Most of the teachers fail to explain about the OSI model related to computer networking. I came up with the idea that could help students realise about the basic purpose of OSI layers. Basically there are 7 layers in an OSI model. It can be explained by inviting 14 students to act as different layers of the OSI model and 1 student to act as a carrier medium of the message. We need following things to organise the play to demonstrate OSI model.

• 7 students to act as a sender.
• 7 students to as a receiver.
• 1 student to act as a carrier medium to transfer message letter between sender and receiver.
• 7 letter covers with different colors.
• a piece of paper and a pen to write the actual message.

Divide students into 2 sets, 7 students in set1 to act as a sender node and 7 students in set2 to act as receiver node. Line up the students in set1, opposite to the students in set2 so that they are not able to see what’s going on other set. Provide letter cover with different colors to each student in set1 from no1 student who should act as an application layer.

Inform the students on the sender’s node to put the letter or message inside their own envelop when they receive anything from upper layers. Ask no1(application layer) student to write an actual message on a piece of paper and wrap it in his own envelope and pass it to the lower layer.

Now no2 student (presentation layer) upon receiving the letter with the actual message wraps the letter received from no1 student into his envelope. Likewise, each student acting as a session, transport, network, data and physical layer will wrap the letter with their own letter.

Ask the carrier student to transfer the letter from sender’s node to the receiver’s node and deliver the letter to the student acting as a physical layer(no7).

Each student on the receiver’s node should unwrap the letter on each layer one by one and pass on to the upper layer. Finally the student acting as an application layer on receiver’s node can read the actual message sent by the sender.

This play will help students to understand the basic concept of how OSI model is structured. Later, teacher can explain in detail about the function of each layers, why is it important to wrap a message with extra information on each layer, what kind of information is attached to the message on each layer, what different kind of carrier or medium can be used to transport the message etc etc