SESSION & PRESENTATION LAYERS

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BAD/HNDIT/PT/E/2011/08

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SESSION LAYER

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SESSION LAYER

It is the thinnest layer in the OSI model. The session layer is the network dialog controller. It was designed to establish, maintain, and synchronize the interaction between communicating devices.
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The Interaction between layers in the OSI MODEL

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SESSION LAYER

The session layer

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This layer is only seldom or

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Provides a user oriented connection service Synchronization Points Little capabilities, usually not implemented or part of application layer Telnet : GA and SYNCH FTP: re-get allows to continue an interrupted download ISO 8327 Session Protocol

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SESSION LAYER

FTP keeps track of the data blocks transmitted and is able to

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SESSION LAYER
The session layer provides the following services: Dialog management: Deciding whose turn it is to talk. Some applications operate in half-duplex mode, whereby the two sides alternate between sending and receiving messages, and never send data simultaneously. In the ISO protocols, dialog management is implemented through the use of a data token. 5/3/12

SESSION LAYER
Synchronization: Move the two session entities into a known state. The transport layer handles only communication errors, synchronization deals with upper layer errors. In a file transfer, for instance, the transport layer might deliver data correctly, but the application layer might be unable to write the file because the file system is full.
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SESSION LAYER

Users can split the data stream into pages, inserting synchronization points between each page. When an error occurs, the receiver can resynchronize the state of the session to a previous synchronization point. This requires that the sender hold data as long as may be needed.

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SESSION LAYER

Synchronization is achieved through the use of sequence numbers. The ISO protocols provide both major and minor synchronization points. When resynchronizing, one can only go back as far as the previous major synchronization point. In addition, major synchronization points are acknowledged through explicit messages (making their use expensive).
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SESSION LAYER

In contrast, minor synchronization points are just markers. Activity management: Allow the user to delimit data into logical units called activities. Each activity is independent of activities that come before and after it, and an activity can be processed on its own. Activities might be used to delimit files of a multi-file transfer.
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SESSION LAYER

Activities are also used for quarantining, collecting all the messages of a multi-message exchange together before processing them. The receiving application would begin processing messages only after all the messages had arrived. This provides a way of helping insure that all or none of a set of operations are performed.
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SESSION LAYER

For example, a bank transaction may consist of locking a record, updating a value, and then unlocking the record. If an application processed the first operation, but never received the remaining operations (due to client or network failures), the record would remain locked forever. Quarantining addresses this problem. Exception handling: A General purpose mechanism for reporting errors.
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SESSION LAYER

Note: The TCP/IP protocols do not include a session layer at all. Session protocols are important with the telephony applications such as H.323 which employs H.225 to establish sessions. Another example is The IETF Session Initiation Protocol(SIP). The ISO 8327 is an OSI basic connection oriented session protocol specification.

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SESSION LAYER

Responsibilities: establishes, manages, and terminates sessions between applications. service location lookup Many protocol suites do not include a session layer.

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PRESENTATION LAYER

The presentation layer is concerned with preserving the meaning of information sent across a network. The presentation layer may represent (encode) the data in various ways Ex: data compression, or encryption), but the receiving peer will convert the encoding back into its original meaning.
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PRESENTATION LAYER

The presentation layer concerns itself with the following issues: 1. Data Format. v. Converting the complex data structures used by an application into a byte stream transmitted across the network. Eg: strings, integers, structures, etc. -

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2.

Compressing data to reduce the amount of transmitted data Ex: to save money. 3. Security and Privacy issues: v. Encryption : Scrambling the data so that only authorized participants can unscramble the messages of a conversation. Recall, that it's easy to \wiretap"transmission media such as Ethernets.
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PRESENTATION LAYER

Authentication : Verifying that the remote party really is the party they claim to be rather than an impostor. The presentation layer is responsible for translation, compression, and encryption. The presentation layer handles the conversion of data between a Standards-based or platform independent formats to a format understood by the local machine.
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Specific responsibilities of the presentation layer are as followings: Data translations Data encryption Data compression

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Specifies the data representation format for the application

Examples:

MME(part of L7) and UUENCODING(part of L7) ISO: ASN.1 and BER

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PRESENTATION LAYER

The layer 6 is responsible for common language between end systems. The presentation layer specifies the meaning of the data and how each byte should be interpreted. In the Internet the presentation layer uses ASCII coding and the meaning of the data is specified by a so- called Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MME) header.
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PRESENTATION LAYER

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PRESENTATION LAYER

Note: Encryption is the solution to these problems. Where should encryption be done? Data link or presentation layer? It is not exactly clear. For instance, it is easy to add encryption at the data link layer, encrypting every transmitted frame. However, if you are concerned about security, would you trust someone else to perform encryption for you? On the other hand, having the 5/3/12 presentation

PRESENTATION LAYER

MME is used by SMTP(Email) and HTTP(Web browsing) for example. UUENCODING is one example of how to transform 8 bitbytes into 7- bit-bytes and it is typically used with Internet Mail attachments.
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PRESENTATION LAYER

Responsibilities: data encryption data compression data conversion Many protocol suites do not include a Presentation Layer.

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PRESENTATION LAYER

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