Hello everyone, my name is Sharon and Welcome to my Get to Know your Protocols presentation!
TCP and IP protocols are the two most important communication protocols and are used to read and breakdown the language into smaller packets.
Can you guess what TCP stands for?
I’ll help you out, which option do you think is correct for the TCP abbreviation?
The correct answer is Transmission Control Protocol and it is the communications protocols that underlie the Internet. TCP primary function is to breakdown and reassemble packets. I’ll get to what a “packet” means in a minute.
Can you guess what IP stands for?
I’ll help you out, which option do you think is correct for the IP abbreviation?
Internet Protocol is the correct answer and it is responsible for ensuring the information packets are sent to the right destination.
Packets are smaller blocks of information that also contain a variety of data that helps the packets travel across the internet. Once the packets are received by the local network, ISP or online service, they travel through many levels of networks, computers and communication lines before they reach their final destination which could be across the street or across the world.
The Internet is a “packet-switched” network which means communication is never broken between the sender and receiver. This is unlike a “circuit switched” network which is what a telephone system is. The telephone circuit is opened and dedicated only to that single connection. By contrast, when one is connected through the internet, your own computer becomes an extension of that network connection.
In order to take full advantage of the Internet, you need to use special software that understands and interprets the Internets TCP/IP protocols. This software is referred to as socket or TCP/IP stack. The good news is that the software is built into any computer that you buy and you do not need to do anything special to access it. The PC software is called Winstock and Macintosh software is called MacTCP and both serve as an intermediary between the internet and the personal computer.
Direct connections need to be done via a local area network, a digital subscriber line or a cable modem. With a dial up connection a modem is used along with one of two software protocols (SLIP or PPP.) Yes more protocols!
These two dial up protocols do the job of communicating with the Internets TCP/IP protocols. PPP is the most effective of the two.
Packets are broken down information (no more than 1500 characters each) which is sent to your computer from another computer. As TCP recreates each packet, it compares them to a checksum header which looks for errors during the transmission from one computer to another.
Each packet is pulled into separate IP envelopes which contains addressing information that tells the Internet where to send the data. All envelopes for a piece of data have the same addressing information so they can all be sent to the same location to be reassembled. So TCP does the dismantling and reassembling and IP does the labeling and organizing.
The packets are sent across the internet through routers. The routers along the way examines everything to see the most efficient path to eventually get to its final destination. Because the traffic load on the internet changes constantly, packets may be sent along different routes and the packets might arrive out of order.
As the packets are initially received and then arrive at their destination, TCP calculates a checksum which compares the precise amount of data contained in the packet. If the sent checksum does not match up with the received checksum TCP knows that the data has been corrupted during transmission. The packet is discarded and TCP will ask that the original packet be retransmitted.
So these are just a few protocols that you will run into, but if you do not remember anything else, remember TCP/IP are the two most important communication protocols.