Homework 6: Reliable Communication
In this homework, you will improve upon the stop and wait implementation of
homework 5. Please see the description of Homework 5 for the basics, and the
April 17 lecture on YouTube for advice on how to get started. Everything is
the same about this assignment except for the file sizes, buffer sizes, and
throughput cutoffs. All of the files have been kept named as “homework 5” for
ease of portability. The included hw5.py
includes a reference stop and wait
implementation.
Writing Your Solution
This repo contains several tools that will help you simulate and test your
solution. You should not make changes to any file other than hw5.py
.
All other files contain code used to either simulate the unreliable connection,
or code to help you test your your solution.
Your solution / hw5.py
file will be tested against stock versions of all the
other files in the repo, so any changes you make will not be present at
grading time.
Your solution must be contained in the send
and recv
functions in hw5.py
.
You should not change the signatures of these functions, only their bodies.
These functions will be called by the grading script, with parameters
controlled by the grading script. Your solution must be general, and should
work for any file.
Your task is to modify the bodies of these functions so that they communicate
using a protocol that ensures that the data sent by the send
function
can be reliably and quickly reconstructed by the recv
function. You should
do so through a combination of setting timeouts on socket reads (e.x.
socket.timeout(float)
) and developing a system through which each side can
acknowledge if / when they receive a packet.
Testing Your Solution
You can use the provided tester.py
script when testing your solution. This
script uses the receiver.py
, sender.py
, and server.py
scripts to
simulate an unreliable connection, and to test your solution.
The tester.py
script contains many parameters you can use to test your
solution under different conditions, and to receive different amounts
of debugging information to better understand the network. These
parameters and options can be viewed by calling tester.py --help
, and are
also reproduced below.
usage: tester.py [-h] [-p PORT] [-l LOSS] [-d DELAY] [-b BUFFER] -f FILE
[-r RECEIVE] [-s] [-v]
Utility script for testing HW5 solutions under user set conditions.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-p PORT, --port PORT The port to simulate the lossy wire on (defaults to
9999).
-l LOSS, --loss LOSS The percentage of packets to drop.
-d DELAY, --delay DELAY
The number of seconds, as a float, to wait before
forwarding a packet on.
-b BUFFER, --buffer BUFFER
The size of the buffer to simulate.
-f FILE, --file FILE The file to send over the wire.
-r RECEIVE, --receive RECEIVE
The path to write the received file to. If not
provided, the results will be written to a temp file.
-s, --summary Print a one line summary of whether the transaction
was successful, instead of a more verbose description
of the result.
-v, --verbose Enable extra verbose mode.
For example, to see how your solution performs when transmitting a text file,
with a 5% loss rate, and with a latency of 100ms, you could use the following:
python3 tester.py --file test_data.txt --loss .05 --delay 0.1
.
Hints and Suggestions
-
Use the included
--verbose
option to include very detailed information about what your code is sending over the network, and how the network is handling that data. -
Use the included
--receive
option to see the results of your file transfer. By default, the testing script will store the results of your code to a temporary location. This option may be useful if you’re not sure how or why the received file does not match the sent file. -
Make sure you try your solution under many different loss ratios and latencies by changing the parameters in the
tester.py
script. -
Keep your packets smaller than or equal to
homework5.MAX_PACKET
(1400 bytes).
Grading
You solution will be graded by using it to transfer six different files, each under different simulated test conditions. For each test case, there is a minimum throughput requirement and a timeout for your program to exit. The timeout is set as 50% more than the corresponding required throughput.
Each test case will be scored accordingly:
Case | Points Earned |
---|---|
File is not transmitted correctly | 0 |
Transmission takes longer than the max time | 0 |
Successful transmission, but low throughput | 1 |
Successful transmission, fast throughput | 2 |
If your program exits normally before the timeout, but the content of the received file is invalid, then zero points are awarded.
If your program doesn’t exit before the timeout, it will be terminated before completion, resulting in incorrect file content, and so 0 points.
If the program exits normally before the timeout and the received file’s content is valid but the throughput obtained is lower than the required minimum throughput then you receive 1 point.
If your program correctly transmits the file below the timeout, and with the required throughput, it will receive 2 points.
Code that earns at least 5 of the above points, and which is both “PEP 8” and “pylint” compatible will earn an additional 1 point.
There are 13 points possible on this assignment. Your solution will be graded out of 12 possible points.
This assignment is due 3PM, April 28th.