Need for standards

- Over the past couple of decades several of the networks that were built used different hardware and software implementations therefore they were incompatible and it became difficult for networks using different specifications to communicate with each other.

- To address the problem of networks being incompatible as well as unable to communicate with each other the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) researched various network schemes.

- The ISO recognised there was a necessitate to create a NETWORK MODEL that would help vendors create interoperable network implementations