Solaris™ 9 Network Administrator Exam Cram™ 2 (Exam CX-310-044)

Peer-to-Peer Communication

As discussed previously, an advantage of a layered model is that it breaks the process down into manageable units—the layers. Each layer actually communicates with its peer layer on another host, so the Application layer on a host sends a message to the Application layer on another host; the fact that the message passes through the Transport, Internet, and Network Interface layers on the local host (and the same layers on the other host) is transparent to the user. The Internet layer, for example, where the IP addresses are added, talks to only the Internet layer on another host. The following section describes the process of encapsulation, which is what enables the corresponding layers to interpret the messages received. ...