gawkinet: Stream Communications
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1 1.1 Reliable Byte-streams (Phone Calls)
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1 When you make a phone call, the following steps occur:
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1 1. You dial a number.
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1 2. The phone system connects to the called party, telling them there
1 is an incoming call. (Their phone rings.)
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1 3. The other party answers the call, or, in the case of a computer
1 network, refuses to answer the call.
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1 4. Assuming the other party answers, the connection between you is now
1 a "duplex" (two-way), "reliable" (no data lost), sequenced (data
1 comes out in the order sent) data stream.
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1 5. You and your friend may now talk freely, with the phone system
1 moving the data (your voices) from one end to the other. From your
1 point of view, you have a direct end-to-end connection with the
1 person on the other end.
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1 The same steps occur in a duplex reliable computer networking
1 connection. There is considerably more overhead in setting up the
1 communications, but once it's done, data moves in both directions,
1 reliably, in sequence.
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