The reason it makes sense NOT to jump into deep packet inspection (or, as you ask, starting at L1), is that starting at an app layer you have a holistic view of *every* possible link in the chain. If ...

First, and foremost, the OSI stack is just a theoretical reference model. There is no actual OSI software. It has been around since about 1980, and it is based upon recommendations from the ITU-T and ...

Thanks for your comments on my first EtherGeek post on understanding the OSI Model. I especially enjoyed learning new ways to remember the OSI Model; for example: Please Do Not Throw Stale Pizza Away.

The third layer of the OSI Model, the network layer, is where most network engineers focus their time and expertise. As Darragh commented in my post on the data link layer, Layer 2 is cool but Layer 3 ...

An abstraction layer (or abstraction level, or a layer of abstraction) is a way of hiding the implementation details of a particular set of functionality. Software models that use layers of ...

Whether it’s wired or wireless, most data communications today happens by way of packets of information travelling over one or more networks. But before these networks can work together, though, they ...

Most IT users will be familiar by now with the idea of `the software-defined something or other’. Indeed, there vendors that already talked about software-defined everything, which really should cover ...