MODULE 2: PHYSICAL LAYER

THE PHYSICAL CONNECTION

• Before any network communications can occur, a physical connection to a local
network must be established.
• This connection could be wired or wireless, depending on the setup of the network.
• This generally applies whether you are considering an office or a home.
• A Network Interface Card (NIC) connects a device to the network.
• Some devices may have just one NIC, while others may have multiple NICs (Wired
and/or Wireless, for example).
• Not all physical connections offer the same level of performance.
THE PHYSICAL LAYER
• Transports bits across the network media

• Accepts a complete frame from the Data Link Layer

• Encodes it as a series of signals that are transmitted to the local media
• This is the last step in the encapsulation process.
• The next device in the path to the destination receives the bits and re-
encapsulates the frame
2.1 PHYSICAL LAYER
CHARACTERISTICS
PHYSICAL COMPONENTS
Physical Layer Standards address three functional areas:
• Physical Components
• Encoding
• Signaling

The Physical Components are the hardware devices, media, and other connectors
that transmit the signals that represent the bits.
• Hardware components like NICs, interfaces and connectors, cable materials, and cable designs are
all associated with the physical layer.
 PHYSICAL COMPONENTS
Encoding
• Encoding converts the stream of bits
into a format recognizable by the next
device in the network path.
• This ‘coding’ provides predictable
patterns that can be recognized by the
next device.
• Examples of encoding methods include
Manchester (shown in the figure).
 PHYSICAL COMPONENTS
Light Pulses Over Fiber-Optic Cable
Signaling
• The signaling method is how the bit values,
“1” and “0” are represented on the
physical medium.
• The method of signaling will vary based on
the type of medium being used.

Microwave Signals Over Wireless

Electrical Signals Over Copper Cable
 BANDWIDTH
• Bandwidth is the capacity at which a medium can carry data.
• Digital bandwidth measures the amount of data that can flow from one place to another
in a given amount of time; how many bits can be transmitted in a second.
• Physical media properties, current technologies, and the laws of physics play a role in
determining available bandwidth.
Unit of Bandwidth Abbreviation Equivalence

Bits per second bps 1 bps = fundamental unit of bandwidth

Kilobits per second Kbps 1 Kbps = 1,000 bps = 103 bps

Megabits per second Mbps 1 Mbps = 1,000,000 bps = 106 bps

Gigabits per second Gbps 1 Gbps – 1,000,000,000 bps = 109 bps

Terabits per second Tbps 1 Tbps = 1,000,000,000,000 bps = 1012 bps

BANDWIDTH TERMINOLOGY
• One important issue in networking is the performance of the network—how good
is it?
• Terms used to measure the quality of bandwidth

Latency
• Amount of time, including delays, for data to travel from one given point to another

Throughput
• The measure of the transfer of bits across the media over a given period of time

Goodput
• The measure of usable data transferred over a given period of time
• Goodput = Throughput - traffic overhead
2.2 UTP CABLING
UTP CABLING
PROPERTIES OF UTP CABLING

UTP has four pairs of color-coded copper wires twisted together and encased
in a flexible plastic sheath. No shielding is used. UTP relies on the following
properties to limit crosstalk:
• Cancellation - Each wire in a pair of wires uses opposite polarity. One wire is
negative, the other wire is positive. They are twisted together and the magnetic
fields effectively cancel each other.
• Variation in twists in each wire - Each wire is twisted a different amount, which
helps prevent crosstalk amongst the wires in the cable.
UTP CABLING
UTP CABLING STANDARDS AND CONNECTORS

Standards for UTP are :

• Cable Types
• Cable Lengths
• Connectors
• Cable Termination
• Testing Methods

Copper cabling are rated according to their performance.

Examples include:
• Category 3
• Category 5 and 5e
• Category 6
UTP CABLING
UTP CABLING STANDARDS AND CONNECTORS (CONT.)

Poorly terminated UTP cable

RJ-45 Connector

Properly terminated UTP cable

RJ-45 Socket
UTP CABLING
STRAIGHT-THROUGH AND CROSSOVER UTP CABLES

Cable Type Standard Application

Ethernet Straight-through Both ends T568A or T568B Host to Network Device

Ethernet Crossover * One end T568A, other end T568B Host-to-Host, Switch-to-Switch, Router-to-
Router
* Considered Legacy due to most NICs using Auto-MDIX to sense cable type and complete connection
Rollover Cisco Proprietary Host serial port to Router or Switch Console
Port, using an adapter
2.3 SIGNALS
SIGNALS
• What is exchanged between Alice and Bob is data, but what goes
through the network at the physical layer is signals.
ANALOG SIGNAL
• An analog signal can take one of the two forms: periodic or aperiodic.
• In data communication, we normally use periodic signals.
• A simple periodic signal, a sine wave, cannot be decomposed into simpler
signals.
DIGITAL SIGNAL
• Information can also be represented by a digital signal.
• For example, a value 1 can be encoded as a positive voltage and
a value 0 as zero voltage.
• A digital signal can have more than two levels. In this case, we can
send more than 1 bit for each level.
TWO DIGITAL SIGNALS, ONE WITH TWO AND ONE WITH FOUR BIT-LEVELS

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SIGNAL IMPAIRMENT
• Signals travel through transmission media, which are not perfect.
• The imperfection causes signal impairment.
• This means that the signal at the beginning of the medium is not the
same as the signal at the end of the medium.
• What is sent is not what is received. Three causes of impairment
are:
• attenuation,
• distortion, and
• noise.
1. ATTENUATION AND AMPLIFICATION
• Attenuation means a loss of energy.
• When a signal, simple or composite, travels through a medium, it
loses some of its energy in overcoming the resistance of the medium.
• To compensate for this loss, we need amplification.
ATTENUATION AND AMPLIFICATION

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2. DISTORTION
• Distortion means that the signal changes its form or shape.
• Distortion can occur in a composite signal made up of different
frequencies.
3. DATA RATE LIMITS
• A very important consideration in data communications
is how fast we can send data, in bits per second, over a
channel.
• Data rate depends on three factors:
▪ The bandwidth available
▪ The level of the signals we use
▪ The quality of the channel (the level of noise)
2.4 MULTIPLEXING
 3. MULTIPLEXING
• In real life, we have links with limited bandwidths.
• Sometimes we need to combine several low-bandwidth channels to make use
of one channel with a larger bandwidth.
• Sometimes we need to expand the bandwidth of a channel to achieve goals
such as privacy and anti-jamming.
 3.1 FREQUENCY-DIVISION MULTIPLEXING
• Frequency-division multiplexing is an analog technique that can be applied
when the bandwidth of a link is greater than the combined bandwidth of the
signals to be transmitted together.
 3.2 TIME-DIVISION MULTIPLEXING
• Time-division multiplexing (TDM) is a digital technique that allows several
connections to share the high bandwidth of a link.