Presentation
Layer

Overview

The Presentation layer protocols provide an interface between user applications and various presentation-related services required by those applications. For example, data encryption/decryption protocols are considered presentation layer protocols as are protocols that translate between encoding schemes such as ASCII to EBCDIC. A common misconception is that the graphical user interfaces such as Microsoft Windows and X-Windows are presentation layer protocols. This is not true. Presentation layer protocols are dealing with network communications whereas Microsoft Windows and/or X-Windows are installed on end user computers.