Layered Architecture — Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantage: allows replacement of entire layers so long as the interface is maintained; Disadvantage: providing a clean separation between layers is often difficult, and a high-level layer may need to interact directly with lower-level layers

Explanation

A key advantage of layered architecture is that entire layers can be replaced as long as the interface is maintained. Redundant facilities such as authentication can be provided at each layer for dependability. The disadvantage is that providing a clean separation between layers is often difficult in practice, and performance can be a problem because multiple levels of interpretation of a service request must be processed at each layer.