Happy New Year & 25 years of TCP/IP!

January 1st 1983 was the date TCP/IP first came into existence and today it reached its 25 years milestone - its very own SILVER JUBLEE!

Since the Internet is a series of smaller networks, which are just series of computers, all the computers need to speak the same protocol (language). This is where IP or "Internet Protocol" comes in:

 

Internet Protocol Language ensures that information being sent over the Internet (known as "packets") are routed to the right place. You can think of a packet as a package of information, and in this package IP holds information about the address and sender - ie: your IP address (The number that identifies your computer online) is contained in the IP portion of the packet.

 

When you visit a website, for example www.facebook.com, you ask the Facebook servers (their computers) to show you its Login Page. However, your request will typically travel through 10+ network nodes (routers) before finally reaching the Facebook servers!

 

TCP or "Transmission Control Protocol" is a protocol built on top of IP packet. TCP's entire job is ensuring that the connection occurs in an organized matter! Say you have to send a document using normal Royal "Snail" Mail, and for whatever reason you have to send it in two separate envelopes... well this occurs in TCP/IP all the time!!! So, it's up to the receiver to arrange the individual packages of data into one whole package... this is what Transmission Control Protocol does!

 

TCP/IP connections have been "handshaking" PC's & Servers since January 1st 1983 when TCP/IP was established as an ARPANET standard.

TCP/IP in Summary:

TCP - is responsible for verifying the correct delivery of data from client to server. Data can be lost in the intermediate network. TCP adds support to detect errors or lost data and to
trigger retransmission until the data is correctly and completely received.

 

IP - is responsible for moving packets of data from computer to computer. IP forwards each packet based on a four byte destination address (the IP number/address). The Internet authorities assign ranges of numbers to different organizations. The organizations assign groups of their numbers to departments. IP operates on gateway machines that move data from departments to organizations to regions and then around the world.