10.1.2.1. TCP/IP

The Transport Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol are the two most popular ways of communicating on the Internet. A lot of applications, such as your browser and E-mail program, are built on top of this protocol suite.

Very simply put, IP provides a solution for sending packets of information from one machine to another, while TCP ensures that the packets are arranged in streams, so that packets from different applications don't get mixed up, and that the packets are sent and received in the correct order.

A good starting point for learning more about TCP and IP is in the following documents:

• man 7 ip: Describes the IPv4 protocol implementation on Linux (version 4 currently being the most wide-spread edition of the IP protocol).

• man 7 tcp: Implementation of the TCP protocol.

• RFC793, RFC1122, RFC2001 for TCP, and RFC791, RFC1122 and RFC1112 for IP.

  The Request For Comments documents contain the descriptions of networking standards, protocols, applications and implementation. These documents are managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force, an international community concerned with the smooth operation of the Internet and the evolution and development of the Internet architecture.

  Your ISP usually has an RFC archive available, or you can browse the RFCs via https://www.ietf.org/rfc.html.