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What the Heck is TCP/IP?
A primer on TCP/IP
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Ever wonder how computers communicate with one another? Just like humans, computers require the use of a language in order to understand the millions of commands and requests that pass from one system to another every second of the day. This language is called TCP/IP.
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is the basic communication language or protocol of the Internet. It is also commonly used as a communications protocol in the private networks called intranets and extranets. The fact that you're reading this story means that your computer includes and uses a copy of a TCP/IP program.
TCP/IP is a two-layered program. The higher layer, Transmission Control Protocol, breaks up and organizes information such as an email message into small packets before it transmits it over the Internet. The recipient of that message also uses a TCP layer that reassembles the packets into the original message. The lower layer ensures that your message gets to the right recipient. Every computer your message travels through will check this address and ensure that it continues through the system to it's proper destination. What's really miraculous is that many of the packets in your messages are often routed differently through different computers, yet they manage to get to the final destination where they are reassembled.
TCP/IP lets you make a request to another computer on the Internet. For example, the request might be to send a Web page to your screen. The remote computer on the Internet usually understands this request and sends it. This TCP/IP communication is primarily point-to-point, which means that each request is unique and absolute. As soon as the request is made and the information is received, the connection is essentially finished. This frees the various paths in the network so that others can continuously use them.
The next time you click on link in the page you receive, another TCP/IP communication begins and ends when you receive the page. Think of it as the opposite of what happens when you're having a telephone conversation that requires a dedicated connection for the duration of the call.
TCP/IP also allows you to send and receive data using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet which lets you logon to remote computers, and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). These and other protocols are often packaged together with TCP/IP as a "suite". Your system includes them all. Yours usually connects you to the Internet through the Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) or the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). These protocols manage the IP packets mentioned above so that they can be sent over a dial-up phone.
In plain old English, TCP/IP is a critical component of what lets you send and receive mail, surf the Web, download free software, use chat programs, and do host of other wonderful things. Without it, quite simply...no Net! And obviously, you should never mess around with your TCP/IP settings. It would be the equivalent to cutting off your computer's tongue.
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