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The initial state of the sender is `Wait for D(0,...)`. In this state, the sender waits for a `Data.request`. The first data frame that it sends uses sequence number `0`. After having sent this frame, the sender waits for an `OK0` acknowledgment. A frame is retransmitted upon expiration of the retransmission timer or if an acknowledgment with an incorrect sequence number has been received.
The receiver first waits for `D(0,...)`. If the frame contains a correct `CRC`, it passes the SDU to its user and sends `OK0`. If the frame contains an invalid CRC, it is immediately discarded. Then, the receiver waits for `D(1,...)`. In this state, it may receive a duplicate `D(0,...)` or a data frame with an invalid CRC. In both cases, it returns an `OK0` frame to allow the sender to recover from the possible loss of the previous `OK0` frame.
Dealing with corrupted frames
The receiver FSM of the Alternating bit protocol discards all frames that contain an invalid CRC. This is the safest approach since the received frame can be completely different from the frame sent by the remote host. A receiver should not attempt at extracting information from a corrupted frame because it cannot know which portion of the frame has been affected by the error.
The figure below illustrates the operation of the alternating bit protocol.
The Alternating Bit Protocol can recover from the losses of data or control frames. This is illustrated in the two figures below. The first figure shows the loss of one data frame.
The second figure illustrates how the hosts handle the loss of one control frame.
The Alternating Bit Protocol can recover from transmission errors and frame losses. However, it has one important drawback. Consider two hosts that are directly connected by a 50 Kbits/sec satellite link that has a 250 milliseconds propagation delay. If these hosts send 1000 bits frames, then the maximum throughput that can be achieved by the alternating bit protocol is one frame every :math:`20+250+250=520` milliseconds if we ignore the transmission time of the acknowledgment. This is less than 2 Kbits/sec !
Go-back-n and selective repeat
To overcome the performance limitations of the alternating bit protocol, reliable protocols rely on `pipelining`. This technique allows a sender to transmit several consecutive frames without being forced to wait for an acknowledgment after each frame. Each data frame contains a sequence number encoded as an `n` bits field.
Pipelining improves the performance of reliable protocols
`Pipelining` allows the sender to transmit frames at a higher rate. However this higher transmission rate may overload the receiver. In this case, the frames sent by the sender will not be correctly received by their final destination. The reliable protocols that rely on pipelining allow the sender to transmit `W` unacknowledged frames before being forced to wait for an acknowledgment from the receiving entity.
This is implemented by using a `sliding window`. The sliding window is the set of consecutive sequence numbers that the sender can use when transmitting frames without being forced to wait for an acknowledgment. The figure below shows a sliding window containing five frames (`6,7,8,9` and `10`). Two of these sequence numbers (`6` and `7`) have been used to send frames and only three sequence numbers (`8`, `9` and `10`) remain in the sliding window. The sliding window is said to be closed once all sequence numbers contained in the sliding window have been used.
The sliding window
The figure below illustrates the operation of the sliding window. It uses a sliding window of three frames. The sender can thus transmit three frames before being forced to wait for an acknowledgment. The sliding window moves to the higher sequence numbers upon the reception of each acknowledgment. When the first acknowledgment (`OK0`) is received, it enables the sender to move its sliding window to the right and sequence number `3` becomes available. This sequence number is used later to transmit the frame containing `d`.
Sliding window example
In practice, as the frame header includes an `n` bits field to encode the sequence number, only the sequence numbers between :math:`0` and :math:`2^{n}-1` can be used. This implies that, during a long transfer, the same sequence number will be used for different frames and the sliding window will wrap. This is illustrated in the figure below assuming that `2` bits are used to encode the sequence number in the frame header. Note that upon reception of `OK1`, the sender slides its window and can use sequence number `0` again.
Utilisation of the sliding window with modulo arithmetic
Unfortunately, frame losses do not disappear because a reliable protocol uses a sliding window. To recover from losses, a sliding window protocol must define :
a heuristic to detect frame losses
a `retransmission strategy` to retransmit the lost frames
The simplest sliding window protocol uses the `go-back-n` recovery. Intuitively, `go-back-n` operates as follows. A `go-back-n` receiver is as simple as possible. It only accepts the frames that arrive in-sequence. A `go-back-n` receiver discards any out-of-sequence frame that it receives. When `go-back-n` receives a data frame, it always returns an acknowledgment containing the sequence number of the last in-sequence frame that it has received. This acknowledgment is said to be `cumulative`. When a `go-back-n` receiver sends an acknowledgment for sequence number `x`, it implicitly acknowledges the reception of all frames whose sequence number is earlier than `x`. A key advantage of these cumulative acknowledgments is that it is easy to recover from the loss of an acknowledgment. Consider for example a `go-back-n` receiver that received frames `1`, `2` and `3`. It sent `OK1`, `OK2` and `OK3`. Unfortunately, `OK1` and `OK2` were lost. Thanks to the cumulative acknowledgments, when the sender receives `OK3`, it knows that all three frames have been correctly received.
The figure below shows the FSM of a simple `go-back-n` receiver. This receiver uses two variables : `lastack` and `next`. `next` is the next expected sequence number and `lastack` the sequence number of the last data frame that has been acknowledged. The receiver only accepts the frame that are received in sequence. `maxseq` is the number of different sequence numbers (:math:`2^n`).
A `go-back-n` sender is also very simple. It uses a sending buffer that can store an entire sliding window of frames [#fsizesliding]_. The frames are sent with increasing sequence numbers (modulo `maxseq`). The sender must wait for an acknowledgment once its sending buffer is full. When a `go-back-n` sender receives an acknowledgment, it removes from the sending buffer all the acknowledged frames and uses a retransmission timer to detect frame losses. A simple `go-back-n` sender maintains one retransmission timer per connection. This timer is started when the first frame is sent. When the `go-back-n sender` receives an acknowledgment, it restarts the retransmission timer only if there are still unacknowledged frames in its sending buffer. When the retransmission timer expires, the `go-back-n` sender assumes that all the unacknowledged frames currently stored in its sending buffer have been lost. It thus retransmits all the unacknowledged frames in the buffer and restarts its retransmission timer.
The operation of `go-back-n` is illustrated in the figure below. In this figure, note that upon reception of the out-of-sequence frame `D(2,c)`, the receiver returns a cumulative acknowledgment `C(OK,0)` that acknowledges all the frames that have been received in sequence. The lost frame is retransmitted upon the expiration of the retransmission timer.
Go-back-n : example
The main advantage of `go-back-n` is that it can be easily implemented, and it can also provide good performance when only a few frames are lost. However, when there are many losses, the performance of `go-back-n` quickly drops for two reasons :
the `go-back-n` receiver does not accept out-of-sequence frames
the `go-back-n` sender retransmits all unacknowledged frames once it has detected a loss
`Selective repeat` is a better strategy to recover from losses. Intuitively, `selective repeat` allows the receiver to accept out-of-sequence frames. Furthermore, when a `selective repeat` sender detects losses, it only retransmits the frames that have been lost and not the frames that have already been correctly received.
A `selective repeat` receiver maintains a sliding window of `W` frames and stores in a buffer the out-of-sequence frames that it receives. The figure below shows a five-frame receive window on a receiver that has already received frames `7` and `9`.

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read-only
Source string location
../../principles/reliability.rst:831
String age
5 years ago
Source string age
5 years ago
Translation file
locale/pot/principles/reliability.pot, string 170