TCP/IP Overview

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TCP/IP Overview

When designing networked applications one key protocol stands out as the foundation for making it possible. That protocol is TCP/IP. There are many protocols out there that allow two applications to communicate. What makes TCP/IP a nice protocol is that it allows applications on two physically separate computers to talk. What makes TCP/IP great is that it can do with two computers across a room or across the world. In this paper I will show you how TCP/IP allows a wide array of computer hardware to work together without ever having to knowing what the other machine is or how it even works. At the same time you will learn how it allows information to find its way around the world in a faction of a second without knowing in advance how to get there.

Before we go too far it should be noted that TCP/IP is really two protocols. The first is the Transmission Control Protocol or TCP. The second protocol is IP which stands for Internet Protocol. These two combined provide the basis for the virtual level of most of the networks we use today. The roots of the protocols reach back into the 1970’s. At that time networks were built by wires connecting one computer to the next directly. This is called direct connect. If you wanted information to get to a computer that yours was not direct connected to you would have to create a bridge on a common machine you are both connected to. This way messages you send in one connection are transferred in the computer to the other connection and sent to the computer you were trying to talk to. This is sometimes called a gateway.

In 1973 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) tasked two engineers to design a way for information to travel more easily between these early netw...

... middle of paper ...

...ackages.

This protocol pair is the work horse of the modern internet. According to Microsoft this is “largely because of its ability to connect together networks of different sizes and systems of different types.” ("Understanding TCP/IP addressing and subnetting basics" September 23, 2011) Before TCP/IP came along machines had to be compatible at a physical level in order for them to pass messages between each other. Now the physical level has been abstracted and messages travel at a logical layer. The physical layer is still present but it is now a solved problem space allowing developers to focus more on the applications. This has become the real success story of TCP/IP.

Works Cited

Microsoft Inc., "Understanding TCP/IP addressing and subnetting basics." Last modified September 23, 2011. Accessed September 24, 2011. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/164015.

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