Author:
Lon W. McDaniel
Internet 4 U

TCP/IP


Contents


Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol is what TCP/IP is. But, what the heck is TCP/IP?

Now would be a good time to read the section on Internet History if you have not already done so.

As you will have seen there, I mentioned a lot of small packages that run around in Internet looking for the computer that they are trying to go to. Those packages use TCP/IP to get where they want to go.

All of us on Internet are not Techies, i.e. technical experts. That is one of my reasons for wanting to explain TCP/IP as down-to-earth as I can, my other reason being that I am not a techie. History teachers seldom are.

TCP/IP is a small collection of program code that lives inside of your computer. If you are running Windows NT Workstation you will have TCP/IP built into the operative system itself.

TCP/IP gets a helping hand from a little box called a router. If you are old enough to remember Bob Dylans song about Route 66, then you know that a route is a road.

A router keeps track of road-systems inside Internet. It knows which roads are open in various directions from where you are now (i.e. where the box is).

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Copywrite © Lon W. McDaniel 1996