Describing the OSI Encapsulation Process

Now let's put it all together with an example and see how all of the pieces fit together. Imagine that you are on your company website and you have clicked a link on the page. By doing so, you have just made a request of the web server to send you a document (most web pages exist as documents with an .html extension). This document will be sent to your computer, which will use the proper application (your Internet browser) to display the document so you can view it.

So that we have some real information to use in the example, details about the two computers (your laptop and the web server) are shown in Table 2.1. Refer to it as we take the information and identify where it goes in the process and how it is used. To simplify the process, we are going to assume that the web server is not located on the Internet, but is located on the same network as your computer. This is not unusual, as many organizations use web servers on the local network to provide information to employees.