Week 3: Muddy on Encapsulation

This week I was a little unclear as to what encapsulation in computer networking really is. Overall, networking in itself is definitely one of the more difficult topics I've come across through my endeavors in ISM3004, but encapsulation is specifically one faction of the lesson I could not seem to grasp. As a result, I did a little bit of internet searching and came across a computer networking help site. There I found an article specifically explaining how encapsulation works in a TCP/IP model:
http://learn-networking.com/tcp-ip/how-encapsulation-works-within-the-tcpip-model.
The article basically explained encapsulation step-by-step, in which they referred to the systems having specific layers and used many analogies to facilitate my understanding of the topic. For example, the article referred to the header as a Russian doll where each doll keeps getting smaller and smaller every time you look inside of it. "Just like the dolls, each layer a sending packet passes through gains another header (or doll). When the packet is being rebuilt on the receiving end, each header is unpackaged the same way."

I now know that the data encapsulation is a process in which data is transferred from one network to another by going through all the layers of the computer (application, transport, internet and network access/link).  The data is a message that is encapsulated for safe travel via cyber space. The topic of encapsulation is still a little fuzzy, but the website and this illustration definitely helped me to grasp the concept a little better.


Photo 1 : Public Domain. http://www.accountingweb.com/files/siftmedia-accountingwebus/images/Confused.jpg


Photo 2 : Public Domain. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/UDP_encapsulation.svg