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UNIT 3
NETWORK ARCHITECTURE
LESSON: 10
THE ISO OSI REFERENCE MODEL
Introduction
In this lesson we will present the main concepts involved in
network architecture. Also the flow of data in a network and
purpose of the seven-layered architecture. Understanding the
function of each layer is instrumental in understanding data
communication within Local, Metropolitan or Wide networks.
Objectives
On completion of the course, students should be able to:
Understand the architecture and technology involved in a
network.
Understand The OSI reference model and IEEE 802.11 Model.
Understand the topologies used in network architecture.
Lesson in Detail
Network architecture is a design for the physical network and a
collection of specifications defining communications on that
physical network. The communication details are dependent on
the physical details, so the specifications usually come together
as a complete package.
In practice, local area networks are not really thought of in terms
of protocol layers but by what is called LAN architecture or
network architecture. (Sometimes network architecture is
referred to as a LAN type or a LAN topology.) A Network
architecture, such as ethernet, provides a bundle of specifica-
tions governing media access, physical addressing, and the
interaction of the computers with the transmission medium.
When you decide on a network architecture, you are in effect
deciding on a design for the Network Access layer. These
specifications include considerations such as the following:
Access methodAn access method is a set of rules
defining how the computers will share the transmission
medium. To avoid data collisions, computers must follow
these rules when they transmit data.
Data frame formatThe IP-level datagram from the
Internet layer is encapsulated in a data frame with a
predefined format. The data enclosed in the header must
supply the information necessary to deliver data on the
physical network. Youll learn more about data frames later
in this hour.
Cabling typeThe type of cable used for a network has an
effect on certain other design parameters, such as the electrical
properties of the bit stream transmitted by the adapter.
Cabling rulesThe protocols, cable type, and electrical
properties of the transmission have an effect on the
maximum and minimum lengths for the cable and for the
cable connector specifications.
Details such as cable type and connector type are not the direct
responsibility of the Network Access layer, but to design the
software components of the Network Access layer, developers
must assume a specific set of characteristics for the physical
network. Thus, the network access software must come with a
specific hardware design.
The ISO OSI 7 Layer Model
The history of the development of the OSI model is, for some
reason, a little-known story. Much of the work on the design of
OSI was actually done by a group at Honeywell Information
Systems, headed by Mike Canepa, with Charlie Bachman as the
principal technical member. This group was chartered, within
Honeywell, with advanced product planning and with the
design and development of prototype systems.
In the early and middle 70s, the interest of Canepas group was
primarily on database design and then on distributed database
design. By the mid-70s, it becomes clear that to support
database machines, distributed access, and the like, structured
distributed communications architecture would be required.
The group studied some of the existing solutions, including
IBMs system network architecture (SNA), the work on
protocols being done for ARPANET, and some of the concepts
of presentation services being developed for standardized
database systems. The result of this effort was the development
by 1977 of a seven-layer architecture known internally as the
distributed systems architecture (DSA).
Meanwhile, in 1977 the British Standards Institute proposed to
the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that a
standard architecture was needed to define the communications
infrastructure for distributed processing. As a result of this
proposal, ISO formed a subcommittee on Open Systems
Interconnection (Technical Committee 97, Subcommittee 16).
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) was charged
to develop proposals in advance of the first formal meeting of
the subcommittee.
Bachman and Canepa participated in these early ANSI meetings
and presented their seven-layer model. This model was chosen
as the only proposal to be submitted to the ISO subcommittee.
When the ISO group met in Washington, DC in March of
1978, the Honeywell team presented their solution. A consen-
sus was reached at that meeting that this layered architecture
would satisfy most requirements of Open Systems Intercon-
nection, and had the capacity of being expanded later to meet
new requirements. A provisional version of the model was
published in March of 1978. The next version, with some
minor refinements, was published in June of 1979 and
eventually standardized. The resulting OSI model is essentially
the same as the DSA model developed in 1977.
Introduction to the ISO - OSI Model
The ISO (International Standards Organization) has created a
layered model, called the OSI (Open Systems Interconnect)
model, to describe defined layers in a network operating system.
The purpose of the layers is to provide clearly defined functions
that can improve Internet work connectivity between com-
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puter manufacturing companies. Each layer has a standard
defined input and a standard defined output.
