Why is OSI Important?
OSI was developed to facilitate the development of standards based protocols for data communication and more generally internetworking. OSI was first conceived at a time when computer products, even from the same manufacturer, often would no communicate with each other. In fact at the time many organizations were purchasing special devices called protocol converters to allow different systems to share data. These products worked after a fashion, meaning that they might be able to convert the data formats, however converting data does not mean that applications running on different systems will be able to interact effectively with each other. OSI is a layered architecture. This means that communication protocols that provide similar functions are grouped together on a peer level or layer. A protocol by the way is an agreement that facilitates communication. The highest layer of the OSI model addresses applications such as file transfer, email, etc. Applications are something that most u
