Introduction to TCPIP


Introduction to TCP/IP

When you connect your computer to the Internet, your machine becomes part of a large network. You mostly think of the Internet connection as providing connectivity to other machines, generally Web servers. You’ll use a client application on your computer, usually a Web browser to connect to other machines, as you browse the Web. Your Web browser hides the underlying complexity of the network, as you enter Web site addresses; it’ll simply present you text, images, and multimedia objects as delivered by the Web servers you connect to.

The Internet is comprised of several layers through which data passes before delivery to your client application. A detailed discussion of the communications protocols involved is out of the scope of this Chapter; however, a brief explanation follows. There are many layers of network protocols that are used in combination with each other to provide Internet connectivity. These layers are commonly described as the Internet protocol suite. Below we will sketch out the basic operation of these communication protocols.

There are two separate acronyms in use when we look at TCP/IP communications. Both ends of a connection use both TCP and IP to send and receive data.

TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol. TCP is responsible for breaking up large sources of data into individual packets on the sending side, and on the receiving side reconnecting the individual packets into a solid chunk of data. Additionally TCP on the receiving side ensures that all segments have been received. In a data network, it is extremely likely that parts will arrive in a different order then that which they were transmitted TCP is responsible for reordering data as it arrives, and ensuring that all parts are intact.

IP stands for Internet Protocol. IP is the layer that is responsible for moving the individual data packets between machines. It helps to think of IP as transport. Where TCP is responsible for ensuring that packets all arrive as they should and in their entirety, IP simply moves the data. The IP protocol has no sense of what it is moving, or if it’s arrived, as it should, it just moves the packets.




Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition
Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition
ISBN: 0764543997
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 290

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