here's a fine referenice for the OSI reference model:
http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/OSI_Layers.asp
The ILP project lives entirely in layer 7. Specific implementations would
be constrained to specific choices in the lower levels, but I don't think
ILP should care if the data is in ASCII or EBCDIC -- which is contrived, as
all right-thinking protocols have demanded Unicode UTF8 for some years now.
But still it shouldn't matter. And likewise for if messages are JSON-LD or
Bencoded. Shouldn't matter.
All the communications are over reliable bi-directional streams. That might
fail at any time for any reason, but when they aren't failing they're
reliable bi-directional streams. if the failure is "NETWORK TIMEOUT" or
some other kind of failure, that doesn't matter, it's a failure of a
stream. Which is too detailed, a failure of a stream implies a failure of a
message, which as a semantic thing is composed of key/value or index/value
associations, regardless of encoding or wire-protocols.
In the language of that reference, ILP's internal layers (atop semantic
messages between peers) would be "tiers" in a "tiered application
architecture."
okay that's my two cents.
> Look forward to your thoughts!
>