The Link Layer - Services

While the physical layer is responsible for the transmission of good signal through a physical medium, the link layer is responsible for the movement of a packet of information from one node to a neighboring node. In this context, we will consider a node to be a neighbouring node if it is connected through a single communication link, regardless of whether it’s wired or wireless.

Services provided by the link layer

The link layer can provide the following services:

Framing

This process involves the encapsulation of payloads from the higher layers of the stack into the link layer packet, commonly referred to as a frame.

Link access

A physical link may be shared between multiple nodes, which means that there must be a way to mediate access to this link, so that ...