TCP/IP

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol is the basic communication language (or protocol) of the internet and many private networks, intranets and extranets.

When you are set up with direct access to the Internet, your computer is provided with a copy of the TCP/IP program just as every other computer that you may send messages to or get information from also has a copy of TCP/IP. It is a two-layer program. The higher layer (Transmission Control Protocol) manages the assembling of a message or file into smaller packets that are transmitted over the Internet and received by a TCP layer that reassembles the packets into the original message. The lower layer (Internet Protocol) handles the address part of each packet so it gets to the right destination. Each gateway computer on the network checks this address to see where to forward the message. Even though some packets from the same message are routed differently than others, they'll be reassembled at the destination. Many users are familiar with the even higher layer application protocols that use TCP/IP to get to the internet. These include: the web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).