Physical Layer of the OSI Model: Definition
Physical layer is the first or the bottom most layer of the OSI model. This layer is used to establish or terminate a connection to a communication medium. It also defines the electrical and mechanical specifications like cables, connectors and signaling options of the medium Physical layer receives data from the upper layer called the data link layer. It converts the received data into bit system. The data is then transmitted through the medium to the receiver. At the receiving end, physical layer receives the data in bit format. It forwards the data to the data link layer. Responsibilities of the physical layer: Characteristics of media - defines the characteristics of the interface which used for connecting the devices. It also define the type of the transmission media such as copper wire or fiber optic cable Encoding – define the encoding type .encoding means changing bit stream (0s and 3s) into signal. Before transmission, physical layer encodes the signal into electrical or op