An analysis of 7-layer dip in the context of the ISO OSI protocol stack
#AND#
A suggestion for Jennifer French’s party
Keiko’s Tex-Mex 7-Layer Dip
The trick to keeping the dip from being runny is to drain and (in some cases) pat dry with paper towels everything.
Layer 1
* 2 large cans bean dip (preferrably Frito Lay)
Drain any water from cans and spread on bottom of a rectangular cake dish
This would be the physical layer. The physical layer corresponds to the actual medium used. Normal media are wire (twisted pair, sheilded twisted pair, coaxial cable), optical fibre, or unguided media such as microwave transmission. It seems to me that the attenuation problem would be particularly severe in bean dip, although there would probably be very little intermodulation, crosstalk, or burst noise.
Layer 2
* 3 avocados peeled and crushed
* 2 tbsp. lemon juice
* sprinkling of garlic salt
Mix 3 ingredients well and spread over bean dip
The data link layer. As you can see from the direction “spread over bean dip”, the data link layer builds upon the physical layer, giving some structure (packets, or in this case guackets) to the bit stream being transmitted over the physical layer. The DLC is responsible for link-to-link flow control, though, and mashed avocado doesn’t flow very well
Layer 3
* 16 oz. sour cream
* 1 pkg. taco seasoning mix
Mix well and spread over avocado
The network layer. Congestion control and routing. Certainly sour cream flows better than avocado, but I’m not sure that taco seasoning mix is really the best routing strategy – I prefer a local adaptive strategy myself – perhaps hollandaise or bearnaise.
Layer 4
* 1 bunch green onions, chopped fine
Spread over sour cream
The transport layer. End-to-end error and flow control (cf data link layer for point-to-point error and flow control). The onions would be effective if left long, so they could reach from end to end – I believe that chopping them will lead to an extremely unreliable transport layer.
Layer 5
* 2 large tomatoes, sliced, seeds removed, patted dry on paper towels, and diced
Spread over onions
Session layer. This isn’t even *part* of the TCP/IP stack – so perhaps the tomatoes could be omitted in the winter when they’re not very good – or salsa could be substituted.
Layer 6
* small can sliced black olives, drained, patted dry, and chopped
Spread over tomatoes
The presentation layer, responsible for presentation of data. Since the presentation layer frequently does compression and encrypting, we will need to study how much smaller the olives really get to be.
Layer 7
* 4-8 oz. cheddar cheese, grated
Spread over black olives
The application layer. Makes sure the user doesn’t see any of the lower layers. Grated cheese, ESPECIALLY if run under the broiler briefly, should be very effective, although it probably doesn’t do email very well.
