Note: Many topics at this site are reduced versions of the text in "The Encyclopedia of Networking and Telecommunications." Search results will not be as extensive as a search of the book's CD-ROM.

Network architectures define the standards and techniques for designing and building communication systems for computers and other devices. In the past, vendors developed their own architectures and required that other vendors conform to this architecture if they wanted to develop compatible hardware and software. There are proprietary network architectures such as IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture) and there are open architectures like the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model defined by the International Organization for Standardization.