The TCP-IP protocol is the basic building block of the Internet. It is the main communications protocol in private networks (both intranets or extranets), too. Every device with access to the Internet has the TCP-IP protocol just like every other device that is available to transmit or receive data from your device also has the TCP/IP protocol layers. The name of the TCP-IP protocol stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. As apparent from its name it consists of two TCP/IP protocol layers. The Transmission Control Protocol is responsible for dividing every bit of data into packets. It also has the task of sending and receiving those packets. The second layer – Internet Protocol, deals with the address data in every packet and ensures that it is sent where it is supposed to be. Every intermediate computer on the way of the packet checks its address and routes it appropriately. Although any number of packets from the message could be sent via different paths, they’ll be reassembled at the end destination.
TCP IP Protocol
TCP/IP needs a client and a server to operate. In this model, the client requests and is provided a service (such as sending a Web page) by the server on the same network. With this protocol, communication is mainly point-to-point, which means that each data exchange happens from one point on the network to another. The TCP-IP protocol layers and all programs that use it are described as “stateless”. That means every client request is considered a new one separate from the ones that preceded it. This is an advantage as it frees network nodes for other transactions happening at the same time. (The TCP layer itself is not stateless if considering a whole message. The connection stays in place until all packets in a message have arrived.) Many higher level protocols need the TCP/IP protocol layers to connect to the Internet. Some of them are the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet (Telnet), and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). All those and others go along with TCP/IP as a “suite.”