The TCP/IP Stack Revisited

The four-layer of the TCP/IP stack are:

  • Application – Network processes and application
  • Transport – Inter-host communication, break data into packets
  • Network – Route packets through the network
  • Link – Access to the network

On the sending end, each layer prepends header information and the corresponding layer on the receiving end take off, interpret and make sense of the pre-pended data.

Data going down the stack and each layer adding header data.

Tcp/ip stack down the stack

The data is then transmitted on the physical medium

The tcp/ip stack bits on the link layer

The corresponding layer on the receiving end reads and act on the header information 

Packet traversing the the stack

Creating this virtual inter-layer communication

Virtual layer to layer communication

 

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