IT Management Class Networking Protocols Are Powerful

IT Management Class

Networking Protocols Are Powerful Catalysts of Collaboration

Across Organizational Boundaries

The foundation of the Internet is based on the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) networking protocol that serves to arbitrate control of the many connections that comprise the Web, with design criterion specifically designed to avoid packet collisions and ensure the highest performance possible. The TCP/IP protocol is based on the Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detect (CSMA/CD), an approach to managing network traffic to anticipate and reduce packet collisions, increasing networking fidelity, performance and stability over the long-term. Inherent in the design of the CSMA/CD standard is support for simplex transmission, half-duplex and full duplex transmission approaches, all designed to enable the highest levels of performance possible for a given TCP/IP network configuration (Cisco Tutorial, 2007). The CSMA/CD standard is credited with the proliferation of the World Wide Web, as it successfully supported the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and its many variants and development languages. The HTTP protocol has been one of the most disruptive technologies in the last twenty years, effectively rending the traditional desktop operating system obsolete given the wide versatility of this protocol. These rapid innovations in networking standards and performance emanate from the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) Model defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Of the many electronic standards organizations and bodies that work to define frameworks, models and techniques for integrating systems together, the ISO standards committees and teams have led the greatest level of disruptive change and technological shifts in computing over the last fifty years. The intent of this analysis is to illustrate how the OSI Model has successfully enabled enterprise-wide collaboration and continues to serve as an accelerator of change to communication patterns and the structures that support them globally through companies and organizations from all industries and sectors. All of these developments taken together have made the globalization of value chains possible, spurred and enabled the creation of entirely new business models, and redefined the nature of supply chain, customer-based and services-based communications.

The OSI Model as a Framework for Enterprise Collaboration

Clearly the OSI Model, refined by ISO working groups in 1984 to support a broader range of connectivity options through configuration of custom parameters, broader support for networking across diverse network architectures, has revolutionized collaboration across organizations globally. The OSI Model has evolved in design to support the logical groupings of data and commands over diverse networks. As the TCP/IP network protocol has become nearly ubiquitous as the foundation of the Internet there has been a continual refinement of its Application Programmer Interface (API) to support the rapid interchange of data across diverse applications and computing platforms. Inherent in the design of the OSI Model is a modular architecture that was specifically designed to ensure enough agility and customization to integrate with non-standardized network architectures and platforms. The design objectives of the OSI Model specifically focus on how to create enough scalability within its layers to ensure a high level of customization for networks already in place within enterprises. The OSI Model was specifically designed to also allow for wide variation in the design of network topologies. This translates into the ability to use the OSI Model in smaller workgroups where interoperability across divergent or disparate applications and systems are needed to scaling up to support multi-platform-based networks as well.

As a result the OSI Model is comprised of five different layers including the Application, Presentation and Session layers as the higher-order strata of the model. The Data Link and Physical layers are used for the critical tasks of mapping physical connections across divergent networks to common interface points throughout disparate networks. This physical-to-logical workflow connection is initiated in these lower layers of the OSI Model, creating a formatted data stream of packets for the upper layers of the Model (Green, 2001). Figure 1, the Open Systems Interconnect Model, illustrates how each of the layers are dependent on each other and create a hierarchy of data integration progressing from binary to network processes and applications.

Figure 1: The Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) Model

Source: (Cisco Tutorial 2007)

The full OSI Model comprised of the seven layers made pervasive system integration possible across the many diverse applications, systems and platforms throughout an enterprise. In conjunction with the pervasive adoption of the HTTP protocol and its many variants, enterprises began use the OSI Model to create gateways that could quickly interpret and translate data in one format to another. This approach to data integration and its effects on TCP/IP over time is shown in Figure 2, Comparing OSI and TCP/IP Models.

Figure 2: Comparing OSI and TCP/IP Models

Source: (Cisco Tutorial 2007)

The compression of the TCP/IP Model is occurring because the HTTP protocol stacks are increasingly taking on more of the functions that traditionally had been handled in the latter model. Programming of the HTTP and HTTPS protocols are also forcing the unification of Application, Presentation and Session layers within the OSI Model (Ciampa, 2005). This has occurred at such a rapid pace that the development of extensions in TCP/IP that the continual evolution of standards is handled with the ISO meeting committees continually. The focus on creating a highly scalable networking architecture has also created role-based and taxonomy-specific approaches to managing information and data models as well (Green, 2001). Taken together, these advances have set the foundation for the creation of global supply chain networks that are unified across TCP/IP-based networks without regard for the specific operating systems, originating applications generating the data, or uses of data across shared processes and strategies (Dyer, Hatch, 2004). TCP/IP made possible the development of entire platforms that enabled global trading exchanges to be created, optimized for transactions and eventually automated with AJAX and Java programming languages (Dyer, Hatch, 2004). All of these innovations that further created exceptional levels of performance in collaboration globally could have only been accomplished with TCP/IP as a networking protocol standard.