FEATURE ARTICLE: (COMMSDESIGN) The 7 Faces of The OSI Networking Model – Part 2
Wednesday, April 16th, 2003
The Seven Faces of the OSI Network Model: Part 2
John Drabik, Arcturus Networks
The Open System Interconnect (OSI) network model, referred to by many as simply a stack, is in fact a well-designed, layered architecture for efficient intersystem and intrasystem communications. In this two-part series, we provide a new view of the stack, showing how the layers are interconnected, and protocol services available at each level.
In Part 1 of this article, we provided an overview of the stack and delved into details on Layers 5 to 7, general concepts of abstraction, syntax, translation, programming interfaces, and functions associated with the model. Now, we’ll further the discussion by looking at Layers 1 to 4 as well as at some non-layer layer items that are important for designers. Let’s start our discussion by looking at Layer 4.