The modular networking architecture of Windows 95 is based
on two industry standard models for a layered networking
architecture, namely the International Organization for Stan-
dardization (ISO) model for computer networking, called the
Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) Reference Model, and the
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802
model. Windows NT and Windows for Workgroups are also
designed according to these standard models. The ISO OSI and
IEEE 802 models define a modular approach to networking,
with each layer responsible for some discrete aspect of the
networking process.
The OSI model describes the flow of data in a network, from
the lowest layer (the physical connections) up to the layer
containing the users applications. Data going to and from the
network is passed layer to layer. Each layer is able to communi-
cate with the layer immediately above it and the layer
immediately below it. This way, each layer is written as an
efficient, streamlined software component. When a layer receives
a packet of information, it checks the destination address, and
if its own address is not there, it passes the packet to the next
layer.
When two computers communicate on a network, the software
at each layer on one computer assumes it is communicating
with the same layer on the other computer. For example, the
Transport layer of one computer communicates with the
Transport layer on the other computer. The Transport layer on
the first computer has no regard for how the communication
actually passes through the lower layers of the first computer,
across the physical media, and then up through the lower layers
of the second computer.
The OSI model has seven layers. The principles that were
applied to arrive at the seven layers can be briefly summarized as
follows:
1. A layer should be created where a different abstraction is
needed.
2. Each layer should perform a well-defined function.
3. The function of each layer should be chosen with an eye
toward defining internationally standardized protocols.
4. The layer boundaries should be chosen to minimize the
information flow across the interfaces.
5. The number of layers should be large enough that distinct
functions need not be thrown together in the same layer out
of necessity and small enough that the architecture does not
become unwieldy.
Below we will discuss each layer of the model in turn, starting at
the bottom layer. Note that the OSI model itself is not a
network architecture because it does not specify the exact services
and protocols to be used in each layer. It just tells what each
layer should do. However, ISO has also produced standards for
all the layers, although these are not part of the reference model
itself. Each one has been published as a separate international
standard.
Figure OSI Reference model
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The Physical Layer
The physical layer is concerned with transmitting raw bits over a
communi-cation channel. The design issues have to do with
making sure that when one side sends a 1 bit, it is received by
the other side as a 1 bit not as a 0 bit. Typical questions here are
how many volts should be used to represent a I and how many
for a O. how many nanoseconds a bit lasts, whether transmis-
sion may proceed simultaneously in both directions, how the
initial connection is established and how it is tom down when
both sides are finished, and how many pins the network
connector has and what each pin is used for. The design issues
here largely deal with mechanical, electrical, and timing interfaces,
and the physical transmission medium, which lies below the
physical layer.
The Data Link Layer
The main task of the data link layer is to transform a raw
transmission facility into a line that appears free of undetected
transmission errors to the network layer, It accomplishes this
task by having the sender break up the input data into data
frames (typically a few hundred or a few thousand bytes) and
transmit the frames sequentially, If the service is reliable, the
receiver confirms correct receipt of each frame by sending back
an acknowledgement frame.
Another issue that arises in the data link layer (and most of the
higher layers as well) is how to keep a fast transmitter from
drowning a slow receiver in data. Some traffic regulation
mechanism is often needed to let the transmitter know how
much buffer space receiver has at the moment. Frequently, this
flow regulation and the error handling are integrated-.
Broadcast networks have an additional issue in the data link
layer: how to control access to the shared channel. A special
sublayer of the data link layer, the medium access control
sublayer, deals with this problem.
The Network Layer
Thenetwork layercontrols the operation of the subnet. A key
design issue is determining bow packets are routed from source
to destination. Routes can be on static tables that wired into
the network and rarely changed. They can also be determined at
the start of each conversation. For example, a terminal session
(e.g. a login to a remote machine). Finally they can be highly
dynamic, being determined anew for each packet, to reflect the
current network load.
If too many packets are present in thesubnet at the same time,
they will get in one anothers way, forming bottlenecks. The
control of such congestion also belongs to the network layer.
More generally, the quality of service provided (delay. transit
time, jitter, etc.) is also a network layer issue.
