presentation layer definition in simple

Presentation Layer

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What is the Presentation Layer?

Presentation Layer is the Layer 6 of the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model . The presentation layer structures data that is passed down from the application layer into a format suitable for network transmission. This layer is responsible for data encryption, data compression, character set conversion, interpretation of graphics commands, and so on. The network redirector also functions at this layer.

Presentation Layer functions

Translation: Before being transmitted, information in the form of characters and numbers should be changed to bit streams. Layer 6 is responsible for interoperability between encoding methods as different computers use different encoding methods. It translates data between the formats the network requires and the format the computer.
Encryption: Encryption at the transmitter and decryption at the receiver
Compression: Data compression to reduce the bandwidth of the data to be transmitted. The primary role of data compression is to reduce the number of bits to be transmitted. Multimedia files, such as audio and video, are bigger than text files and compression is more important.

Role of Presentation Layer in the OSI Model

This layer is not always used in network communications because its functions are not always necessary. Translation is only needed if different types of machines need to talk with each other. Encryption is optional in communication. If the information is public there is no need to encrypt and decrypt info. Compression is also optional. If files are small there is no need for compression.

Explaining Layer 6 in video

Most real-world protocol suites, such as TCP/IP , do not use separate presentation layer protocols. This layer is mostly an abstraction in real-world networking.

An example of a program that loosely adheres to layer 6 of OSI is the tool that manages the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) — although it’s technically considered an application-layer protocol per the TCP/IP model.

However, HTTP includes presentation layer services within it. HTTP works when the requesting device forwards user requests passed to the web browser onto a web server elsewhere in the network.

It receives a return message from the web server that includes a multipurpose internet mail extensions (MIME) header. The MIME header indicates the type of file – text, video, or audio – that has been received so that an appropriate player utility can be used to present the file to the user.

In short, the presentation layer

Makes sure that data which is being transferred or received should be accurate or clear to all the devices which are there, in a closed network.

ensures proper formatting and delivery to and from the application layer;
performs data encryption; and
manages serialization of data objects.

Layer 6 Presentation Layer

De/Encryption, Encoding, String representation

The presentation layer (data presentation layer, data provision level) sets the system-dependent representation of the data (for example, ASCII, EBCDIC) into an independent form, enabling the syntactically correct data exchange between different systems. Also, functions such as data compression and encryption are guaranteed that data to be sent by the application layer of a system that can be read by the application layer of another system to the layer 6. The presentation layer. If necessary, the presentation layer acts as a translator between different data formats, by making an understandable for both systems data format, the ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation One) used.

OSI Layer 6 - Presentation Layer

The presentation layer is responsible for the delivery and formatting of information to the application layer for further processing or display. It relieves the application layer of concern regarding syntactical differences in data representation within the end-user systems. An example of a presentation service would be the conversion of an EBCDIC-coded text computer file to an ASCII-coded file. The presentation layer is the lowest layer at which application programmers consider data structure and presentation, instead of simply sending data in the form of datagrams or packets between hosts. This layer deals with issues of string representation - whether they use the Pascal method (an integer length field followed by the specified amount of bytes) or the C/C++ method (null-terminated strings, e.g. "thisisastring\0"). The idea is that the application layer should be able to point at the data to be moved, and the presentation layer will deal with the rest. Serialization of complex data structures into flat byte-strings (using mechanisms such as TLV or XML) can be thought of as the key functionality of the presentation layer. Encryption is typically done at this level too, although it can be done on the application, session, transport, or network layers, each having its own advantages and disadvantages. Decryption is also handled at the presentation layer. For example, when logging on to bank account sites the presentation layer will decrypt the data as it is received.[1] Another example is representing structure, which is normally standardized at this level, often by using XML. As well as simple pieces of data, like strings, more complicated things are standardized in this layer. Two common examples are 'objects' in object-oriented programming, and the exact way that streaming video is transmitted. In many widely used applications and protocols, no distinction is made between the presentation and application layers. For example, HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), generally regarded as an application-layer protocol, has presentation-layer aspects such as the ability to identify character encoding for proper conversion, which is then done in the application layer. Within the service layering semantics of the OSI network architecture, the presentation layer responds to service requests from the application layer and issues service requests to the session layer. In the OSI model: the presentation layer ensures the information that the application layer of one system sends out is readable by the application layer of another system. For example, a PC program communicates with another computer, one using extended binary coded decimal interchange code (EBCDIC) and the other using ASCII to represent the same characters. If necessary, the presentation layer might be able to translate between multiple data formats by using a common format. Wikipedia

Data conversion
Character code translation
Compression
Encryption and Decryption

The Presentation OSI Layer is usually composed of 2 sublayers that are:

CASE common application service element

Sase specific application service element, layer 7 application layer, layer 6 presentation layer, layer 5 session layer, layer 4 transport layer, layer 3 network layer, layer 2 data link layer, layer 1 physical layer.

