the source of any borrowed
code. This means providing a reference to a book or a URL when the code appears (as comments).
Also indicate in your report the portions of your code that were borrowed. Explain any
modifications you have made (if any) to the borrowed code.
10. Marking Policy
You should test your program rigorously before submitting your code. Your code will be marked
using the following criteria:
1. We will first run PTP with the drop probability set to zero and the window size set to 1 MSS.
This should result in a simple stop-and-wait protocol. We will transfer a sample text file (similar
to those on the assignment webpage) using PTP. We will then test if the stop-and-wait version
can tolerate packet loss, by varying the drop probability. In all tests we will also check your log
files to verify the functioning of the PL module and the reliability of PTP. (5 marks)
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2. Successful operation of the PTP protocol. This will involve a number of tests as indicated
below: (12 marks)
(a) Initially we will set the drop probability (pdrop) for the PL to zero, and transfer a file
using PTP.
(b) We will then test how reliable your protocol is by gradually increasing the drop
probability (pdrop). Your protocol should be able to deal with lost packets
successfully.
(c) In the above tests we will also check the log files created by your Sender, Receiver to
verify the functioning of your programs.
(d) We will thoroughly test the operation for a wide range of parameters: MWS, pdrop,
timeout, etc.
3. Your report, which includes a description of how you implemented the programs and the
answers to the prescribed questions (as described in Section 8 of the specification): 3 marks.
Note that, we will verify that the description in your report confirms with the actual
implementations in the programs. We will also verify the experiments that you have run for
answering the questions. If we find that your report does not conform to the programs that you have
submitted, you will NOT receive any marks for your report.
NOTE: If your Sender and Receiver do not generate the log files as indicated earlier in the
specification, you will only be graded out of 25% of the total marks (i.e., a 75% penalty will be
assessed).