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What is TCP/IP?
TCP/IP, or Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, is the system of protocols that governs the transfer of data over networks. It includes a set of rules for manipulating packets of information to ensure correct delivery. TCP/IP is crucial to how computers function that most people refer to it simply as “the Internet.”
The first version of TCP/IP was created in 1973 by Vinton Gray Cerf and Robert Elliot Kahn. It has gone through three stages of refinement until TCP/IP version 4.
The term “TCP/IP” is often pronounced like the word “T-C-P-I-P.” with each letter spoken letters separately.
Since it includes both the TCP and IP protocols, some people shorten “TCP/IP” to simply “TCP.”
Data is transmitted digitally as a string of ones and zeros, and it can be sent in packets, individual data bundles separated by a certain number of bytes or characters. Packets are created when a device such as a computer or a printer sends a file across a network. TCP/IP uses the term “segment” to refer to a packet of data sent from a device on one level of a TCP/IP-enabled computer system. It is only a segment until it reaches the next layer in the system, at which point it becomes part of something called the Internet Protocol (IP).
The IP divides each segment into packets that are small enough to be sent across the network…
