Virtually all networks in use today are based in some fashion on the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) standard. OSI was developed in 1984 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a global federation of national standards organizations representing approximately 130 countries.

The core of this standard is the OSI Reference Model, a set of seven layers that define the different stages that data must go through to travel from one device to another over a network. In this article, you'll find out all about the OSI standard.