Homework 1

1. Description
2. Simulator Code

FAQ

1. Could you suggest any tools for plotting graphs?
   • matplotlib
   • gnuplot
2. CSMA protocols are having poor performance? Any easy ways to improve it?
   • One key aspect to getting good performance in CSMA is to make sure that you're decrementing the backoff counter only when the channel is idle.
3. How do you compute the packet delays?
   • The packet delay is the sum of several components: (1) queueing delay, (2) channel access delay, and (3) transmission delay. Queueing delay captures the time between the packet was generated by the application (and as a result inserted in the queue) until the packet becomes the head of the queue. The channel access delay is the time until the MAC layer transmits the packet. The transmission delay is usually defined: size of packet / bandwidth (in the homework this is set to 8). Note that you can compute the packet delay directly by keeping track of when the packet was generated and when the MAC layer completes the transmition of the packet.