CSE691/891 - Internet Programming Summer 2001
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TCP/IP Protocol

TCP/IP stands for "Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol. TCP/IP is the most important of several protocols used on the internet. Some others are: HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and Telnet, a protocol for logging into a remote computer.

Sockets provide a standard interface for a variety of network protocols. TCP/IP is, by far, the most commonly used protocol for sockets. Here are the main features of TCP/IP:

  1. IP is a routable protocol, which means that TCP/IP messages can be passed between networks in a Wide Area Network (WAN) cluster.

  2. Each device using TCP/IP must have an IP address. This address is a 32 bit word, organized into four 8-bit fields, called octets. Part of the IP address identifies the network and the rest identifies a specific host on the network.

  3. IP addresses are organized into three classes. Each class has a different allocation of octets to these two identifiers. This allows the internet to define many networks, each containing up to 256 devices (mostly computers), and a few networks, each containing many more devices.

  4. A single machine can run mulitple communictaions sessions using TCP/IP. That is, you can run a web browser while using Telnet and FTP, simultaneously.

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