The document discusses various methods of communication in distributed systems. It outlines the Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model (OSI-RM) which divides communication into seven layers. It also describes protocols like remote procedure call (RPC) and remote object invocation which allow processes on different machines to communicate through procedure or method calls. RPC uses client and server stubs to transform local calls into messages that are sent across the network. Asynchronous RPC is also discussed as a way to avoid blocking the client process while waiting for the response.