|  |  | Summary

In this chapter, you learned that the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) is a professional organization that defines network standards. You should know that IEEE LAN standards (including IEEE 802.3 and IEEE 802.5) are the best-known IEEE communication standards and are the predominant LAN standards in the world today. The IEEE divides the OSI link layer into two separate sublayers:

- Media Access Control (MAC)
- Logical Link Control (LLC)

This chapter explained how Layer 2 of the OSI model provides access to the networking media and physical transmission across the media, which enables the data to locate its intended destination on a network. With this in mind, you should understand how:

- Layer 2 provides reliable transit of data across a physical link
- Layer 2 uses a system called Media Access Control (MAC)
- Layer 2 uses the MAC address, which is the physical address located on a NIC
- Layer 2 uses framing to organize or group the bits

Now that you have a firm understanding of Layer 2 concepts, you are ready to learn about the Layer 2 technologies, which are discussed in the next chapter.