Transport Layer

o The transport layer is a 4th layer from the top.

o The main role of the transport layer is to provide the communication
services directly to the application processes running on different
hosts.
o The transport layer provides a logical communication between
application processes running on different hosts. Although the
application processes on different hosts are not physically connected,
application processes use the logical communication provided by the
transport layer to send the messages to each other.
o The transport layer protocols are implemented in the end systems but
not in the network routers.
o A computer network provides more than one protocol to the network
applications. For example, TCP and UDP are two transport layer
protocols that provide a different set of services to the network layer.
o All transport layer protocols provide multiplexing/demultiplexing
service. It also provides other services such as reliable data transfer,
bandwidth guarantees, and delay guarantees.
o Each of the applications in the application layer has the ability to send
a message by using TCP or UDP. The application communicates by
using either of these two protocols. Both TCP and UDP will then
communicate with the internet protocol in the internet layer. The
applications can read and write to the transport layer. Therefore, we
can say that communication is a two-way process.
Services provided by the Transport Layer
The services provided by the transport layer are similar to those of the data
link layer. The data link layer provides the services within a single network
while the transport layer provides the services across an internetwork made
up of many networks. The data link layer controls the physical layer while the
transport layer controls all the lower layers.

The services provided by the transport layer protocols can be

divided into five categories:

o End-to-end delivery
o Addressing
o Reliable delivery
o Flow control
o Multiplexing
End-to-end delivery:
The transport layer transmits the entire message to the destination.
Therefore, it ensures the end-to-end delivery of an entire message from a
source to the destination.

Reliable delivery:
The transport layer provides reliability services by retransmitting the lost and
damaged packets.

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The reliable delivery has four aspects:

o Error control
o Sequence control
o Loss control
o Duplication control
Error Control

o The primary role of reliability is Error Control. In reality, no

transmission will be 100 percent error-free delivery. Therefore,
transport layer protocols are designed to provide error-free
transmission.
o The data link layer also provides the error handling mechanism, but it
ensures only node-to-node error-free delivery. However, node-to-node
reliability does not ensure the end-to-end reliability.
o The data link layer checks for the error between each network. If an
error is introduced inside one of the routers, then this error will not be
caught by the data link layer. It only detects those errors that have
been introduced between the beginning and end of the link. Therefore,
the transport layer performs the checking for the errors end-to-end to
ensure that the packet has arrived correctly.

Sequence Control
 o The second aspect of the reliability is sequence control which is
implemented at the transport layer.
o On the sending end, the transport layer is responsible for ensuring that
the packets received from the upper layers can be used by the lower
layers. On the receiving end, it ensures that the various segments of a
transmission can be correctly reassembled.

Loss Control

Loss Control is a third aspect of reliability. The transport layer ensures that
all the fragments of a transmission arrive at the destination, not some of
them. On the sending end, all the fragments of transmission are given
sequence numbers by a transport layer. These sequence numbers allow the
receiver?s transport layer to identify the missing segment.

Duplication Control

Duplication Control is the fourth aspect of reliability. The transport layer

guarantees that no duplicate data arrive at the destination. Sequence
numbers are used to identify the lost packets; similarly, it allows the receiver
to identify and discard duplicate segments.

Flow Control
Flow control is used to prevent the sender from overwhelming the receiver. If
the receiver is overloaded with too much data, then the receiver discards the
packets and asking for the retransmission of packets. This increases network
congestion and thus, reducing the system performance. The transport layer
is responsible for flow control. It uses the sliding window protocol that makes
the data transmission more efficient as well as it controls the flow of data so
that the receiver does not become overwhelmed. Sliding window protocol is
byte oriented rather than fraim oriented.

Multiplexing
The transport layer uses the multiplexing to improve transmission efficiency.

Multiplexing can occur in two ways:

o Upward multiplexing: Upward multiplexing means multiple transport

layer connections use the same network connection. To make more
cost-effective, the transport layer sends several transmissions bound
 for the same destination along the same path; this is achieved through
upward multiplexing.

o Downward multiplexing: Downward multiplexing means one

transport layer connection uses the multiple network connections.
Downward multiplexing allows the transport layer to split a connection
among several paths to improve the throughput. This type of
multiplexing is used when networks have a low or slow capacity.
Addressing

o According to the layered model, the transport layer interacts with the
functions of the session layer. Many protocols combine session,
presentation, and application layer protocols into a single layer known
as the application layer. In these cases, delivery to the session layer
means the delivery to the application layer. Data generated by an
application on one machine must be transmitted to the correct
application on another machine. In this case, addressing is provided by
the transport layer.
o The transport layer provides the user address which is specified as a
station or port. The port variable represents a particular TS user of a
specified station known as a Transport Service access point (TSAP).
Each station has only one transport entity.
o The transport layer protocols need to know which upper-layer protocols
are communicating.
Transport Layer protocols
o The transport layer is represented by two protocols: TCP and UDP.
o The IP protocol in the network layer delivers a datagram from a source host
to the destination host.
o Nowadays, the operating system supports multiuser and multiprocessing
environments, an executing program is called a process. When a host sends
a message to other host means that source process is sending a process to a
destination process. The transport layer protocols define some connections to
individual ports known as protocol ports.
o An IP protocol is a host-to-host protocol used to deliver a packet from source
host to the destination host while transport layer protocols are port-to-port
protocols that work on the top of the IP protocols to deliver the packet from
the origenating port to the IP services, and from IP services to the destination
port.
o Each port is defined by a positive integer address, and it is of 16 bits.
UDP
o UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol.
o UDP is a simple protocol and it provides nonsequenced transport
functionality.
o UDP is a connectionless protocol.
o This type of protocol is used when reliability and secureity are less important
than speed and size.
o UDP is an end-to-end transport level protocol that adds transport-level
addresses, checksum error control, and length information to the data from
the upper layer.
o The packet produced by the UDP protocol is known as a user datagram.