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Presentation layer in osi model.

Last Updated on March 7, 2024 by Abhishek Sharma

The OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model is a conceptual framework used to understand the functions of a telecommunication or computing system. It consists of seven layers, each responsible for specific tasks. The sixth layer, known as the Presentation Layer, plays a crucial role in ensuring that data exchanged between systems is readable and usable. Let’s explore the functions and importance of the Presentation Layer in the OSI model.

What is Presentation Layer in OSI Model?

The Presentation Layer, the sixth layer of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model, is responsible for ensuring that data exchanged between systems is in a format that can be interpreted and used by the receiving system. It performs various functions, including data translation, encryption, compression, and formatting, to facilitate efficient and secure communication between networked devices.

Functions of the Presentation Layer

Below are some of the functions of the Presentation Layer in OSI Model:

Data Translation: The Presentation Layer translates data from the format used by the application layer into a format that can be transmitted over the network. This includes encoding, compression, and encryption.
Data Formatting: It ensures that data is formatted according to the specifications of the application layer. This includes converting between different character sets, such as ASCII and Unicode.
Data Compression: The Presentation Layer compresses data to reduce the amount of bandwidth required for transmission, improving network efficiency.
Data Encryption: It encrypts data to ensure that it remains secure during transmission, protecting it from unauthorized access.
Data Syntax: The Presentation Layer defines the syntax for data representation, ensuring that both the sender and receiver understand the structure of the data being exchanged.

Importance of the Presentation Layer

Importance of Presentation Layer are:

Data Integrity: By ensuring that data is formatted correctly and encrypted, the Presentation Layer helps maintain the integrity of data during transmission.
Interoperability: The Presentation Layer enables different systems to communicate with each other by ensuring that data is translated into a common format that both systems understand.
Efficiency: Data compression reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted, improving network efficiency and reducing bandwidth requirements.
Security: Encryption provided by the Presentation Layer ensures that data remains secure and protected from unauthorized access.

Conclusion The Presentation Layer is a crucial component of the OSI model, responsible for ensuring that data exchanged between systems is in a format that can be understood and used. By performing functions such as data translation, formatting, compression, and encryption, the Presentation Layer plays a vital role in maintaining data integrity, facilitating interoperability, and ensuring the security of data during transmission.

FAQs related to Presentation Layer in OSI Model

Here are some of the FAQs related to Presentation Layer in OSI Model:

Q1: What is the role of the Presentation Layer in the OSI model? The Presentation Layer ensures that data exchanged between systems is in a usable format, performing functions such as data translation, encryption, compression, and formatting.

Q2: How does the Presentation Layer ensure data security? The Presentation Layer encrypts data before transmission, making it unreadable to unauthorized parties, thus ensuring data security.

Q3: Why is data compression important in the Presentation Layer? Data compression reduces the size of data packets, leading to faster transmission speeds and optimized bandwidth usage, which is crucial in high-traffic networks.

Q4: How does the Presentation Layer facilitate interoperability between systems? By translating data into a common format that both sender and receiver understand, the Presentation Layer enables different systems to communicate with each other seamlessly.

Q5: Can the Presentation Layer be bypassed in data transmission? While it is possible to bypass the Presentation Layer in some cases, doing so can lead to compatibility issues between systems and is not recommended.

Physical Layer

Data link layer, network layer, routing algorithm, transport layer, application layer, application protocols, network security.

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Presentation Layer: Protocols, Examples, Services | Functions of Presentation Layer

Presentation Layer is the 6th layer in the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model where all application programmer consider data structure and presentation, beyond of simply sending the data into form of datagram otherwise packets in between the hosts. Now, we will explain about what is presentation layer with its protocols, example, service ; involving with major functions of presentation Layer with ease. At the end of this article, you will completely educate about What is Presentation Layer in OSI Model without any hassle.

What is Presentation Layer?

Definition : Presentation layer is 6th layer in the OSI model , and its main objective is to present all messages to upper layer as a standardized format. It is also known as the “ Translation layer “. This layer takes care of syntax and semantics of messages exchanged in between two communication systems. Presentation layer has responsible that receiver can understand all data, and it will be to implement all data languages can be dissimilar of two communication system.

