Question

Consider the GBN and SR protocols. Suppose the sequence number space is of size k. What is the largest allowable sender window that will avoid the occurrence of problems such as that in Figure 3.27 for each of these protocols?

 

Answer 1

In order to avoid the scenario of Figure 3.27, we want to avoid having the leading edge of the receiver's window (i.e., the one with the “highest” sequence number) wrap around in the sequence number space and overlap with the trailing edge (the one with the "lowest" sequence number in the sender's window). That is, the sequence number space must be large enough to fit the entire receiver window and the entire sender window without this overlap condition. So - we need to determine how large a range of sequence numbers can be covered at any given time by the receiver and sender windows.

 

Suppose that the lowest-sequence number that the receiver is waiting for is packet m. In this case, it's window is [m,m+w-1] and it has received (and ACKed) packet m-1 and the w-1 packets before that, where w is the size of the window. If none of those w ACKs have been yet received by the sender, then ACK messages with values of [m-w,m-1] may

still be propagating back. If no ACKs with these ACK numbers have been received by the sender, then the sender's window would be [m-w,m-1].

 

Thus, the lower edge of the sender's window is m-w, and the leading edge of the receivers window is m+w-1. In order for the leading edge of the receiver's window to not overlap with the trailing edge of the sender's window, the sequence number space must thus be big enough to accommodate 2w sequence numbers. That is, the sequence number space must be at least twice as large as the window size, k ≥ 2w.

the window size, k ≥ 2w.