Some Information about the Internet and the WWW

This page will contain any items of interest related to the Internet or World Wide Web in general that we may discuss in class, but are not included in the text. Or, it may be that there is simply more information on a given topic here than was presented in the text.

Layered Communication Architectures

A layered communication architecture, in the context of the Internet and the WWW, is a mechanism used to transfer information from a client to a server and the server back to the client (for example). Once can think of information "trickling down" from the application layer through the lower layers, then moving across the Internet till it reaches its destination, and then "bubbling up from the lowest layer to the application layer on the other side.

The table below shows the parts of two commonly-encountered such layered communication architectures. The OSI model is somewhat more theoretical, the Internet model somewhat more practical.