What is Transport Layer? Definition and brief description of Transport Layer by Certiology

Transport Layer

The transport layer is the layer that is used to transfer data between applications. It can also be used to stream data from one device to another. An example of that would be to stream a movie from Netflix to your television or other device.

The most widely known transport layer is the one that is actually responsible for the internet’s existence. This is the Transmission Control Protocol, and is the very foundation for internet access itself. This is layer 4 in an OSI model.

This layer is used to assemble, compile, and encode data so that it can be transported from one device to another.It enables connection-oriented communications, ensures same order delivery and data integrity, it allows for flow control, traffic control, multiplexing, and byte orientation.

A good example of this layer’s everyday use would be when you download a digital product that you have purchased.You go to the vendor’s download page on the internet, click on the file you want to down load and the transfer protocol layer allows for that file to be transferred to a specified destination on your computer, tablet, phone, or streams the file live such as with a video file.

To sum up, the transport layer is responsible for end-to-end communication over a network.It is also responsible for the management of error correction, providing quality and reliability to the end user and it enables the host to send and receive error corrected data, packages, or messages over a network.

It also ensures that data sent and received is done so in the proper speed and establishes a handshake protocol to ensure a connection is robust before any data is exchanged. Without this layer the internet it’s self would not exist. There would be no way for one computer to transfer files to another computer in order to communicate.