Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
The network protocols form a layered stack. The bottom of the stack
is the physical connection: coax (now rare), twisted-pair (cat-5/cat-6
cable with rectangular plugs on the end), fiber optic... etc. At some
level above that is the part that translates data packets (containing IP
or IPX or other addressing scheme) to a data packet with the
MAC/hardware address of the destination connection -- both IP and IPX
could be running over the same cable without conflicts. Above that is
the part that handles, say, TCP or UDP -- this is the part that detects
TCP missed packets from a connection. Somewhere above that layer is
where things like FTP, SMTP, POP3, Telnet, HTTP, etc. live.
Geez, this network programming stuff is complicated, yet at the same
time very interesting and, well, not all *that* complicated! I guess it
helps to keep reading this stuff over and over, too. I just read the
section on socket programming in Programming Python, which also
discussed these layers and such.
I don't know why, but I find it all very interesting! I think one reason
is because this is sort of a "coming together" of everything I've ever
known/heard/read about the internet, but I never stopped to put it all
together until now.
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