ISO OSI Layered Architecture

OSI Model Layer 1: The Physical Layer

1. Physical Layer is the lowest layer of the OSI Model.

2. It activates, maintains and deactivates the physical connection.
3. It is responsible for transmission and reception of the unstructured raw data over network.
4. Voltages and data rates needed for transmission is defined in the physical layer.
5. It converts the digital/analog bits into electrical signal or optical signals.
6. Data encoding is also done in this layer.

The physical layer is concerned with the following:

1. .Physical characteristics of interfaces and medium

2. Representation of bits
3. Data Rate
4. Synchronization of bits
5. Line configuration
6. Physical topology
7. Transmission mode
OSI Model Layer 2: Data Link Layer
1. Data link layer synchronizes the information which is to be transmitted over the physical
layer.
2. Framing The datalink layer divides the stream of bits received from the network layer into
small data units called frames
3. Physical addressing The datalink layer adds a header to the frame to define the sender/
receiver of the frame.
4. Flow Control If the receiver is slower than sender, the datalink layer imposes a flow control
mechanism to avoid the overwhelming the receiver
5. Error control The datalink layer adds reliability to the physical layer by adding mechanisms
to detect and retransmit damaged and lost frames.
6. Access Control When two or more devices are connected to the same link,data link layer
protocols are necessary to determine which device has the control over the link.

OSI Model Layer 3: Network Layer

1. Network layer is responsible for the source to destination delivery of a packet across
multiple networks.
2. Network Layer routes the signal through different channels from one node to other.
3. It acts as a network controller. It manages the Subnet traffic.
4. It decides by which route data should take.
5. It divides the outgoing messages into packets and assembles the incoming packets into
messages for higher levels.
6. Logical Addressing

OSI Model Layer 4: Transport Layer

1. Transport layer is responsible for the process to process delivery of the entire message.

2. Service-point addressing

 Computers often run many programs at the same time. Due to this, source-to-
destination delivery means delivery from a specific job (currently running program)
on one computer to a specific job (currently running program) on the other system not
only one computer to the next.
 For this reason, the transport layer added a specific type of address to its header, it is
referred to as a service point address or port address.
 By this address each packet reaches the correct computer and also the transport layer
gets the complete message to the correct process on that computer.

3. Segmentation and Reassembly

  In segmentation, a message is divided into transmittable segments; each segment
containing a sequence number. This number enables this layer to reassemble the
message.
 Upon arriving at its destination system message is reassembled correctly, identify and
replaces packets that were lost in transmission.

4. Connection Control

It can be either of two types:

i. Connectionless Transport Layer

ii. Connection Oriented Transport Layer

i) Connectionless Transport Layer

 This Transport Layer treats each packet as an individual and delivers it to the
destination machine.
 In this type of transmission, the receiver does not send an acknowledgment to the
sender about the receipt of a packet. This is a faster communication technique.

ii) Connection Oriented Transport Layer

 This Transport Layer creates a connection with the Transport Layer at the destination
machine before transmitting the packets to the destination.
 To Create a connection following three steps are possible:
o Connection establishment
o Data transfer
o Connection termination

When all the data are transmitted connection is terminated. Connectionless Service is less
reliable than connection Oriented Service.

5. Multiplexing and Demultiplexing

 Multiple packets from diverse applications are transmitted across a network needs
very dedicated control mechanisms, which are found in the transport layer.
 The transport layer accepts packets from different processes. These packets are
differentiated by their port numbers and pass them to the network layer after adding
proper headers.
 In Demultiplexing, at the receiver's side to obtain the data coming from various
processes. It receives the segments of data from the network layer and delivers it to
the appropriate process running on the receiver's machine.

6. Flow control

 The transport layer also responsible for the flow control mechanism between the
adjacent layers of the TCP/IP model.
 It does not perform across a single link even it performs an end-to-end node.
 By imposing flow control techniques data loss can be prevented from the cause of the
sender and slow receiver.
  For instance, it uses the method of sliding window protocol in this method receiver
sends a window back to the sender to inform the size of the data is received.

7. Error Control

 Error Control is also performed end to end like the data link layer.
 In this layer to ensure that the entire message arrives at the receiving transport layer
without any error(damage, loss or duplication). Error Correction is achieved through
retransmission of the packet.
 The data has arrived or not and checks for the integrity of data, it uses the ACK and
NACK services to inform the sender

OSI Model Layer 5: The Session Layer

Dialog Control

 The session layer behaves as a dialog controller.

 It allows two communication machines to enter into a dialog.
 It permits to communicate in either half-duplex (one way at a time) or full-duplex
(two ways at a time) mode of communication.
 For Example, A dialog between a terminal connected to the mainframe can be half-
duplex.

2. Synchronization

 This layer permitted a process to add checkpoints which are referred to as

synchronization points into the stream of data.
 Example: If a system is sending a file of 2500 pages, It is advisable to add
checkpoints after every 100 to ensures that a 100-page unit is successfully received
and acknowledged independently.
 In this case, if a crash happens during transmission of page number 824; then
retransmission begins on page 801. There is no need to retransmit pages 1 to 800
pages.

3. Token Management

This layer is also responsible for managing tokens. Through this, it prevents the two users to
simultaneously attempt access of the same critical operation.
OSI Model Layer 6: The Presentation Layer

The Presentation Layer is concerned with the syntax and semantics of the information
exchanged between two communicating devices.

1) Translation

 The processes or running programs in two machines are usually exchanging the
information in the form of numbers, character strings and so on before being
transmitted. The information should be changed to bitstreams because different
computers use different encoding schemes.
 The Presentation layer is responsible for compatibility between these encoding
methods.
 The Presentation layer at the sender's side changes the information from its sender
dependent format.
 The Presentation layer at the receiving machine changes the common format into its
receivers dependent format.

Example: Convert ASCII code to EBCDIC code.

2) Encryption

 The system must be able to assure privacy regarding the message or information as it
also carries sensitive information.
 Encryption means that the sender transforms the original information or message to
another form, this data after encryption is known as the ciphertext and this ciphertext
sends the resulting message out over the network.
 Decryption concerned with the transform of the message back to its original form.
This decrypted data is known as plain text.

3) Compression

 Data Compression means reduces the number of bits to be transmitted by this reduce
the bandwidth of the data.
 Data Compression becomes particularly important in the transmission of multimedia
such as audio, video, text, etc

OSI Model Layer 7: Application Layer

1) Network Virtual terminal

 The application layer is the software version of a physical terminal and this layer
permitted to a user to log on to a remote host.
 For this, an application creates a software emulation of a terminal at the remote host.
By this user's computer can communicate with the software terminal, which in turn,
communicates with the host.
  It is shown that the remote host is communicating with one of its terminals, so it
allows the user to log on.

2) File Transfer, Access, and Management (FTAM)

 An application permits a user to access files in a remote computer, to retrieve files

from a computer and to manage files on a remote computer.
 FTAM is concerned with a hierarchical virtual file in terms of file attributes, file
structure and the types of operations performed on the files and their attributes.

3) Addressing

 To achieve communication between client and server system, there is a need for
addressing.
 When a request is sent from the client side to the server side, this request contains the
server address and its own address.
 The server answered to the client request, this request contains the destination
address, i.e., client address. DNS is used to achieve this type of addressing.

4) Mail Services

Email forwarding and storage of e-mails provided by an application layer.

5) Directory Services

A distributed database is contained by an application that provides access for global

information about various objects and services.

6) Authentication

It provides authentication to occur between devices for an extra layer of security and it
authenticates the sender or receiver's message or both.