Assignment 2 - Recovering from Packet Loss and Delay

CS456
Assignment 2 - Recovering from Packet Loss and Delay
Language: Any
1 Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to implement the Go-Back-N protocol, which could be used
to transfer a text file from one host to another across an unreliable network. The protocol should
be able to handle network errors such as packet loss and duplicate packets.
For simplicity, your protocol is unidirectional, i.e., data will flow in one direction (from the sender
to the receiver) and the acknowledgments (ACKs) in the opposite direction. To implement this
protocol, you will write two programs: a sender and a receiver, with the specifications given
below. You will test your implementation using the provided network link emulator.
When the sender needs to send packets to the receiver, it sends them to the network emulator
instead of sending them directly to the receiver. The network emulator then forwards the
received packets to the receiver. However, it may randomly discard and/or delay received
packets. The same scenario happens when the receiver sends ACKs to the sender.
2 Specifications
Note: these specifications are provided for Java, but you are free to use other languages.
2.1 Packet Format
All packets exchanged between the sender and the receiver should have the following structure:
public class packet
{
private int type; // 0: ACK, 1: Data, 2: EOT
private int seqnum; // Modulo 32
private int length; // Length of the String variable ‘data’
private String data; // String with Max Length 500
}
The type field indicates the type of the packet. It is set to 0 if it is an ACK, 1 if it is a data packet,
2 if it is an end-of-transmission (EOT) packet (see the definition and use of an
end-of-transmission packet below). For data packets, seqnum is the modulo 32 sequence
number of the packet. The sequence number of the first packet should be zero. For ACK
packets, seqnum is the sequence number of the packet being acknowledged. The length field
specifies the number of characters carried in the data field. It should be in the range of 0 to 500.
For ACK packets, length should be set to zero.
2.2 Sender Program (sender)
You should implement a sender program, named sender. Its command-line input includes the
following:
<host address of the network emulator>
<UDP port number used by the emulator to receive data from the sender>
<UDP port number used by the sender to receive ACKs from the emulator>, and
<name of the file to be transferred> in the given order.
Upon execution, the sender program should be able to read data from the specified file and
send it using the Go-Back-N protocol to the receiver via the network emulator. The window size
should be set to N=10. After all contents of the file have been transmitted successfully to the
receiver (and corresponding ACKs have been received), the sender should send an EOT packet
to the receiver. The EOT packet is in the same format as a regular data packet, except that its
type field is set to 2 and its length is set to zero. Once the sender has received ACKs for all data
packets it has sent, it will send an EOT to the receiver. When the sender receives an EOT from
the receiver, the sender can close its connection and exit. To keep the project simple, you
can assume that the end-of-transmission packet never gets lost in the network.
In order to ensure reliable transmission, your program should implement the Go-Back-N
protocol as follows:
● If the sender has a packet to send, it first checks to see if the window is full, that is,
whether there are N outstanding, unacknowledged packets.
● If the window is not full, the packet is sent and the appropriate variables are updated and
a timer is started if not done before. The sender will use only a single timer that will be
set for the oldest transmitted-but-not-yet-acknowledged packet.
● If the window is full, the sender will try sending the packet later.
● When the sender receives an acknowledgment packet with sequence number n, the
ACK will be taken to be a cumulative acknowledgment, indicating that all packets with a
sequence number up to and including n have been correctly received at the receiver.
● If a timeout occurs, the sender resends all packets that have been previously sent but
that have not yet been acknowledged.
● If an ACK is received but there are still additional transmitted-but-yet-to-beacknowledged packets, the timer is restarted. If there are no outstanding packets, the
timer is stopped.
Further description of the GBN sender and receiver can be found in slides 47-50 of Chapter 3
Lecture Notes.
2.2.1 Timing
This assignment includes an experiment. In order to perform this experiment, the sender needs
to record how long it takes for the receiver to successfully acquire the entire file. To do this,
record the time just before sending the first packet and the time immediately after receiving the
EOT from the receiver. From these two recorded times, compute the transmission time in
milliseconds.
