Introduction to Internet Protocols


Internet Protocols are the most popular protocols that are used to communicate over the interconnected networks.  The Internet protocols consist of the suite of protocols in which there are two major protocols i.e. TCP and IP and it is also known as TCP/IP protocols.  TCP/IP was first developed in 1970 by a community of the researchers.  TCP/IP provides a lot of services and the most common includes email, files transfer, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, DNS and remote login.

TCP stands for the transmission control protocol and it provides the reliable data transmission in the IP based networks such as LAN, WAN and internet.  It provides the connection-oriented and reliable end to end data packets delivery within an internetwork.  The reliability mechanism of the TCP enables the communication devices to deal with the lost, duplicated and misread data packets. TCP ensures the delivery of the data packets in the same sequence as they are received.

The other part of the TCP/IP is the IP, which stands for Internet Protocol. IP is responsible for the transmission of the data from one computer to another and each computer in the IP-based networks must has a unique identifier which is known as an IP address. IP is a connectionless protocol and it means that there is not continuous connection between the two communicating protocols.

IP works on the network layer of the OSI layers model.  The most widely used version of the IP is the IPv4 but now IPv6 now also began to be supported. IPv6 supports relatively longer IP addresses which show the possibility of many more web users.  The other protocols of the TCP/IP suite are described below.

FTP

FTP stands for the files transfer protocol and it is used to send and receive the files over the IP based networks such as Internet.

SMTP

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and it is used to send the email messages to the recipient’s email address through the SMTP server.

DHCP

DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and it is used to assign the IP addresses and TCP/IP configurations to the network computers dynamically.

HTTP

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and it is used to send the requests for a web page to the web server where the web page is hosted.

LDAP

LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and it used to communicate with the Active Directory in the TCP/IP network.

POP3

POP3 stand for Post Office Protocol and it is used to receive the emails from the email servers.

Telnet

Telnet is a TCP/IP utility that is used to configure, troubleshoot and manage the remote computers and servers.

PPTP

PPTP stands for Point to Point Tunneling Protocol and it used for the secure communication in the Virtual Private Network.

RIP

RIP stands Routing Information Protocol.  It is a single vector routing protocol.  In the vector routing protocols the routers exchanges network information with each others.

                                                              
SNMP

SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol and it is used for the network management.

TFTP

TFTP stands for Trivial Files Transfer Protocol and it is a very simple files transfer protocol.  It is very close to the FTP but it lacks the authentication mechanism.

OSPF

OSPF stands for Open Shortest Path First Protocol and it used to find the shortest possible path from one router to another in a network.