SOLUTION MANUAL
COMPUTER NETWORKING: A TOP
DOWN APPROACH
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
,Computer networking: a top-down approach, 8th
edition
Solutions to review questions and problems
Version date: august 2020
This document contains the solutions to review questions and problems for the 8th edition
of computer networking: a top-down approach by jim kurose and keith ross. These
solutions are being made available to instructors only. Please do not copy or distribute this
document to others (even other instructors). Please do not post any solutions on a
publicly-available web site. We‟ll be happy to provide a copy (up-to-date) of this solution
manual ourselves to anyone who asks.
Acknowledgments: over the years, several students and colleagues have helped us prepare
this solutions manual. Special thanks goes to honggang zhang, rakesh kumar, prithula
dhungel, vijay annapureddy, yifan zhou. Also thanks to all the readers who have made
suggestions and corrected errors.
All material © copyright 1996-2020 by j.f. Kurose and k.w. Ross. All rights reserved
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
,Chapter 1 review questions
1. There is no difference. Throughout this text, the words “host” and “end system” are
used interchangeably. End systems include pcs, workstations, web servers, mail
servers, pdas, internet-connected game consoles, etc.
2. From wikipedia: diplomatic protocol is commonly described as a set of international
courtesy rules. These well-established and time-honored rules have made it easier for
nations and people to live and work together. Part of protocol has always been the
acknowledgment of the hierarchical standing of all present. Protocol rules are based on
the principles of civility.
3. Standards are important for protocols so that people can create networking systems and
products that interoperate.
4. 1. Dial-up modem over telephone line: home; 2. Dsl over telephone line: home or
small office; 3. Cable to hfc: home; 4. 100 mbps switched ethernet: enterprise.
5. Hfc bandwidth is shared among the users. On the downstream channel, all packets
emanate from a single source, namely, the head end. Thus, there are no collisions in the
downstream channel.
6. In most american cities, the current possibilities include: dial-up; dsl; cable modem;
fiber-to-the-home.
7. Ethernet lans have transmission rates of 10 mbps, 100 mbps, 1 gbps and 10 gbps.
8. Today, ethernet most commonly runs over twisted-pair copper wire. It also can run over
fibers optic links.
9. Adsl: up to 24 mbps downstream and 2.5 mbps upstream, bandwidth is dedicated; hfc,
rates up to 42.8 mbps and upstream rates of up to 30.7 mbps, bandwidth is shared.
Ftth: 2-10mbps upload; 10-20 mbps download; bandwidth is not shared.
10. There are two popular wireless internet access technologies today:
a. Wifi (802.11) in a wireless lan, wireless users transmit/receive packets to/from
an base station (i.e., wireless access point) within a radius of few tens of
meters. The base station is typically connected to the wired internet and thus
serves to connect wireless users to the wired network.
b. 3g and 4g wide-area wireless access networks. In these systems, packets are
transmitted over the same wireless infrastructure used for cellular telephony,
with the base station thus being managed by a telecommunications provider.
This provides wireless access to users within a radius of tens of kilometers of
the base station.
11. At time t0 the sending host begins to transmit. At time t1 = l/r1, the sending host
completes transmission and the entire packet is received at the router (no propagation
delay). Because the router has the entire packet at time t1, it can begin to transmit the
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
, Packet to the receiving host at time t1. At time t2 = t1 + l/r2, the router completes
transmission and the entire packet is received at the receiving host (again, no
propagation delay). Thus, the end-to-end delay is l/r1 + l/r2.
12. A circuit-switched network can guarantee a certain amount of end-to-end bandwidth
for the duration of a call. Most packet-switched networks today (including the internet)
cannot make any end-to-end guarantees for bandwidth. Fdm requires sophisticated
analog hardware to shift signal into appropriate frequency bands.
