Question One
The two factors for delay include; propagation and serialization. Propagation is the amount of time taken before data can travel at the speed of light from the data source to the destination. Serialization is the process of converting data stored from bytes into a stream of bits that can be transmitted over the networks.
Question Two
One of the causes of packet jitter is the congestion in the IP network. The other reasons include route changes, and timing drift.
Question Three
Making use of a jitter buffer will help reduce the delays in the packet delivery. The applications consuming the packets in the network will essentially receive them from the buffers rather than directly from the switch or from the router.
Question Four
If the developer wants to get rid of any retransmitting some lost packets, then UDP tends to be more reliable than TCP. This means that the developer will use UDP for the applications that are more sensitive to delays (Stallings 518).
Another reason why a developer would prefer UDP is in case he or she wants to build multicast applications. UDP allows the transmission from a single point to multipoint destinations. If the developer uses TCP in such transmissions, then there would be an additional task of keeping track of the packet sending rates (Stallings 513).
Question Five
Port number are application levels of addressing packets. These port numbers are responsible for ensuring multiple applications can send and receive data in a simultaneous manner. Each of the applications is allocated a particular number. Each segmented header contains two fields for the port number of the destination and the port number of the source.
Question Six
SCTP makes use of a four-way handshake to initiate a transmission process. First, the client has to initiate the communication process with the INIT packet. The next step is for the serves to use a cookie to acknowledge the INIT-ACK packet. The client can then send the server cookie to the server which then sends additional information just after the COOKIE-ECHO. The final step is for the server to use COOKIE-ACK to acknowledge the COOKIE-ECHO. The first advantage of SCTP over TCP is that the former allows for the transmission of multiple streams per connection. The other advantage is that SCTP protects against SYN flooding that can be experienced in the TCP connections.
Work Cited
Stallings, William. Data and Computer Communications. New York: Pearson Education, 2013. Print.
