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The third phase of a connection is its release. As a connection involves three parties (two users and one service provider), any of them can request the termination of the connection. Usually, connections are terminated upon request of one user once the data transfer is finished. However, sometimes the service provider may be forced to terminate a connection. This can be due to lack of resources inside the service provider or because one of the users is not reachable anymore through the network. In this case, the service provider will issue `Disconnect.indication` primitives to both users. These primitives will contain, as parameter, some information about the reason for the termination of the connection. Unfortunately, as illustrated in the figure below, when a service provider is forced to terminate a connection it cannot guarantee that all SDUs sent by each user have been delivered to the other user. This connection release is said to be abrupt as it can cause losses of data.
An abrupt connection release can also be triggered by one of the users. If a user needs, for any reason, to terminate a connection quickly, it can issue a `Disconnect.request` primitive and to request an abrupt release. The service provider will process the request, stop the two data streams and deliver the `Disconnect.indication` primitive to the remote user as soon as possible. As illustrated in the figure below, this abrupt connection release may cause losses of SDUs.
To ensure a reliable delivery of the SDUs sent by each user over a connection, we need to consider the two streams that compose a connection as independent. A user should be able to release the stream that it uses to send SDUs once it has sent all the SDUs that it planned to send over this connection, but still continue to receive SDUs over the opposite stream. This `graceful` connection release is usually performed as shown in the figure below. One user issues a `Disconnect.request` primitive to its provider once it has issued all its `Data.request` primitives. The service provider will wait until all `Data.indication` primitives have been delivered to the receiving user before issuing the `Disconnnect.indication` primitive. This primitive informs the receiving user that it will no longer receive SDUs over this connection, but it is still able to issue `Data.request` primitives on the stream in the opposite direction. Once the user has issued all of its `Data.request` primitives, it issues a `Disconnnect.request` primitive to request the termination of the remaining stream. The service provider will process the request and deliver the corresponding `Disconnect.indication` to the other user once it has delivered all the pending `Data.indication` primitives. At this point, all data has been delivered, the two streams have been released successfully and the connection is completely closed.
Reliability of the connection-oriented service
An important point to note about the connection-oriented service is its reliability. A `connection-oriented` service can only guarantee the correct delivery of all SDUs provided that the connection has been released gracefully. This implies that while the connection is active, there is no guarantee for the actual delivery of the SDUs exchanged as the connection may need to be abruptly released at any time.
The request-response service
The `request-response service` is a compromise between the `connectionless service` and the `connection-oriented service`. Many applications need to send a small amount of data and receive a small amount of information back. This is similar to procedure calls in programming languages. A call to a procedure takes a few arguments and returns a simple answer. In a network, it is sometimes useful to execute a procedure on a different host and receive the result of the computation. Executing a procedure on another host is often called Remote Procedure Call. It is possible to use the `connectionless service` for this application. However, since this service is usually unreliable, this would force the application to deal with any type of error that could occur. Using the `connection oriented service` is another alternative. This service ensures the reliable delivery of the data, but a connection must be created before the beginning of the data transfer. This overhead can be important for applications that only exchange a small amount of data.
The `request-response service` allows to efficiently exchange small amounts of information in a request and associate it with the corresponding response. This service can be depicted by using the time-sequence diagram below.
Services and layers
In the previous sections, we have described services that are provided by the transport layer. However, it is important to note that the notion of service is more general than in the transport layer. As explained earlier, the network layer also provides a service, which in most networks is an unreliable connectionless service. There are network layers that provide a connection-oriented service. Similarly, the datalink layer also provides services. Some datalink layers will provide a connectionless service. This will be the case in Local Area Networks for examples. Other datalink layers, e.g. in public networks, provide a connection oriented service.
The transport layer entity interacts with both a user in the application layer and the network layer. It improves the network layer service to make it usable by applications. From the application's viewpoint, the main limitations of the network layer service come from its unreliable service:
the network layer may corrupt data;
the network layer may loose data;
the network layer may not deliver data in-order;
the network layer has an upper bound on maximum length of the data;
the network layer may duplicate data.
To deal with these issues, the transport layer includes several mechanisms that depend on the service that it provides. It interacts with both the applications and the underlying network layer.
Interactions between the transport layer, its user, and its network layer provider
We have already described in the datalink layers mechanisms to deal with data losses and transmission errors. These techniques are also used in the transport layer.
Connectionless transport
The simplest service that can be provided in the transport layer is the connectionless transport service. Compared to the connectionless network layer service, this transport service includes two additional features :
an `error detection` mechanism that allows detecting corrupted data
a `multiplexing technique` that enables several applications running on one host to exchange information with another host
To exchange data, the transport protocol encapsulates the SDU produced by its user inside a `segment`. The `segment` is the unit of transfer of information in the transport layer. Transport layer entities always exchange segments. When a transport layer entity creates a segment, this segment is encapsulated by the network layer into a packet which contains the segment as its payload and a network header. The packet is then encapsulated in a frame to be transmitted in the datalink layer.
A `segment` also contains control information, usually stored inside a `header` and the payload that comes from the application. To detect transmission errors, transport protocols rely on checksums or CRCs like the datalink layer protocols.
Compared to the connectionless network layer service, the transport layer service allows several applications running on a host to exchange SDUs with several other applications running on remote hosts. Let us consider two hosts, e.g. a client and a server. The network layer service allows the client to send information to the server, but if an application running on the client wants to contact a particular application running on the server, then an additional addressing mechanism is required. The network layer address identifies a host, but it is not sufficient to differentiate the applications running on a host. `Port numbers` provides this additional addressing. When a server application is launched on a host, it registers a `port number`. This `port number` will be used by the clients to contact the server process.
The figure below shows a typical usage of port numbers. The client process uses port number `1234` while the server process uses port number `5678`. When the client sends a request, it is identified as originating from port number `1234` on the client host and destined to port number `5678` on the server host. When the server process replies to this request, the server's transport layer returns the reply as originating from port `5678` on the server host and destined to port `1234` on the client host.
To support the connection-oriented service, the transport layer needs to include several mechanisms to enrich the connectionless network-layer service. We discuss these mechanisms in the following sections.
Connection establishment
Like the connectionless service, the connection-oriented service allows several applications running on a given host to exchange data with other hosts. The port numbers described above for the connectionless service are also used by the connection-oriented service to multiplex several applications. Similarly, connection-oriented protocols use checksums/CRCs to detect transmission errors and discard segments containing an invalid checksum/CRC.
An important difference between the connectionless service and the connection-oriented one is that the transport entities in the latter maintain some state during lifetime of the connection. This state is created when a connection is established and is removed when it is released.

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cnp3-ebook / principles/transport — English

the network layer may duplicate data.
the network layer may duplicate data.
a year ago
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../../principles/transport.rst:560
String age
a year ago
Source string age
a year ago
Translation file
locale/pot/principles/transport.pot, string 92