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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.
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: