[GRLUG] Poll: OSI Model/Protocol

[David van Geest]

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 7:57 PM, Eric Beversluis
<ebever at researchintegration.org> wrote:
>
> Item: the de facto standard for networking, TCP/IP, uses a significantly
> different model; nor have I seen any need to understand the TCP/IP
> layers in my work.
>
> I would guess designers and builders of hardware and certain programs
> would use knowledge of the TCP/IP layer protocols. But other than these
> users, who out there has had the need to be acquainted with the OSI
> model?
>

Just yesterday I (the "web developer", in this case) had to explain to
another contractor (the "embedded developer") that the TCP zero window
packets his device was throwing was indicative of his receive buffer
filing up.  And that that was likely related to why his device "wasn't
getting the response" from the my web service.

Point is, you would be surprised sometimes how quickly your network
debugging can descend the stack.  Without working knowledge of OSI in
general or the TCP/IP stack specifically, we would have been much
worse off.  Just knowing a bit of HTTP isn't going to cut it in many
cases.

I also agree with Lee that it's not really about learning the facts so
much as the concept and how to apply it to different situations.

-David


-- 
David van Geest
http://davidvg.com

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.