Protocol stack

Some of these terms are used interchangeably but strictly speaking, the suite is the definition of the communication protocols, and the stack is the software implementation of them.

[2] Imagine three computers: A, B, and C. A and B both have radio equipment and can communicate via the airwaves using a suitable network protocol (such as IEEE 802.11).

On this computer, the lower layer handlers will pass the packet up to the inter-network protocol, which, on recognizing that B is not the final destination, will again invoke lower-level functions.

The media-to-transport interface defines how transport protocol software makes use of particular media and hardware types and is associated with a device driver.

Examples of these interfaces include Berkeley sockets and System V STREAMS in Unix-like environments, and Winsock for Microsoft Windows.

An important feature of many communities of interoperability based on a common protocol stack is a spanning layer, a term coined by David Clark[3] Certain protocols are designed with the specific purpose of bridging differences at the lower layers, so that common agreements are not required there.

Protocol stack of the OSI model
The network protocol stack used by Amiga software