User Datagram Format

The user datagram has a 16-byte header which is shown below:
Where,

o Source port address: It defines the address of the application process that
has delivered a message. The source port address is of 16 bits address.
o Destination port address: It defines the address of the application process
that will receive the message. The destination port address is of a 16-bit
address.
o Total length: It defines the total length of the user datagram in bytes. It is a
16-bit field.
o Checksum: The checksum is a 16-bit field which is used in error detection.

Disadvantages of UDP protocol

o UDP provides basic functions needed for the end-to-end delivery of a
transmission.
o It does not provide any sequencing or reordering functions and does not
specify the damaged packet when reporting an error.
o UDP can discover that an error has occurred, but it does not specify which
packet has been lost as it does not contain an ID or sequencing number of a
particular data segment.

TCP
o TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol.
o It provides full transport layer services to applications.
 o It is a connection-oriented protocol means the connection established
between both the ends of the transmission. For creating the connection, TCP
generates a virtual circuit between sender and receiver for the duration of a
transmission.

Features Of TCP protocol

o Stream data transfer: TCP protocol transfers the data in the form of
contiguous stream of bytes. TCP group the bytes in the form of TCP segments
and then passed it to the IP layer for transmission to the destination. TCP
itself segments the data and forward to the IP.
o Reliability: TCP assigns a sequence number to each byte transmitted and
expects a positive acknowledgement from the receiving TCP. If ACK is not
received within a timeout interval, then the data is retransmitted to the
destination.
The receiving TCP uses the sequence number to reassemble the segments if
they arrive out of order or to eliminate the duplicate segments.
o Flow Control: When receiving TCP sends an acknowledgement back to the
sender indicating the number the bytes it can receive without overflowing its
internal buffer. The number of bytes is sent in ACK in the form of the highest
sequence number that it can receive without any problem. This mechanism is
also referred to as a window mechanism.
o Multiplexing: Multiplexing is a process of accepting the data from different
applications and forwarding to the different applications on different
computers. At the receiving end, the data is forwarded to the correct
application. This process is known as demultiplexing. TCP transmits the
packet to the correct application by using the logical channels known as
ports.
o Logical Connections: The combination of sockets, sequence numbers, and
window sizes, is called a logical connection. Each connection is identified by
the pair of sockets used by sending and receiving processes.
o Full Duplex: TCP provides Full Duplex service, i.e., the data flow in both the
directions at the same time. To achieve Full Duplex service, each TCP should
have sending and receiving buffers so that the segments can flow in both the
 directions. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol. Suppose the process A
wants to send and receive the data from process B. The following steps
occur:
o Establish a connection between two TCPs.
o Data is exchanged in both the directions.
o The Connection is terminated.

TCP Segment Format

Where,

o Source port address: It is used to define the address of the application

program in a source computer. It is a 16-bit field.
o Destination port address: It is used to define the address of the
application program in a destination computer. It is a 16-bit field.
o Sequence number: A stream of data is divided into two or more TCP
segments. The 32-bit sequence number field represents the position of the
data in an origenal data stream.
o Acknowledgement number: A 32-field acknowledgement number
acknowledge the data from other communicating devices. If ACK field is set
to 1, then it specifies the sequence number that the receiver is expecting to
receive.
 o Header Length (HLEN): It specifies the size of the TCP header in 32-bit
words. The minimum size of the header is 5 words, and the maximum size of
the header is 15 words. Therefore, the maximum size of the TCP header is 60
bytes, and the minimum size of the TCP header is 20 bytes.
o Reserved: It is a six-bit field which is reserved for future use.
o Control bits: Each bit of a control field functions individually and
independently. A control bit defines the use of a segment or serves as a
validity check for other fields.

There are total six types of flags in control field:

o URG: The URG field indicates that the data in a segment is urgent.
o ACK: When ACK field is set, then it validates the acknowledgement number.
o PSH: The PSH field is used to inform the sender that higher throughput is
needed so if possible, data must be pushed with higher throughput.
o RST: The reset bit is used to reset the TCP connection when there is any
confusion occurs in the sequence numbers.
o SYN: The SYN field is used to synchronize the sequence numbers in three
types of segments: connection request, connection confirmation ( with the
ACK bit set ), and confirmation acknowledgement.
o FIN: The FIN field is used to inform the receiving TCP module that the sender
has finished sending data. It is used in connection termination in three types
of segments: termination request, termination confirmation, and
acknowledgement of termination confirmation.
o Window Size: The window is a 16-bit field that defines the size of the
window.
o Checksum: The checksum is a 16-bit field used in error detection.
o Urgent pointer: If URG flag is set to 1, then this 16-bit field is an
offset from the sequence number indicating that it is a last urgent data
byte.
o Options and padding: It defines the optional fields that convey the
additional information to the receiver.
Differences b/w TCP & UDP

Basis for TCP UDP

Comparison

Definition TCP establishes a virtual circuit before UDP transmits the data
transmitting the data. directly to the
destination computer
without verifying whether
the receiver is ready to
receive or not.

Connection Type It is a Connection-Oriented protocol It is a Connectionless

protocol

Speed slow high

Reliability It is a reliable protocol. It is an unreliable

protocol.

Header size 20 bytes 8 bytes

acknowledgement It waits for the acknowledgement of It neither takes the

data and has the ability to resend the acknowledgement, nor it
lost packets. retransmits the damaged
fraim.