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Networks

What is a Network Protocol?

A network protocol defines a "language" of rules and conventions for communication between network devices. A protocol includes formatting rules that specify how data is packaged into messages. It also may include conventions like message acknowledgement or data compression to support reliable and/or high-performance network communication.

Many protocols exist in computer networking ranging from the high level to the low level. The Internet Protocol family includes IP and all higher-level network protocols built on top of it, such as TCP, UDP, HTTP, and FTP. Modern operating systems include services or daemons that implement support for a given network protocol. Some protocols, like TCP/IP, have also been implemented in silicon hardware for optimized performance.

TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) are two distinct network protocols, technically speaking. TCP and IP are so commonly used together, however, that TCP/IP has become standard terminology to refer to either or both of the protocols.

IP corresponds to the Network layer (Layer 3) in the OSI model, whereas TCP corresponds to the Transport layer (Layer 4) in OSI. In other words, the term TCP/IP refers to network communications where the TCP transport is used to deliver data across IP networks.

The average person on the Internet works in a predominately TCP/IP environment. Web browsers, for example, use TCP/IP to communicate with Web servers.