Progress in communications technology has produced a wide range of communications techniques for different applications. All these methods basically perform the same operation; transferring information between users. Little uniformity exists, however, and the main computer manufacturers have each produced their own network architectures, all incompatible with each other. The paper describes a network architecture designed by NCR. The requirements of such a network architecture are listed, and the need for an architecture to be compatible with international standards is emphasized by comparing NCR’s architecture with the open systems interconnection reference model from the ISO.