The purpose of the network layer is to help route messages between different local networks. Central to this layer is the concept of exclusive network addresses, where every terminal connected to the ...

The communications technology of the public Internet, local area networks (LANs) and most wide area networks (WANs). The Internet Protocol (IP) is part of the TCP/IP protocol suite, and the terms "IP ...

Do you remember when we used multi-protocol routing for IPX, AppleTalk, and TCP/IP running on the same network? In the 1980s and early 1990s many enterprises had multiple protocols running on the ...

Ethernet is a layer 2 data link protocol that is widely used with the TCP/IP protocol, which resides at layers 3 and 4. To understand network communications, it is essential to learn about the ...

Getting a handle on the invisible part of your network—the protocols that are in use—can be of enormous value in helping you detect problems. So far, we've talked about the tangibles of your ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. What is a network protocol? Most textbook writers state something like this: A network protocol ...

Networks function and flourish because they deliver reliable and fast communication over large distances. And while people often marvel at the speed, it's the reliability -- made possible through the ...

I like to think of the transport layer as the layer of the OSI Model that enables more interesting traffic. While we network engineers may love a lot of the simpler uses of the IP protocol and ...

Security and networking platforms for large enterprises and data centers are rapidly evolving in sophistication and performance. In the security space, simple packet-filtering firewalls are evolving ...