Introduction to TCP/IP

The Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was originally developed by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to provide robust service on large internetworks that incorporate a variety of computer types. In recent years, the Internet protocols constitute the most popular network protocols currently in use.

One reason for the popularity of TCP/IP is that no one vendor owns it, unlike IPX/SPX, DNA, SNA, NetBEUI, AppleTalk protocol suite, all of which are controlled by specific companies. TCP/IP evolved in response to input from a wide variety of industry sources. Consequently, TCP/IP is the most open of the protocol suites and is supported by the widest variety of vendors. Virtually every brand of computing equipment now supports TCP/IP.

TCP/IP provides a routable, enterprise networking protocol and access to the worldwide Internet and its resources.

The interoperability is one of the primary advantages to TCP/IP. Almost all networks support TCP/IP as a protocol. TCP/IP also supports routing, and is commonly used as an internetworking protocol.

Because of its popularity, TCP/IP has become the de facto standard for internetworking.

Other protocols written specifically for the TCP/IP suite include:

- TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) - Connection-oriented Transport Protocol.
- UDP (User Datagram Protocol) - Connectionless Transport Protocol.
- IP (Internet Protocol) - Packet-switching Datagram Service.
- ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) - more error-control than IP.
- SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) - Email.
- FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - For exchanging files among computers running TCP/IP.
- RIP (Routing Information Protocol) - Route Selector.
- SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) - Network Management.
- DNS (Domain Name System) - Domain-Name-to-Address Resolution.
- WINS (Windows Internet Naming System) - NetBIOS-Names-to-Address Resolution.
- TELNET (Remote Terminal Emulation) Dumb Remote Terminal Viewer.
- ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) - Hardware Address Resolution.

TIP: Please do not confuse with all above standards. I will be describing all of them in the next articles.

Historically, there were two primary disadvantages of TCP/IP; its size and speed. TCP/IP is relatively large protocol stack, which can cause problems in MS-DOS-based clients. However, on graphical user interface (GUI)-based operating systems, such as Windows NT or Windows 98, the size is not an issue and speed is about the same as IPX.

However, if you are connecting a few computers (2 - 5), it's better not to use the TCP/IP. Use here NetBEUI protocol, if your requirement is just to play with the files (security is not the direct issue). Implementing tight security and server-based networking architecture requires the TCP/IP to be used. In future I will describe what I meant. For the time being, read the standard-names only.

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