The Fast Local Internet Protocol (FLIP) is a communication protocol for LAN and WAN, conceived for distributed applications. FLIP was designed at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to support remote procedure call (RPC) in the Amoeba distributed operating system.[1]
In the OSI model, FLIP occupies the network layer (3), thus replacing IP, but it also obviates the need for a transport layer (4) protocol like TCP.
Layer | OSI | TCP/IP | FLIP |
---|---|---|---|
7 | Application | User-defined | User-defined |
6 | Presentation | User-defined | Amoeba Interface Language (AIL) |
5 | Session | Not used | RPC and Group communication |
4 | Transport | TCP or UDP | Not needed |
3 | Network | IP | FLIP |
2 | Data Link | E.g., Ethernet | E.g., Ethernet |
1 | Physical | E.g., Coaxial cable | E.g., Coaxial cable |
FLIP is a connectionless protocol designed to support transparency (with respect to the underlying network layers of the OSI model: 2. data link and 1. physical), efficient RPC, group communication, secure communication and easy network management. The following FLIP properties helps to achieve the requirements of distributed computing:[1]