Which tasks are the responsibility of the physical layer

Network Programming with Python. Learn Web Scraping. More in Python Python Compiler. Java Core Java Tutorial. Java Type Conversion Examples. Java Wrapper Class. Java 8. Java More in Java Java Compiler. Computer Sci. Computer Architecture. Computer Network. Database DBMS. Learn SQL. Practice SQL. More Tutorials Game Development. Transmission media can be either guided such as cables, fiber optics, or UTP, or unguided when no physical connectivity is established between the sender and receiver such as in the case of wireless connections.

Since the air itself constitutes the media over which data is sent in unguided media, anyone besides the actual recipient of the information may collect that data. The physical layer sometimes plays an important role in the effective sharing of available communication resources and helps avoid contention among multiple users. It also handles the transmission rate to improve the flow of data between a sender and receiver. The physical layer provides the following services:.

By: Justin Stoltzfus Contributor, Reviewer. By: Satish Balakrishnan. Dictionary Dictionary Term of the Day. Gorilla Glass. Techopedia Terms. Connect with us. Sign up. Term of the Day. Best of Techopedia weekly. News and Special Offers occasional. Physical Layer. Techopedia Explains Physical Layer. I don't want to go to a pay-only model like some sites, but when more and more people block ads, I end up working for free.

And I have a family to support, just like you. It's priced very economically and you can read all of it in a convenient format without ads. If you want to use this site for free, I'd be grateful if you could add the site to the whitelist for Adblock. To do so, just open the Adblock menu and select "Disable on tcpipguide. Or go to the Tools menu and select "Adblock Plus Preferences Then click "Add Filter Then just click OK. The physical layer is special compared to the other layers of the model, because it is the only one where data is physically moved across the network interface.

All of the other layers perform useful functions to create messages to be sent, but they must all be transmitted down the protocol stack to the physical layer, where they are actually sent out over the network.