Understanding OSI by Professor John Larmouth is freely available online. This book provides an intelligent near-beginner with an understanding of open systems interconnection (OSI).
Book Description
Some previous acquaintance with data communications as presented in the many text books on that broad subject would be useful. The book is aimed at the reader who is curious enough to ask: “Why is it that way? What advantages does that approach give? Might there be other or better ways?”
This text is not an exposition of the technical detail of the OSI Standards. Rather it aims to explain why OSI is the shape it is, and to guide the reader in a critical examination of the OSI approach to specifying rules for computer communication (computer protocols). The text should be particularly valuable for those who are newly moving into positions where they are a part of a team developing applications using OSI, either in the International Standards’ work or for their own firm. The text would also be useful for those sections of undergraduate and taught masters’ courses that are dealing with OSI, either as the main text or as follow-on reading.
Table of Contents
- Organizational Matters
- The architecture
- Direct connection, formally!
- World-wide connection
- Sorting out the mess
- Dialogues and all that
- The encoding question
- Writing it all down
- And yet more tools!
- What it is all about
- What has not been covered