13. A) 2 users can be supported because each user requires half of the link bandwidth.
b) Since each user requires 1mbps when transmitting, if two or fewer users transmit
simultaneously, a maximum of 2mbps will be required. Since the available
bandwidth of the shared link is 2mbps, there will be no queuing delay before the
link. Whereas, if three users transmit simultaneously, the bandwidth required
will be 3mbps which is more than the available bandwidth of the shared link. In
this case, there will be queuing delay before the link.
c) Probability that a given user is transmitting = 0.2
d) Probability that all three users are transmitting simultaneously =
= (0.2)3 = 0.008. Since the queue grows when all the users are transmitting, the
fraction of time during which the queue grows (which is equal to the probability
That all three users are transmitting simultaneously) is 0.008.
14. If the two isps do not peer with each other, then when they send traffic to each other
they have to send the traffic through a provider isp (intermediary), to which they have
to pay for carrying the traffic. By peering with each other directly, the two isps can
reduce their payments to their provider isps. An internet exchange points (ixp)
(typically in a standalone building with its own switches) is a meeting point where
multiple isps can connect and/or peer together. An isp earns its money by charging
each of the the isps that connect to the ixp a relatively small fee, which may depend
on the amount of traffic sent to or received from the ixp.
15. Google's private network connects together all its data centers, big and small. Traffic
between the google data centers passes over its private network rather than over the
public internet. Many of these data centers are located in, or close to, lower tier isps.
Therefore, when google delivers content to a user, it often can bypass higher tier isps.
What motivates content providers to create these networks? First, the content provider
has more control over the user experience, since it has to use few intermediary isps.
Second, it can save money by sending less traffic into provider networks. Third, if isps
decide to charge more money to highly profitable content providers (in countries where
net neutrality doesn't apply), the content providers can avoid these extra payments.
16. The delay components are processing delays, transmission delays, propagation delays,
and queuing delays. All of these delays are fixed, except for the queuing delays, which
are variable.
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
,17. A) 1000 km, 1 mbps, 100 bytes
B) 100 km, 1 mbps, 100 bytes
18. 10msec; d/s; no; no
19. A) 500 kbps
b) 64 seconds
c) 100kbps; 320 seconds
20. End system a breaks the large file into chunks. It adds header to each chunk, thereby
generating multiple packets from the file. The header in each packet includes the ip
address of the destination (end system b). The packet switch uses the destination ip
address in the packet to determine the outgoing link. Asking which road to take is
analogous to a packet asking which outgoing link it should be forwarded on, given the
packet‟s destination address.
21. The maximum emission rate is 500 packets/sec and the maximum transmission rate is
350 packets/sec. The corresponding traffic intensity is 500/350 =1.43 > 1. Loss will
eventually occur for each experiment; but the time when loss first occurs will be
different from one experiment to the next due to the randomness in the emission
process.
22. five generic tasks are error control, flow control, segmentation and reassembly,
multiplexing, and connection setup. Yes, these tasks can be duplicated at different
layers. For example, error control is often provided at more than one layer.
23. the five layers in the internet protocol stack are – from top to bottom – the application
layer, the transport layer, the network layer, the link layer, and the physical layer. the
principal responsibilities are outlined in section 1.5.1.
24. application-layer message: data which an application wants to send and passed onto
the transport layer; transport-layer segment: generated by the transport layer and
encapsulates application-layer message with transport layer header; network-layer
datagram: encapsulates transport-layer segment with a network-layer header; link-layer
frame: encapsulates network-layer datagram with a link-layer header.
25. routers process network, link and physical layers (layers 1 through 3). (this is a little
bit of a white lie, as modern routers sometimes act as firewalls or caching components,
and process transport layer as well.) link layer switches process link and physical
layers (layers 1 through2). hosts process all five layers.
26. a self-replicating malware is a piece of code that cab enter and infect our devices,
and once it infects the host, from that host it seeks entry into other hosts over the internet.
