Skip to main content

Routers and serial connections

Routers and serial connections 5.2.3 This page will describe how routers and serial connections are used in a WAN.


Routers are responsible for routing data packets from source to destination within the LAN, and for providing connectivity to the WAN. Within a LAN environment the router contains broadcasts, provides local address resolution services, such as ARP and RARP, and may segment the network using a subnetwork structure. In order to provide these services the router must be connected to the LAN and WAN.

In addition to determining the cable type, it is necessary to determine whether DTE or DCE connectors are required. The DTE is the endpoint of the user’s device on the WAN link. The DCE is typically the point where responsibility for delivering data passes into the hands of the service provider.

When connecting directly to a service provider, or to a device such as a CSU/DSU that will perform signal clocking, the router is a DTE and needs a DTE serial cable. This is typically the case for routers. However, there are cases when the router will need to be the DCE. When performing a back-to-back router scenario in a test environment, one of the routers will be a DTE and the other will be a DCE.

When cabling routers for serial connectivity, the routers will either have fixed or modular ports. The type of port being used will affect the syntax used later to configure each interface.

Interfaces on routers with fixed serial ports are labeled for port type and port number.

Interfaces on routers with modular serial ports are labeled for port type, slot, and port number. The slot is the location of the module. To configure a port on a modular card, it is necessary to specify the interface using the syntax “port type slot number/port number”. Use the label “serial 1/0”, when the interface is serial, the slot number where the module is installed is slot 1, and the port that is being referenced is port 0.

The next page discusses routers and ISDN BRI connections.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Windowing

Windowing 11.1.5 This page will explain how windows are used to transmit data. Data packets must be delivered to the recipient in the same order in which they were transmitted to have a reliable, connection-oriented data transfer. The protocol fails if any data packets are lost, damaged, duplicated, or received in a different order. An easy solution is to have a recipient acknowledge the receipt of each packet before the next packet is sent. If a sender had to wait for an ACK after each packet was sent, throughput would be low. Therefore, most connection-oriented, reliable protocols allow multiple packets to be sent before an ACK is received. The time interval after the sender transmits a data packet and before the sender processes any ACKs is used to transmit more data. The number of data packets the sender can transmit before it receives an ACK is known as the window size, or window. TCP uses expectational ACKs. This means that the ACK number refers to the next packet that is...

OSI layers / Peer-to-peer communications / TCP/IP model

OSI layers 2.3.4 This page discusses the seven layers of the OSI model. The OSI reference model is a framework that is used to understand how information travels throughout a network. The OSI reference model explains how packets travel through the various layers to another device on a network, even if the sender and destination have different types of network media. In the OSI reference model, there are seven numbered layers, each of which illustrates a particular network function. - Dividing the network into seven layers provides the following advantages: • It breaks network communication into smaller, more manageable parts. • It standardizes network components to allow multiple vendor development and support. • It allows different types of network hardware and software to communicate with each other. • It prevents changes in one layer from affecting other layers. • It divides network communication into smaller parts to make learning it easier to understand. In the foll...

1.2.2 RIP V2 Features

 1.2.2 RIP V2 Features This page will discuss RIP v2, which is an improved version of RIP v1. Both versions of RIP share the following features: It is a distance vector protocol that uses a hop count metric. It uses hold down timers to prevent routing loops – default is 180 seconds. It uses split horizon to prevent routing loops. It uses 16 hops as a metric for infinite distance. RIP v2 provides prefix routing, which allows it to send out subnet mask information with the route update. Therefore, RIP v2 supports the use of classless routing in which different subnets within the same network can use different subnet masks, as in VLSM. RIP v2 provides for authentication in its updates. A set of keys can be used on an interface as an authentication check. RIP v2 allows for a choice of the type of authentication to be used in RIP v2 packets. The choice can be either clear text or Message-Digest 5 (MD5) encryption. Clear text is the default. MD5 can be used t...