*** Welcome to piglix ***

X.25


X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet switched wide area network (WAN) communication. An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange (PSE) nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, plain old telephone service connections, or ISDN connections as physical links. X.25 is a family of protocols that was popular during the 1980s with telecommunications companies and in financial transaction systems such as automated teller machines. X.25 was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts and finalized in a publication known as The Orange Book in 1976.

While X.25 has, to a large extent, been replaced by less complex protocols, especially the (IP), the service is still used (e.g. as of 2012 in the credit card payment industry) and available in niche and legacy applications.

X.25 is one of the oldest packet-switched services available. It was developed before the OSI Reference Model. The protocol suite is designed as three conceptual layers, which correspond closely to the lower three layers of the seven-layer OSI model. It also supports functionality not found in the OSI network layer.

X.25 was developed in the ITU-T (formerly CCITT) Study Group VII based upon a number of emerging data network projects. Various updates and additions were worked into the standard, eventually recorded in the ITU series of technical books describing the telecommunication systems. These books were published every fourth year with different-colored covers. The X.25 specification is only part of the larger set of X-Series specifications on public data networks.


...
Wikipedia

...