27. creation of a botnet requires an attacker to find vulnerability in some application or
system (e.g. exploiting the buffer overflow vulnerability that might exist in an
application). after finding the vulnerability, the attacker needs to scan for hosts that
are vulnerable. the target is basically to compromise a series of systems by exploiting
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
, that particular vulnerability. any system that is part of the botnet can automatically
scan its environment and propagate by exploiting the vulnerability. an important
property of such botnets is that the originator of the botnet can remotely control and
issue commands to all the nodes in the botnet. hence, it becomes possible for the
attacker to issue a command to all the nodes, that target a single node (for example,
all nodes in the botnet might be commanded by the attacker to send a tcp syn
message to the target, which might result in a tcp syn flood attack at the target).
28. trudy can pretend to be bob to alice (and vice-versa) and partially or completely
modify the message(s) being sent from bob to alice. for example, she can easily
change the phrase “alice, i owe you $1000” to “alice, i owe you $10,000”.
furthermore, trudy can even drop the packets that are being sent by bob to alice (and
vise-versa), even if the packets from bob to alice are encrypted.
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
,chapter 1 problems
problem 1
there is no single right answer to this question. many protocols would do the trick. here's a
simple answer below:
messages from atm machine to server
msg name purpose
-------- -------
helo <userid> let server know that there is a card in the
atm machine
atm card transmits user id to server
passwd <passwd> user enters pin, which is sent to server
balance user requests balance
withdrawl <amount> user asks to withdraw money
bye user all done
messages from server to atm machine (display)
msg name purpose
-------- -------
passwd ask user for pin (password)
ok last requested operation (passwd, withdrawl)
ok
err last requested operation (passwd, withdrawl)
in error
amount <amt> sent in response to balance request
bye user done, display welcome screen at atm
correct operation:
client server
helo (userid) --------------> (check if valid userid)
< passwd
passwd <passwd> --------------> (check password)
<------------- ok (password is ok)
balance >
<------------- amount <amt>
withdrawl <amt> --------------> check if enough $ to cover
withdrawl
< ok
atm dispenses $
bye >
< bye
in situation when there's not enough money:
helo (userid) --------------> (check if valid userid)
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
, < passwd
passwd <passwd> --------------> (check password)
<------------- ok (password is ok)
balance ----------------------- >
<------------- amount <amt>
withdrawl <amt> --------------> check if enough $ to cover
withdrawl
<------------- err (not enough funds)
error msg displayed
no $ given out
bye >
< bye
problem 2
at time n*(l/r) the first packet has reached the destination, the second packet is stored in
the last router, the third packet is stored in the next-to-last router, etc. at time n*(l/r) + l/r,
the second packet has reached the destination, the third packet is stored in the last router,
etc. continuing with this logic, we see that at time n*(l/r) + (p-1)*(l/r) = (n+p- 1)*(l/r) all
packets have reached the destination.
problem 3
a) a circuit-switched network would be well suited to the application, because the
application involves long sessions with predictable smooth bandwidth requirements.
since the transmission rate is known and not bursty, bandwidth can be reserved for each
application session without significant waste. in addition, the overhead costs of setting
up and tearing down connections are amortized over the lengthy duration of a typical
application session.
b) in the worst case, all the applications simultaneously transmit over one or more network
links. however, since each link has sufficient bandwidth to handle the sum of all of the
applications' data rates, no congestion (very little queuing) will occur. given such
generous link capacities, the network does not need congestion control mechanisms.
problem 4
a) between the switch in the upper left and the switch in the upper right we can have 4
connections. similarly we can have four connections between each of the 3 other pairs
of adjacent switches. thus, this network can support up to 16 connections.
b) we can 4 connections passing through the switch in the upper-right-hand corner and
another 4 connections passing through the switch in the lower-left-hand corner, giving
a total of 8 connections.
c) yes. for the connections between a and c, we route two connections through b and two
connections through d. for the connections between b and d, we route two
connections through a and two connections through c. in this manner, there are at most
4 connections passing through any link.
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
COMPUTER NETWORKING: A TOP
DOWN APPROACH
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
,Computer networking: a top-down approach, 8th
edition
Solutions to review questions and problems
Version date: august 2020
This document contains the solutions to review questions and problems for the 8th edition
of computer networking: a top-down approach by jim kurose and keith ross. These
solutions are being made available to instructors only. Please do not copy or distribute this
document to others (even other instructors). Please do not post any solutions on a
publicly-available web site. We‟ll be happy to provide a copy (up-to-date) of this solution
manual ourselves to anyone who asks.
Acknowledgments: over the years, several students and colleagues have helped us prepare
this solutions manual. Special thanks goes to honggang zhang, rakesh kumar, prithula
dhungel, vijay annapureddy, yifan zhou. Also thanks to all the readers who have made
suggestions and corrected errors.
All material © copyright 1996-2020 by j.f. Kurose and k.w. Ross. All rights reserved
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
,Chapter 1 review questions
1. There is no difference. Throughout this text, the words “host” and “end system” are
used interchangeably. End systems include pcs, workstations, web servers, mail
servers, pdas, internet-connected game consoles, etc.
2. From wikipedia: diplomatic protocol is commonly described as a set of international
courtesy rules. These well-established and time-honored rules have made it easier for
nations and people to live and work together. Part of protocol has always been the
acknowledgment of the hierarchical standing of all present. Protocol rules are based on
the principles of civility.
3. Standards are important for protocols so that people can create networking systems and
products that interoperate.
4. 1. Dial-up modem over telephone line: home; 2. Dsl over telephone line: home or
small office; 3. Cable to hfc: home; 4. 100 mbps switched ethernet: enterprise.
5. Hfc bandwidth is shared among the users. On the downstream channel, all packets
emanate from a single source, namely, the head end. Thus, there are no collisions in the
downstream channel.
6. In most american cities, the current possibilities include: dial-up; dsl; cable modem;
fiber-to-the-home.
7. Ethernet lans have transmission rates of 10 mbps, 100 mbps, 1 gbps and 10 gbps.
8. Today, ethernet most commonly runs over twisted-pair copper wire. It also can run over
fibers optic links.
9. Adsl: up to 24 mbps downstream and 2.5 mbps upstream, bandwidth is dedicated; hfc,
rates up to 42.8 mbps and upstream rates of up to 30.7 mbps, bandwidth is shared.
Ftth: 2-10mbps upload; 10-20 mbps download; bandwidth is not shared.
10. There are two popular wireless internet access technologies today:
a. Wifi (802.11) in a wireless lan, wireless users transmit/receive packets to/from
an base station (i.e., wireless access point) within a radius of few tens of
meters. The base station is typically connected to the wired internet and thus
serves to connect wireless users to the wired network.
b. 3g and 4g wide-area wireless access networks. In these systems, packets are
transmitted over the same wireless infrastructure used for cellular telephony,
with the base station thus being managed by a telecommunications provider.
This provides wireless access to users within a radius of tens of kilometers of
the base station.
11. At time t0 the sending host begins to transmit. At time t1 = l/r1, the sending host
completes transmission and the entire packet is received at the router (no propagation
delay). Because the router has the entire packet at time t1, it can begin to transmit the
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
, Packet to the receiving host at time t1. At time t2 = t1 + l/r2, the router completes
transmission and the entire packet is received at the receiving host (again, no
propagation delay). Thus, the end-to-end delay is l/r1 + l/r2.
12. A circuit-switched network can guarantee a certain amount of end-to-end bandwidth
for the duration of a call. Most packet-switched networks today (including the internet)
cannot make any end-to-end guarantees for bandwidth. Fdm requires sophisticated
analog hardware to shift signal into appropriate frequency bands.