When a packet has to travel from onenetwork to another to get
to its destina-tion, many problems can arise. The addressing
used by the second network may be different from the first one.
The second onemay not accept the packet at all because it is too
large. The protocols may differ, and so on. I t is up to thenet-
work layer to overcome all these problems to allow
heterogeneous networks to be interconnected.
In broadcast networks, the routing problem is simple, so the
network layer is often thin or even nonexistent.
The Transport Layer
The basic function of the transport layer is to accept data from
above. split it up into smaller units if need be, pass these to the
network layer, and ensure that the pieces all arrive correctly at the
other end. Furthermore, all this must be done efficiently and in
a way that isolates the upper layers from the inevitable changes
in the hardware technology.
The transport layer also determines what type of service to
provide to the ses-sion layer, and, ultimately, to the users of the
network. The most popular type of transport connection is an
error-free point-to-point channel that delivers messages or bytes
in the order in which they were sent. However, other possible
kinds of transport service are the transporting of isolated
messages, with no guarantee about the order of delivery, and
the broadcasting of messages to multiple destina-tions. The
type of service is determined when the connection is estab-
lished. (As an aside, an error-free channel is impossible to
achieve; what people really mean by this term is that the error
rate is low enough to ignore in practice.)
The transport layer is a true end-to-end layer, all the way from
the source to the destination. In other words, a program on the
source, machine carries on a conversation with a similar program
on the destination machine, using the mes-sage headers and
control messages. In the lower layers, the protocols are between
each machine and its immediate neighbors, and not between
the ultimate source and destination machines, which may be
separated by many routers. The differ-ence between layers I
through 3, which are chained, and layers 4 through 7, which are
end-to-end, as illustrated in figure.
The Session Layer
The session layer allows users on different machines to establish
sessions between them. Sessions offer various services,
including dialog control (keeping track of whose turn it is to
transmit), token management (preventing two parties from
attempting the same critical operation at the same time), and
synchroniza-tion (check-pointing long transmissions to allow
them to continue from where they were after a crash). This layer
establishes dialog control between the two computers in a
session, regulating which side transmits, plus when and how
long it transmits.
The Presentation Layer
Unlike lower layers, which are mostly concerned with moving
bits around, the presentation layer is concerned with the syntax
and semantics of the information transmitted. In order to
make it possible for computers with different data re-presenta-
tions to communicate, the data structures to be exchanged can
be defined in an abstract way, along with a standard encoding to
be used on the wire. The presentation layer manages these
abstract data structures and allows higher-level data structures
(e.g., banking records), to be defined and exchanged.
This layer also manages security issues by providing services
such as data encryption, and compresses data so that fewer bits
need to be transferred on the network.
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The Application Layer
The application layer contains a variety of protocols that are
commonly ended by users. One widely used application
protocol is HTTP (Hyper-Text transfer Protocol), which is the
basis for the World Wide Web. When a brow-ser wants a Web
page, it sends the name of the page it wants to the server using
HTTP. The server then sends the page back. Other application
protocols are used for file transfer, and network news.
This layer represents the services that directly support applica-
tions such as software for file transfers, database access, and
electronic mail.
Summary and Reference
This course provides an introduction to the architecture and
services of a network. A general introduction illustrates the
major features of network architecture, how they interact and
introduce the concept of Reference model. The OSI reference
models and the through description of all the layers for
network architecture.
Computer Networks, Pearson Education [Andrew S.
Tanenbaum]
http:/ / www.pe.net/ ~rlewis/ Resources/ james.html
Questions
1. Which layer is responsible for converting data packets from
the Data Link Layer into electrical signals?
2. At which layer is routing implemented. Explain how?
3. Which layer is responsible for creating, managing, and
terminating sessions between applications?
4. Which layer is represented by frames?
5. Which layer is represented by segements?
6. Which layer is represented by packets?
7. Which layer is represented by bits?
8. Which layer is responsible for keeping the data from different
applications separate on the network?
9. Which layer of the OSI provides translation of data?
A. Application
B. Presentation
C. Session
D. Transport
E. Data Link
10.Segmentation of a data stream happens at which layer of the
OSI model?
A. Physical
B. Data Link
C. Network
D. Transport

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