WANs use the OSI reference model, but focus mainly on Layer 1 and Layer 2. WAN standards typically describe both physical layer delivery methods and data link layer requirements, including physical addressing, flow control, and encapsulation. WAN standards are defined and managed by a number of recognized authorities.
The physical layer protocols describe how to provide electrical, mechanical, operational, and functional connections to the services provided by a communications service provider. Some of the common physical layer standards are listed in Figure
, and their connectors illustrated in Figure 
.The data link layer protocols define how data is encapsulated for transmission to remote sites, and the mechanisms for transferring the resulting frames. A variety of different technologies are used, such as ISDN, Frame Relay or Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). These protocols use the same basic framing mechanism, high-level data link control (HDLC), an ISO standard, or one of its sub-sets or variants
2.1.4 WAN Encapsulation
Data from the network layer is passed to the data link layer for delivery on a physical link, which is normally point-to-point on a WAN connection. The data link layer builds a frame around the network layer data so the necessary checks and controls can be applied. Each WAN connection type uses a Layer 2 protocol to encapsulate traffic while it is crossing the WAN link. To ensure that the correct encapsulation protocol is used, the Layer 2 encapsulation type used for each router serial interface must be configured. The choice of encapsulation protocols depends on the WAN technology and the equipment. Most framing is based on the HDLC standard.
HDLC framing gives reliable delivery of data over unreliable lines and includes signal mechanisms for flow and error control.
The frame always starts and ends with an
8-bit flag field, the bit pattern is 01111110. Because there is a likelihood
that this pattern will occur in the actual data, the sending HDLC system always
inserts a 0 bit after every five 1s in the data field, so in practice the flag
sequence can only occur at the frame ends. The receiving system strips out the
inserted bits. When frames are transmitted consecutively the end flag of the
first frame is used as the start flag of the next frame. The address field is not needed for WAN links, which are almost always point-to-point. The address field is still present and may be one or two bytes long. The control field indicates the frame type, which may be information, supervisory, or unnumbered:
- Unnumbered
frames carry line setup messages.
- Information
frames carry network layer data.
- Supervisory
frames control the flow of information frames and request data
retransmission in the event of an error.
Several data link protocols are used, including sub-sets and proprietary versions of HDLC.
Both PPP and the Cisco version of HDLC have
an extra field in the header to identify the network layer protocol of the
encapsulated data. 