13. A) 2 users can be supported because each user requires half of the link bandwidth.
b) Since each user requires 1mbps when transmitting, if two or fewer users transmit
simultaneously, a maximum of 2mbps will be required. Since the available
bandwidth of the shared link is 2mbps, there will be no queuing delay before the
link. Whereas, if three users transmit simultaneously, the bandwidth required
will be 3mbps which is more than the available bandwidth of the shared link. In
this case, there will be queuing delay before the link.
c) Probability that a given user is transmitting = 0.2
d) Probability that all three users are transmitting simultaneously =
= (0.2)3 = 0.008. Since the queue grows when all the users are transmitting, the
fraction of time during which the queue grows (which is equal to the probability
That all three users are transmitting simultaneously) is 0.008.
14. If the two isps do not peer with each other, then when they send traffic to each other
they have to send the traffic through a provider isp (intermediary), to which they have
to pay for carrying the traffic. By peering with each other directly, the two isps can
reduce their payments to their provider isps. An internet exchange points (ixp)
(typically in a standalone building with its own switches) is a meeting point where
multiple isps can connect and/or peer together. An isp earns its money by charging
each of the the isps that connect to the ixp a relatively small fee, which may depend
on the amount of traffic sent to or received from the ixp.
15. Google's private network connects together all its data centers, big and small. Traffic
between the google data centers passes over its private network rather than over the
public internet. Many of these data centers are located in, or close to, lower tier isps.
Therefore, when google delivers content to a user, it often can bypass higher tier isps.
What motivates content providers to create these networks? First, the content provider
has more control over the user experience, since it has to use few intermediary isps.
Second, it can save money by sending less traffic into provider networks. Third, if isps
decide to charge more money to highly profitable content providers (in countries where
net neutrality doesn't apply), the content providers can avoid these extra payments.
16. The delay components are processing delays, transmission delays, propagation delays,
and queuing delays. All of these delays are fixed, except for the queuing delays, which
are variable.
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
,17. A) 1000 km, 1 mbps, 100 bytes
B) 100 km, 1 mbps, 100 bytes
18. 10msec; d/s; no; no
19. A) 500 kbps
b) 64 seconds
c) 100kbps; 320 seconds
20. End system a breaks the large file into chunks. It adds header to each chunk, thereby
generating multiple packets from the file. The header in each packet includes the ip
address of the destination (end system b). The packet switch uses the destination ip
address in the packet to determine the outgoing link. Asking which road to take is
analogous to a packet asking which outgoing link it should be forwarded on, given the
packet‟s destination address.
21. The maximum emission rate is 500 packets/sec and the maximum transmission rate is
350 packets/sec. The corresponding traffic intensity is 500/350 =1.43 > 1. Loss will
eventually occur for each experiment; but the time when loss first occurs will be
different from one experiment to the next due to the randomness in the emission
process.
22. five generic tasks are error control, flow control, segmentation and reassembly,
multiplexing, and connection setup. Yes, these tasks can be duplicated at different
layers. For example, error control is often provided at more than one layer.
23. the five layers in the internet protocol stack are – from top to bottom – the application
layer, the transport layer, the network layer, the link layer, and the physical layer. the
principal responsibilities are outlined in section 1.5.1.
24. application-layer message: data which an application wants to send and passed onto
the transport layer; transport-layer segment: generated by the transport layer and
encapsulates application-layer message with transport layer header; network-layer
datagram: encapsulates transport-layer segment with a network-layer header; link-layer
frame: encapsulates network-layer datagram with a link-layer header.
25. routers process network, link and physical layers (layers 1 through 3). (this is a little
bit of a white lie, as modern routers sometimes act as firewalls or caching components,
and process transport layer as well.) link layer switches process link and physical
layers (layers 1 through2). hosts process all five layers.
26. a self-replicating malware is a piece of code that cab enter and infect our devices,
and once it infects the host, from that host it seeks entry into other hosts over the internet.