Presentation layer is capable to handle abstract data structures, and further it helps to defined and exchange of higher-level data structures.

Presentation Layer Tutorial Headlines:

In this section, we will show you all headlines about this entire article; you can check them as your choice; below shown all:

Functions of Presentation Layer

Protocols of Presentation Layer

Example of Presentation Layer Protocols

Presentation Layer Services

Design issues with presentation layer, faqs (frequently asked questions), what is meant by presentation layer in osi model, what protocols are used in the presentation layer, can you explain some presentation layer examples, what are the main functions of the presentation layer, what are services of presentation layer in osi, let’s get started, functions of presentation layer.

Presentation layer performs various functions in the OSI model ; below explain each one –

Presentation layer helps to translate from American standard code for information interchange (ASCII) to the extended binary code decimal interchange code (EBCDIC).
It deals with user interface as well as supporting for several services such as email and file transfer.
It provides encoding mechanism for translating all messages from user dependent format with common format and vice – versa.
It’s main goal for data encryption and decryption of entire data before they are getting transmission over all common platforms.
It provides data compression mechanism for source point to decrease the all bits which are transmitted. Due to this data compression system, user are able to transmit enlarge multimedia file at fastest file transfer rate.
Due to use of Data Encryption and Decryption algorithm, presentation layer provides more network protection and confidentiality while transmission data over the entire network.
This layer offers best flexibility for data translation for making connections with various kinds of servers , computers, and mainframes over the similar network.
Presentation layer has responsible to fix all translations in between all network systems .

Presentation layer is used various protocols; below list is available –

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
File Transfer Protocol
Network News Transfer Protocol
Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)
Independent Computing Architecture (ICA), the Citrix system core protocol
Lightweight Presentation Protocol (LPP)
NetWare Core Protocol (NCP)
Network Data Representation (NDR)
Telnet (a remote terminal access protocol)
Tox Protocol
eXternal Data Representation (XDR)
25 Packet Assembler/Disassembler Protocol (PAD)

Example of Presentation Layer Protocols:

Here, we will discuss all examples of presentation layer protocols; below explain each one –

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) : MIME protocol was introduced by Bell Communications in 1991, and it is an internet standard that provides scalable capable of email for attaching of images, sounds and text in a message.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) : FTP is a internet protocol, and its main goal is to transmit all files in between one host to other hosts over the internet on TCP/IP connections.

Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) : This protocol is used to make connection with Usenet server and transmit all newsgroup articles in between system over internet.

Apple Filing Protocol (AFP ) : AFP protocol is designed by Apple company for sharing all files over the entire network .

Lightweight Presentation Protocol (LPP) : This protocol is used to offer ISO presentation services on top of TCP/IP based protocol stacks.

NetWare Core Protocol (NCP) : NCP is a Novell client server model protocol that is designed especially for Local Area Network (LAN). It is capable to perform several functions like as file/print-sharing, clock synchronization, remote processing and messaging.

Network Data Representation (NDR) : NDR is an data encoding standard, and it is implement in the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE).

Telnet (Telecommunication Network) : Telnet protocol was introduced in 1969, and it offers the command line interface for making communication along with remote device or server .

Tox : The Tox protocol is sometimes regarded as part of both the presentation and application layer , and it is used for sending peer-to-peer instant-messaging as well as video calling.

eXternal Data Representation (XDR) : This protocol provides the description and encoding of entire data, and it’s main goal is to transfer data in between dissimilar computer architecture.

25 Packet Assembler/Disassembler Protocol (PAD) : Main objective of this protocol is to obtain all data from group of terminal and allots the data into X. 25 packets.

Presentation layer provides several services like as –

Data conversion
Character code translation
Compression
Encryption and Decryption
It helps to handle and maintain Syntax and Semantics of the message transmitted.
Encoding data can be done as standard agreed like as String, double, date, and more.
Standard Encoding can be done on wire.

Presentation Layer is the 6th layer in the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model that is the lowest layer, where all application programmer consider data structure and presentation, beyond of simply sending the data into form of datagram otherwise packets in between the hosts.

Presentation layer is used various protocols like as:

Yes! In this article, already we have been explained many examples of presentation layer; you can check them.

Presentation layer has a responsibility for formatting, translation, and delivery of the information for getting to process otherwise display .

