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Introduce

The Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) model has seven layers. This article describes and explains them, beginning with the 'lowest' in the hierarchy (the physical) and proceeding to the 'highest' (the application). The layers are stacked this way:

1. Physical
2. Data Link
3. Network
4. Transport
5. Session
6. Presentation
7. Application

Physical Layer

The physical layer, the lowest layer of the OSI model, is concerned with the transmission and reception of the unstructured raw bit stream over a physical medium. It describes the electrical/optical, mechanical, and functional interfaces to the physical medium, and carries the signals for all of the higher layers. It provides:

• Data encoding: modifies the simple digital signal pattern (1s and 0s) used by the PC to better accommodate the characteristics of the physical medium, and to aid in bit and frame synchronization. It determines:
  
  • What signal state represents a binary 1
  • How the receiving station knows when a "bit-time" starts
  • How the receiving station delimits a frame
   
• Physical medium attachment, accommodating various possibilities in the medium:
  
  • Will an external transceiver (MAU) be used to connect to the medium?
  • How many pins do the connectors have and what is each pin used for?
   
• Transmission technique: determines whether the encoded bits will be transmitted by baseband (digital) or broadband (analog) signaling. 

• Physical medium transmission: transmits bits as electrical or optical signals appropriate for the physical medium, and determines:
  
  • What physical medium options can be used
  • How many volts/db should be used to represent a given signal state, using a given physical medium

Data Link Layer

The data link layer provides error-free transfer of data frames from one node to another over the physical layer, allowing layers above it to assume virtually error-free transmission over the link. To do this, the data link layer provides:

• Link establishment and termination: establishes and terminates the logical link between two nodes.
• Frame traffic control: tells the transmitting node to "back-off" when no frame buffers are available.
• Frame sequencing: transmits/receives frames sequentially.
• Frame acknowledgment: provides/expects frame acknowledgments. Detects and recovers from errors that occur in the physical layer by retransmitting non-acknowledged frames and handling duplicate frame receipt.
• Frame delimiting: creates and recognizes frame boundaries.
• Frame error checking: checks received frames for integrity.
• Media access management: determines when the node "has the right" to use the physical medium.

Network Layer

The network layer controls the operation of the subnet, deciding which physical path the data should take based on network conditions, priority of service, and other factors. It provides:

• Routing: routes frames among networks.
• Subnet traffic control: routers (network layer intermediate systems) can instruct a sending station to "throttle back" its frame transmission when the router's buffer fills up.
• Frame fragmentation: if it determines that a downstream router's maximum transmission unit (MTU) size is less than the frame size, a router can fragment a frame for transmission and re-assembly at the destination station.
• Logical-physical address mapping: translates logical addresses, or names, into physical addresses.
• Subnet usage accounting: has accounting functions to keep track of frames forwarded by subnet intermediate systems, to produce billing information.

Communications Subnet

The network layer software must build headers so that the network layer software residing in the subnet intermediate systems can recognize them and use them to route data to the destination address.

This layer relieves the upper layers of the need to know anything about the data transmission and intermediate switching technologies used to connect systems. It establishes, maintains and terminates connections across the intervening communications facility (one or several intermediate systems in the communication subnet).

In the network layer and the layers below, peer protocols exist between a node and its immediate neighbor, but the neighbor may be a node through which data is routed, not the destination station. The source and destination stations may be separated by many intermediate systems.


Transport Layer

The transport layer ensures that messages are delivered error-free, in sequence, and with no losses or duplications. It relieves the higher layer protocols from any concern with the transfer of data between them and their peers.

The size and complexity of a transport protocol depends on the type of service it can get from the network layer. For a reliable network layer with virtual circuit capability, a minimal transport layer is required. If the network layer is unreliable and/or only supports datagrams, the transport protocol should include extensive error detection and recovery.

The transport layer provides:

• Message segmentation: accepts a message from the (session) layer above it, splits the message into smaller units (if not already small enough), and passes the smaller units down to the network layer. The transport layer at the destination station reassembles the message.
• Message acknowledgment: provides reliable end-to-end message delivery with acknowledgments.
• Message traffic control: tells the transmitting station to "back-off" when no message buffers are available.
• Session multiplexing: multiplexes several message streams, or sessions onto one logical link and keeps track of which messages belong to which sessions (see session layer).

Typically, the transport layer can accept relatively large messages, but there are strict message size limits imposed by the network (or lower) layer. Consequently, the transport layer must break up the messages into smaller units, or frames, prepending a header to each frame.

The transport layer header information must then include control information, such as message start and message end flags, to enable the transport layer on the other end to recognize message boundaries. In addition, if the lower layers do not maintain sequence, the transport header must contain sequence information to enable the transport layer on the receiving end to get the pieces back together in the right order before handing the received message up to the layer above.

End-to-end layers

Unlike the lower "subnet" layers whose protocol is between immediately adjacent nodes, the transport layer and the layers above are true "source to destination" or end-to-end layers, and are not concerned with the details of the underlying communications facility. Transport layer software (and software above it) on the source station carries on a conversation with similar software on the destination station by using message headers and control messages.

Session Layer

The session layer allows session establishment between processes running on different stations. It provides:

• Session establishment, maintenance and termination: allows two application processes on different machines to establish, use and terminate a connection, called a session.
• Session support: performs the functions that allow these processes to communicate over the network, performing security, name recognition, logging, and so on. 

