Presentation Layer - ISO-OSI 7-Layer Network Architecture

This layer is concerned with the syntax and semantics of the information transmitted. In order to make it possible for computers with different data representations to communicate data structures to be exchanged can be defined in abstract way alongwith standard encoding. It also manages these abstract data structres and allows higher level of data structres to be defined an exchange. It encodes the data in standard agreed way(network format). Suppose there are two machines A and B one follows 'Big Endian' and other 'Little Endian' for data representation. This layer ensures that the data transmitted by one gets converted in the form compatibale to othe machine. This layer is concerned with the syntax and semantics of the information transmitted.In order to make it possible for computers with different data representations to communicate data structures to be exchanged canbe defined in abstract way alongwith standard encoding. It also manages these abstract data structres and allows higher level of data structres to be defined an exchange. Other functions include compression, encryption etc.