TCP/IP

There are lots and lots of network protocols used, and they're all necessary to help us get our packets in the right place. Think of network protocols like a set of rules for how we transfer data in a network. Imagine if you sent a letter to your friend Sasha, who lives in California, but your post office sends it out to another Sasha who lives out in New York. That would hopefully never happen since the post office has rules that they follow to make sure your letter is sent to the correct address. Our networking protocols do the same thing. There are rules that make sure our packets are routed efficiently, aren't corrupted, are secure, go to the right machine, and are named appropriately. You get the idea. We'll cover specific network protocols later on. But there are two protocols that you need to know. The Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol, or TCPIP for short, which had become the predominant protocols of the Internet. The Internet Protocol, or IP, is responsible for delivering our packets to the right computers. Remember those addresses that computers use to find something on a network? They're called IP addresses or Internet Protocol Addresses. The Internet Protocol helps us route information. The Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, is a protocol that handles reliable delivery of information from one network to another. This protocol was an important part of the creation of the internet since it led us share information with other computers. For now, you've got a high level understanding of how the Internet works with TCP, IP.