Presentation Layer

The presentation layer formats the data to be presented to the application layer. It can be viewed as the translator for the network. This layer may translate data from a format used by the application layer into a common format at the sending station, then translate the common format to a format known to the application layer at the receiving station.

The presentation layer provides:

• Character code translation: for example, ASCII to EBCDIC.
• Data conversion: bit order, CR-CR/LF, integer-floating point, and so on.
• Data compression: reduces the number of bits that need to be transmitted on the network.
• Data encryption: encrypt data for security purposes. For example, password encryption.

Application Layer

The application layer serves as the window for users and application processes to access network services. This layer contains a variety of commonly needed functions:

• Resource sharing and device redirection
• Remote file access
• Remote printer access
• Inter-process communication
• Network management
• Directory services
• Electronic messaging (such as mail)
• Network virtual terminals

In a telecommunications network, a switch is a device that channels incoming data from any of multiple input ports to the specific output port that will take the data toward its intended destination. In the traditional circuit-switched telephone network, one or more switches are used to set up a dedicated though temporary connection or circuit for an exchange between two or more parties. On an Ethernet local area network (LAN), a switch determines from the physical device (Media Access Control or MAC) address in each incoming message frame which output port to forward it to and out of. In a wide area packet-switched network such as the Internet, a switch determines from the IP address in each packet which output port to use for the next part of its trip to the intended destination.

In the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) communications model, a switch performs the Layer 2 or Data-link layer function. That is, it simply looks at each packet or data unit and determines from a physical address (the "MAC address") which device a data unit is intended for and switches it out toward that device. However, in wide area networks such as the Internet, the destination address requires a look-up in a routing table by a device known as a router. Some newer switches also perform routing functions (Layer 3 or the Network layer functions in OSI) and are sometimes called IP switches.

On larger networks, the trip from one switch point to another in the network is called a hop. The time a switch takes to figure out where to forward a data unit is called its latency. The price paid for having the flexibility that switches provide in a network is this latency. Switches are found at the backbone and gateway levels of a network where one network connects with another and at the subnetwork level where data is being forwarded close to its destination or origin. The former are often known as core switches and the latter as desktop switches.

In the simplest networks, a switch is not required for messages that are sent and received within the network. For example, a local area network may be organized in a token ring or bus arrangement in which each possible destination inspects each message and reads any message with its address.



Circuit-Switching version Packet-Switching

A network's paths can be used exclusively for a certain duration by two or more parties and then switched for use to another set of parties. This type of "switching" is known as circuit-switching and is really a dedicated and continuously connected path for its duration. Today, an ordinary voice phone call generally uses circuit-switching.

Most data today is sent, using digital signals, over networks that use packet-switching. Using packet-switching, all network users can share the same paths at the same time and the particular route a data unit travels can be varied as conditions change. In packet-switching, a message is divided into packets, which are units of a certain number of bytes. The network addresses of the sender and of the destination are added to the packet. Each network point looks at the packet to see where to send it next. Packets in the same message may travel different routes and may not arrive in the same order that they were sent. At the destination, the packets in a message are collected and reassembled into the original message.

In general, a hub is the central part of a wheel where the spokes come together. The term is familiar to frequent fliers who travel through airport "hubs" to make connecting flights from one point to another. In data communications, a hub is a place of convergence where data arrives from one or more directions and is forwarded out in one or more other directions. A hub usually includes a switch of some kind. (And a product that is called a "switch" could usually be considered a hub as well.) The distinction seems to be that the hub is the place where data comes together and the switch is what determines how and where data is forwarded from the place where data comes together. Regarded in its switching aspects, a hub can also include a router.


1) In describing network topologies, a hub topology consists of a backbone (main circuit) to which a number of outgoing lines can be attached ("dropped"), each providing one or more connection port for device to attach to. For Internet users not connected to a local area network, this is the general topology used by your access provider. Other common network topologies are the bus network and the ring network. (Either of these could possibly feed into a hub network, using a bridge.)

2) As a network product, a hub may include a group of modem cards for dial-in users, a gateway card for connections to a local area network (for example, an Ethernet or a token ring), and a connection to a line (the main line in this example).

In packet-switched networks such as the Internet, a router is a device or, in some cases, software in a computer, that determines the next network point to which a packet should be forwarded toward its destination.

The router is connected to at least two networks and decides which way to send each information packet based on its current understanding of the state of the networks it is connected to. A router is located at any gateway (where one network meets another), including each point-of-presence on the Internet. A router is often included as part of a network switch.


A router may create or maintain a table of the available routes and their conditions and use this information along with distance and cost algorithms to determine the best route for a given packet. Typically, a packet may travel through a number of network points with routers before arriving at its destination. Routing is a function associated with the Network layer (layer 3) in the standard model of network programming, the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. A layer-3 switch is a switch that can perform routing functions.
An edge router is a router that interfaces with an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network. A brouter is a network bridge combined with a router.


For home and business computer users who have high-speed Internet connections such as cable, satellite, or DSL, a router can act as a hardware firewall. This is true even if the home or business has only one computer. Many engineers believe that the use of a router provides better protection against hacking than a software firewall, because no computer Internet Protocol address are directly exposed to the Internet. This makes port scans (a technique for exploring weaknesses) essentially impossible. In addition, a router does not consume computer resources as a software firewall does. Commercially manufactured routers are easy to install, reasonably priced, and available for hard-wired or wireless networks.

Also see hub and switch.