Inside Macintosh: Networking With Open Transport / Part 1 - Open Transport Essentials

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Open Transport

This chapter provides an overview of the 1.3 release of the Open Transport, a communications architecture for implementing network protocols and other communications systems. This book discusses only the implementation of Open Transport on the Mac OS--that is, the set of programming interfaces for applications and other software running on Mac OS computers.

This chapter introduces some of the terminology that is used throughout the rest of this book. Read this chapter to gain an overview of the Open Transport architecture and the way it's used to implement networking protocols. You should also read this chapter for suggestions on which networking protocols to use for various application requirements.

This chapter begins with a brief description of Open Transport and the advantages it provides over earlier Macintosh networking architectures. Next, "Basic Networking Concepts" defines a variety of terms used in Open Transport and in networking in general. The section "About Networking With Open Transport" describes the Open Transport architecture and some concepts important to Open Transport: providers, transport independence, and endpoints. Finally, the section "Deciding Which Protocol to Use" gives you guidelines to help you decide which protocol or protocol family to use for a given purpose.

The chapters that make up the rest of this book describe how to use the Open Transport programming interface and the Open Transport implementations of AppleTalk and TCP/IP.

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Chapter Contents

Introduction to Open Transport

Basic Networking Concepts

Types of Protocols

Addressing

Protocol Stacks and the OSI Model

About Networking With Open Transport

Open Transport Architecture

Open Transport API

Software Modules

Drivers and Hardware

Open Transport and Interrupt-Time Processing

Providers: Endpoints, Mappers, and Services

Transport Independence

Endpoints and Protocol Layering

Deciding Which Protocol to Use

General Purpose or Special Purpose

Choice of Protocol Family

High-Level or Low-Level Protocol

Connection-Oriented or Connectionless

Transaction-Based or Transactionless

Summary