Wednesday, 28 September 2011

Understanding Protocols, Standards

  Understanding Protocols

A protocol is a set of rules that enable effective communications to occur. We encounter protocols every day. Computer networks depend upon many different types of protocols in order to work. These protocols are very rigidly defined, and for good reason. Network cards must know how to talk to other network cards in order to exchange information, operating systems must know how to talk to network cards in order to send and receive data on the network, and application programs must know how to talk to operating systems in order to know how to retrieve a file from a network server. Protocols come in many different types. At the lowest level, protocols define exactly what type of electrical signal represents a one and what type of signal represents a zero. At the highest level, protocols allow a computer user in the United States to send an e-mail message to another computer user in New Zealand. And in between are many other levels of protocols. You find out more about these levels of protocols (which are often called layers) in the section “The Seven Layers of the OSI Reference Model,”


Understanding Standards

A standard is an agreed-upon definition of a protocol. In the early days of computer networking, each computer manufacturer developed its own networking protocols. As a result, you weren’t able to easily mix equipment from different manufacturers on a single network. Then along came standards to save the day. Standards are industry-wide protocol definitions that are not tied to a particular manufacturer. With standard
protocols, you can mix and match equipment from different vendors. As long as the equipment implements the standard protocols, it should be able to coexist on the same network. Many organizations are involved in setting standards for networking. The five most important organizations are 


American National Standards Institute (ANSI): The official standards organization in the United States. ANSI is pronounced An-See. 

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE): An international organization that publishes several key networking standards; in particular, the official standard for the Ethernet networking system (known officially as IEEE 802.3). IEEE is pronounced Eye-triple-E.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO): A federation of more than 100 standards organizations from throughout the world. If I had studied French in high school, I’d probably understand why the acronym for International Organization for Standardization is ISO, and not IOS. 


Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF): The organization responsible for the protocols that drive the Internet. 

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): An international organization that handles the development of standards for the World Wide Web.

No comments:

Post a Comment