This is a good place to have an idea about internetworking and tcp/ip protocols

PROTOCOLS
-----------------

Computers on a network have agreed ways of communicating,called
PROTOCOLS.

Protocols dictate which signal computers use across cables, how
to tell one another that they have received information, and how
they exchange information Computer systems which conform to
communications protocols such as TCP/IP are thus able to speak
a common language.

A variety of universities, Government agencies and computer firms
are aonnected to an internet-work i.e. Internet which follows
the TCP/IP(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).

The success of the Internet growth goes to:

a) TCP/IP : Which allowed access on data independent of the platform,
operating systems,applicaions,Internet Service Protocol.

b) HTTP : HTTP(Hyper Text Transfer Protocol)is a standard method for
transmitting information throught the Internet.HTTP and its
sibling standards, the document mark up language known as
Hyper Text Markup Language(HTML) have done more than any
thing to make information exchange accessible to the masses
and have been the principal contributing factor in the
explosive growth of the internet.




**TRANSMISSION CONTROL PROTOCOL/INTERNET PROTOCOL(TCP/IP)**
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TCP/IP is a set of protocols and programs used to interconnect
computer networks and to route traffic among different types of computers.
The suitable shift in terminology reflects the fact that the
communication functions are complex and are usually divided into
independent layers, also called levels.TCP/IP has four software
layers built on an underlying hardware layers.
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LAYER NAME TASK
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 Application Accesses the transport layer and
sends and receives data.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 Transport Provides communication protocols
between application programs and
the network layer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 Network Takes care of communication between
software and hardware
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Physical Accepts and transmits data over the
physical network.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



TRANSMISSION CONTROL PROTOCOL(TCP)
==================================


The Transmission Control Protocol,TCP works with IP to provide
reliable delivery.It provides a means to ensure that various
datagrams making up a message are reassembled in the correct
order at their final destination and that any missing datagrams
are resent until they are correctly received.

The primary purpose of TCP is to avoid loss, damage, duplication,
delay or misordering of packets that can occur under IP.Also
security provisions such as limiting user access to certain
machines can be implement through TCP.

INTERNET PROTOCOL(IP)
=====================

The Internet Protocol (IP) defines a data delivery system wherein
the sending and receiving machines are not necessarily directly
connected.IP splits data into packet of a given size, which are
then forwarded to the receiving machine via the network.These individual
packet data(often called datagrams) are routed through different
machines on the Internet to the destination network and ultimately to
the receiving machine.Machine on the internet are referred to as
hosts or nodes, and are defined by their IP addresses.