What Is The Alternative To TCP/IP Networking?

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Madbiker McMad Profile
Madbiker McMad answered
The most obvious alternative is OSI (Open Systems Interconnect), a large and unwieldy set of protocols used almost exclusively by military and telecoms companies.  It is a seven-layer protocol suite, going right up to the presentation and application layers (unlike the four layers of TCP/IP).  Instead of IP addresses you have NSAPs: Network Service Access Point addresses which can be various lengths.

OSI is conceptually similar to TCP/IP up to and including layer 4, and also supports the notion of connection-oriented and connectionless network protocols.  Indeed, well-written applications can be capable of using TCP/IP and OSI interchangably.

You would be hard pushed to find a supported OSI protocol stack to replace TCP/IP, but they have been known to exist and put to commercial use.

For more information, Cisco has a useful mini-introduction.
thanked the writer.
Anonymous
Anonymous commented
This article answered my question well, but I would like more info as to other network technologies besides OSI which could be used in place of TCP/IP.

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Anonymous