Future of the OSI Model

The OSI, or Open System Interconnection, model defines a networking framework for implementing protocols in seven layers. Control is passed from one layer to the next, starting at the application layer in one station, and proceeding to the bottom layer, over the channel to the next station and back up the hierarchy. The OSI model is not a real network architecture, because it does not really specify the services and protocols each layer should use. …

…the beginning. The OSI model will also remain memories for another reason: even if TCP/IP is the model concretely used, people have tendency and use OSI like the current network model of reference. In fact, TCP/IP and OSI have very close structures, and it is especially the effort of standardization of OSI which imposed this general "confusion" between the 2 models. One commonly tends to consider TCP/IP as the real implementation of OSI.