Layers 7 through 4 are geared more to the application than the lower layers, which are designed to move packets from one place to another no matter what they contain. This top layer defines the ...

The reason it makes sense NOT to jump into deep packet inspection (or, as you ask, starting at L1), is that starting at an app layer you have a holistic view of *every* possible link in the chain. If ...

I like to think of the transport layer as the layer of the OSI Model that enables more interesting traffic. While we network engineers may love a lot of the simpler uses of the IP protocol and ...

The line between middleware and application software is blurred, which is why this chapter introduces both together. Middleware is software that has been abstracted out of the application layer for a ...