27. creation of a botnet requires an attacker to find vulnerability in some application or
system (e.g. exploiting the buffer overflow vulnerability that might exist in an
application). after finding the vulnerability, the attacker needs to scan for hosts that
are vulnerable. the target is basically to compromise a series of systems by exploiting
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
, that particular vulnerability. any system that is part of the botnet can automatically
scan its environment and propagate by exploiting the vulnerability. an important
property of such botnets is that the originator of the botnet can remotely control and
issue commands to all the nodes in the botnet. hence, it becomes possible for the
attacker to issue a command to all the nodes, that target a single node (for example,
all nodes in the botnet might be commanded by the attacker to send a tcp syn
message to the target, which might result in a tcp syn flood attack at the target).
28. trudy can pretend to be bob to alice (and vice-versa) and partially or completely
modify the message(s) being sent from bob to alice. for example, she can easily
change the phrase “alice, i owe you $1000” to “alice, i owe you $10,000”.
furthermore, trudy can even drop the packets that are being sent by bob to alice (and
vise-versa), even if the packets from bob to alice are encrypted.
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
,chapter 1 problems
problem 1
there is no single right answer to this question. many protocols would do the trick. here's a
simple answer below:
messages from atm machine to server
msg name purpose
-------- -------
helo <userid> let server know that there is a card in the
atm machine
atm card transmits user id to server
passwd <passwd> user enters pin, which is sent to server
balance user requests balance
withdrawl <amount> user asks to withdraw money
bye user all done
messages from server to atm machine (display)
msg name purpose
-------- -------
passwd ask user for pin (password)
ok last requested operation (passwd, withdrawl)
ok
err last requested operation (passwd, withdrawl)
in error
amount <amt> sent in response to balance request
bye user done, display welcome screen at atm
correct operation:
client server
helo (userid) --------------> (check if valid userid)
< passwd
passwd <passwd> --------------> (check password)
<------------- ok (password is ok)
balance >
<------------- amount <amt>
withdrawl <amt> --------------> check if enough $ to cover
withdrawl
< ok
atm dispenses $
bye >
< bye
in situation when there's not enough money:
helo (userid) --------------> (check if valid userid)
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
, < passwd
passwd <passwd> --------------> (check password)
<------------- ok (password is ok)
balance ----------------------- >
<------------- amount <amt>
withdrawl <amt> --------------> check if enough $ to cover
withdrawl
<------------- err (not enough funds)
error msg displayed
no $ given out
bye >
< bye
problem 2
at time n*(l/r) the first packet has reached the destination, the second packet is stored in
the last router, the third packet is stored in the next-to-last router, etc. at time n*(l/r) + l/r,
the second packet has reached the destination, the third packet is stored in the last router,
etc. continuing with this logic, we see that at time n*(l/r) + (p-1)*(l/r) = (n+p- 1)*(l/r) all
packets have reached the destination.
problem 3
a) a circuit-switched network would be well suited to the application, because the
application involves long sessions with predictable smooth bandwidth requirements.
since the transmission rate is known and not bursty, bandwidth can be reserved for each
application session without significant waste. in addition, the overhead costs of setting
up and tearing down connections are amortized over the lengthy duration of a typical
application session.
b) in the worst case, all the applications simultaneously transmit over one or more network
links. however, since each link has sufficient bandwidth to handle the sum of all of the
applications' data rates, no congestion (very little queuing) will occur. given such
generous link capacities, the network does not need congestion control mechanisms.
problem 4
a) between the switch in the upper left and the switch in the upper right we can have 4
connections. similarly we can have four connections between each of the 3 other pairs
of adjacent switches. thus, this network can support up to 16 connections.
b) we can 4 connections passing through the switch in the upper-right-hand corner and
another 4 connections passing through the switch in the lower-left-hand corner, giving
a total of 8 connections.
c) yes. for the connections between a and c, we route two connections through b and two
connections through d. for the connections between b and d, we route two
connections through a and two connections through c. in this manner, there are at most
4 connections passing through any link.
© 2020 Pearson Education, Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.
