Cloud the bottom of the hierarchy. Clouds in the troposphere assume five physical forms based on structure and process of formation. These forms are commonly used for the purpose of satellite analysis. They are given below in approximate ascending order of instability or convective activity. "Non-convective" stratiform clouds appear in "stable" airmass conditions and, in general, have flat sheet-like structures that can form at any altitude in the troposphere. The stratiform group is divided by altitude range into the genera cirrostratus (high-level), altostratus (mid-level), stratus (low-level), and nimbostratus (multi-level). Fog is commonly considered a surface-based cloud layer. The fog may form
Physical layer Physical layer In the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking, the physical layer or layer 1 is the first and lowest layer. This layer may be implemented by a PHY chip. The physical layer consists of the electronic circuit transmission technologies of a network. It is a fundamental layer underlying the higher level functions in a network. Due to the plethora of available hardware technologies with widely varying characteristics, this is perhaps the most complex layer in the OSI architecture. The physical layer defines the means of transmitting raw bits rather than logical data packets over a physical data link