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I think this might be the favourite thing I read on hacker news. Thank you so much Robert Graham for writing this, I always considered the OSI model fishy, and

I think this might be the favourite thing I read on hacker news. Thank you so much Robert Graham for writing this, I always considered the OSI model fishy, and although I mostly worked with stuff like CAN (that was also mentioned) I was irked when people tried to shoehorn OSI model _even there_ ! If I ever meet you, robertgraham, I am definitely going to try buying you a beer. One thing I am a bit confused though is that the Ethernet uses TCP/IP but you keep trying to hammer the point that is a internet thing. So... I'm a bit confused about this. Are the packages used by the router to talk with a local network device different than the packages used by the router to talk with a device on the internet? And is the format of these packages the same and just fwded if they address a local device but unpacked and re-packed with the proper header if they address a internet device?

robertgraham 3y ago
Ethernet doesn't use TCP/IP. Ethernet is it's own network. It has nothing to do with TCP/IP. Other things use Ethernet. Routers, when connected to each other, often use a local Ethernet network to communicate. Think of the TCP/IP Internet as it's own network, ignoring how routers physically talk to each other. Sometimes it's a directly link, a wire. Sometimes it's carrier pigeons. Sometimes it's WiFi. Sometimes it's Ethernet. Whatever it is, it's local to between the routers and does not extend outside that.
- RealityVoid 3y ago
  I think my confusion arises that, when I access some other PC on the local network, I connect to an IP and port. That's not on the wide internet, but it uses IP to communicate. Therefore... where's the ethernet's role in that?