Internet Business Tutorial 9

by Robert H. Fraass on Friday, March 11, 2005
TCP/IP-Transfer Communication Protocol/Internet Protocol
Transfer Communication Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) are two separate protocols, but they work together as the basic communications protocol that forms the basis for the entire Internet. If HTTP can be described as giving life to the World Wide Web, then TCP/IP is what gives life to the entire, all-encompassing Internet, of which the Web is a part.
It's helpful to think of TCP as the caretaker of data as it travels over the Internet. TCP establishes communication between two networked computers, breaks the data into groups called packets, checks to ensure the data's integrity, and fixes any problems it may encounter.
IP takes the data presented by TCP and actually delivers it to the networked computer receiving it. IP also establishes the presence of all computers linked to the Internet. An IP Address is a website's location on the Internet, expressed as a numeric form of four sets of numbers (from 0 to 255) separated by dots in this format: 123.152.278.21. This is a numeric form of a website's domain name. Even if a website's URL has a name (such as www.mywebsite.com), it also has a numeric equivalent expressed in these four sets of numbers.
PPP-Point-to-Point Protocol
The rules for connecting a computer to the Internet using standard dial-up telephone lines are governed by Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)