In Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) terminology, a service data unit (SDU) is a unit of data that has been passed down from an OSI layer to a lower layer and that has not yet been encapsulated into a protocol data unit (PDU) by the lower layer. It is a set of data that is sent by a user of the services of a given layer, and is transmitted semantically unchanged to a peer service user .
It differs from a PDU in that the PDU specifies the data that will be sent to the peer protocol layer at the receiving end, as opposed to being sent to a lower layer.
The SDU at any given layer, layer 'n', is the PDU of the layer above, layer 'n+1'. In effect the SDU is the 'payload' of a given PDU. That is, the process of changing a SDU to a PDU, consists of an encapsulation process, performed by the lower layer. All the data contained in the SDU becomes encapsulated within the PDU. The layer n-1 adds headers or footers, or both, to the SDU, transforming it into a PDU of layer n-1. The added headers or footers are part of the process used to make it possible to get data from a source to a destination.
Famous quotes containing the words service, data and/or unit:
“But when with moving accents thou
Shalt constant faith and service vow,
Thy Celia shall receive those charms
With open ears, and with unfolded arms.”
—Thomas Carew (1589–1639)
“This city is neither a jungle nor the moon.... In long shot: a cosmic smudge, a conglomerate of bleeding energies. Close up, it is a fairly legible printed circuit, a transistorized labyrinth of beastly tracks, a data bank for asthmatic voice-prints.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)