Now, i hope that you have completely learnt about what is presentation layer with its protocols, example, service ; involving with major functions of presentation Layer with ease. If this post is useful for you, then please share it along with your friends, family members or relatives over social media platforms like as Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, Twitter, and more.

Also Read: Data Link Layer: Protocols, Examples | Functions of Data Link Layer

If you have any experience, tips, tricks, or query regarding this issue? You can drop a comment!

What is the Presentation Layer in Programming?

Trevor Page

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The presentation layer is one of the three main layers in object-oriented programming.

The three main layers include:

Presentation Layer
Business Layer

Now, these three layers are typically related to enterprise web applications. It's a design pattern used to help separate your code out in three distinct areas that (if need be) can easily be switched out with another programming language or technology.

So if you keep all of your presentation layer code in one area of your application, switching presentation layer technologies shouldn't be too difficult.

Same rules apply to the business and data layers. If you separated your code out properly, switching databases shouldn't be too big of an issue.

Having said that, we'll be focusing on the presentation layer.

The four big players (in terms of technology) in the presentation layer are as follows:

Let’s dive into the overviews of each of these big players, shall we?

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is a technology used to communicate with web browsers. All browsers follow the rules laid out in HTML (currently in its 5th iteration).

HTML defines a bunch of different HTML elements known as tags that are put together to make up the basic layout of a web page. These tags are used to define things like the title of the webpage (which appears in the tab of your browser), the actual text that appears on the page, images, buttons and more.

Thankfully HTML isn’t too tough to learn as it’s more of a game of memorizing the most popular tags and using them to create your simple web pages. HTML is not a programming language, as it doesn’t define variables, data types, control structure or the like. This is also what makes it fairly easy to learn.

We’ll be diving into examples of HTML “code” later, so stay tuned.

CSS (cascading style sheets) is used to add some “pizazz” to your web pages. CSS is used to add a design look and feel to your web pages through the use of its cascading rules. We won’t get into the exact rules that CSS uses to apply its designs just yet, but again, stay tuned for a more in depth explanation.

All you need to know is that CSS is used to make a web page look nice. You can use it to choose which parts of the web page should be which color, how big or small elements should be, what fonts should be used and more.

If you’ve ever landed on a web page that wasn’t able to properly load its CSS, you’d likely think that the website was completely broken. It is often fixed by forcing the page to reload and then the CSS usually gets picked up the second time and everything loads properly and the website goes back to looking great. This situation is quite rare, but I thought I’d mention it because it’s a great example of just how powerful CSS is.

JavaScript is used to make your web pages interactive. It allows you to put some real programming functionality into web pages (as HTML is not a programming language and thus cannot add real programming elements to a page).

Examples of what JavaScript can do is when you’re logging into an application and you forget to provide information in one of the fields. JavaScript can detect that you’ve forgotten to type in your username or password and can provide you with a prompt explaining that you need to fill in your username and password before you can continue.

JavaScript shouldn’t be confused with Java, as they are two different technologies. Java is part of the business layer and has no place in the presentation layer. Java is known as a server side language, as it exists and runs on servers. JavaScript is known as a client side technology, and thus lives where the “clients” are, which is inside the actual web browsers.

A good way to think of the difference between the two languages is that when you land on a web page and it loads in your browser, it will also load any JavaScript code inside the page and you’ll actually be able to access that code and read it. Whereas, you’d never be able to read the Java code, as it’s not loaded in your browser because it’s a server side technology.

That simple distinction between the two languages makes for two very different languages in terms of their use and functionality.

The syntax for JavaScript, however, is fairly similar to Java. This is nice since you’ll be able to look at a piece of JavaScript code and more or less understand what’s going on. So you should be able to pick up the JavaScript language a lot quicker if you already have a good command of the Java language.

JQuery is a technology that’s used in tandem with JavaScript. JQuery makes your life as a web programmer so much easier for one reason, it allows you to write code once and have it work across all the browsers.

In today’s world we have so many browsers that can be downloaded for free and used to peruse the web. This actually makes building websites a bit challenging, as every browser has made up their own minds on how to “render” an HTML web page.

This means that a webpage loaded on Safari might not look the same as if it’s loaded on Internet Explorer, or Firefox, or Chrome.

These inconsistencies drive web programmers crazy, so that’s why jQuery was introduced. It allows you to write your JavaScript in a sort of “browser agnostic” way. You can write it once, and jQuery will execute the code appropriately depending on which browser it’s loaded it. VERY COOL!

The best part of all of these technologies is that they are all free to use.

And thankfully, they are also free to learn via these tutorials!

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