2.2.2 Output
For both testing and grading purposes, your sender program should be able to generate three
log files, named as seqnum.log, ack.log, and time.log. Whenever a packet is sent, its
sequence number should be recorded in seqnum.log. The file ack.log should record the
sequence numbers of all the ACK packets that the sender receives during the entire period of
transmission. The format for these two log files is one number per line. You must follow this
format to avoid losing marks.
Place the transmission time in time.log. Do not place anything else in this file.
2.3 Receiver Program (receiver)
You should implement the receiver program, named receiver. Its command-line input includes
the following:
<hostname for the network emulator>,
<UDP port number used by the link emulator to receive ACKs from the receiver>,
<UDP port number used by the receiver to receive data from the emulator>, and
<name of the file into which the received data is written> in the given order.
When receiving packets sent by the sender via the network emulator, it should execute the
following:
● check the sequence number of the packet;
● if the sequence number is the one that it is expecting, it should send an ACK packet
back to the sender with the sequence number equal to the sequence number of the
received packet;
● in all other cases, it should discard the received packet and resends an ACK packet for
the most recently received in-order packet;
After the receiver has received all data packets and an EOT from the sender, it should send an
EOT packet then exit.
2.3.1 Output
The receiver program is also required to generate a log file, named as arrival.log. The file
arrival.log should record the sequence numbers of all the data packets that the receiver
receives during the entire period of transmission. The format for the log file is one number per
line. You must follow the format to avoid losing marks.
Network Emulator (nEmulator)
You will be given the executable code for the network emulator. To run it, you need to supply
the following command line parameters in the given order:
<emulator's receiving UDP port number in the forward (sender) direction>,
<receiver’s network address>,
<receiver’s receiving UDP port number>,
<emulator's receiving UDP port number in the backward (receiver) direction>,
<sender’s network address>,
<sender’s receiving UDP port number>,
<maximum delay of the link in units of millisecond>,
<packet discard probability 0 <= p <= 1 >,
<verbose-mode> (Boolean: if 1, the network emulator outputs its internal processing).
When the link emulator receives a packet from the sender, it will discard it with the specified
probability. Otherwise, it stores the packet in its buffer, and later forwards the packet to the
receiver with a random amount of delay (less than the specified maximum delay).
3 Experiment
After implementing the GBN protocol, measure the impact of packet loss and delay on
transmission time.
For each combination parameters, execute your program THREE times and record the average
transmission time (Section 2.2.1).
Set Maximum Delay Packet Discard Probability
Baseline 0 0
No Delay 1 0 0.1
No Delay 2 0 0.2
No Delay 3 0 0.3
No Delay 4 0 0.4
No Delay 5 0 0.5
No Discard 1 10 0
No Discard 2 20 0
No Discard 3 30 0
No Discard 4 40 0
No Discard 5 50 0
Both 1 20 0.1
Both 2 20 0.2
Both 3 20 0.3
Both 4 40 0.1
Both 5 40 0.2
Both 6 40 0.3
Repeat these experiments for the provided small input file, medium, and large input file.
Plot the results.
Produce a report of your findings, including the plots.
● How do changes in packet delay, probability of loss impact the transmission time?
● How do changes in file size (number of packets sent) impact transmission time?
4 Hints
● Use the packet class given in packet.java containing necessary declarations, definitions,
and helper methods
● All the packets must be sent and received as byte arrays instead of as Java packet
objects. Since the network emulator is written in C/C++, it cannot read Java objects.
Necessary code to convert the packet class into byte array and vice versa is provided in
the packet.java file.
● You must run the programs in the CS Undergrad Environment in order to allow
nEmulator to work.
● Run nEmulator, receiver, and sender on three different machines in this order to obtain
meaningful results.
Example Execution
1. On the host host1: nEmulator 9991 host2 9994 9993 host3 9992 1 0.2 0
2. On the host host2: java receiver host1 9993 9994 <output File>
3. On the host host3: java sender host1 9991 9992 <input file>
5 Hand-in Instructions
Submit all your files in a single compressed file (.zip, .tar, etc.) using LEARN, in the dedicated
Dropbox. You must hand in the following files/documents:
1. all source code files
2. Makefile (your code must compile and link by typing make or gmake)
3. README file containing compile and runtime instructions
4. Modified server/client.sh scripts
Your implementation will be tested on the undergrad environment machines. Please compile
and test your code on these machines prior to submission.