Data Link Layer

The data link layer is layer two of the seven-layer OSI model as well as of the five-layer TCP/IP reference model. It responds to service requests from the network layer and issues service requests to the physical layer.

This is the layer which transfers data between adjacent network nodes in a wide area network or between nodes on the same local area network segment. The data link layer provides the functional and procedural means to transfer data between network entities and might provide the means to detect and possibly correct errors that may occur in the Physical layer. Examples of data link protocols are Ethernet for local area networks and PPP, HDLC and ADCCP for point-to-point connections.

The data link is all about getting information from one place to a selection of other places. At this layer one does not need to be able to go everywhere, just able to go somewhere else. It is analogous to social interaction in that one needs to be able to talk to Bob to get a message to Fred or James.

The data link provides data transfer across the physical link. That transfer might or might not be reliable; many data link protocols do not have acknowledgments of successful frame reception and acceptance, and some data link protocols might not even have any form of checksum to check for transmission errors. In those cases, higher-level protocols must provide flow control, error checking, and acknowledgments and retransmission.

In some networks, such as IEEE 802 local area networks, the data link layer is split into MAC and LLC sublayers; this means that the IEEE 802.2 LLC protocol can be used with all of the IEEE 802 MAC layers, such as Ethernet, token ring, IEEE 802.11, etc., as well as with some non-802 MAC layers such as FDDI. Other data link layer protocols, such as HDLC, are specified to include both sublayers, although some other protocols, such as Cisco HDLC, use HDLC's low-level framing as a MAC layer in combination with a different LLC layer