Communication Protocols Under the Hood: TCP/IP and Beyond
Communication Protocols Under the Hood: TCP/IP and Beyond Every time you send an email, browse a site, or stream video, a quiet map of rules guides the journey. Those rules are called protocols, and they sit at different layers of the network. The core family is TCP/IP, a set of conventions that keeps data moving from your device to a distant server and back. TCP/IP is often explained as layers. A common four-layer model helps, though real systems mix these ideas. Link, Internet, Transport, and Application. Link covers the local network and hardware addresses. Internet handles routing and IP addresses. Transport decides how data travels, choosing reliability or speed. Application hosts the actual services you use, such as HTTP for web pages or DNS for names. ...