Heard about the TCP/IP model before but didn’t know anything about it? Or maybe you have a general idea of what it is, but never took the time to actually learn more about it. This blog is going to give you an overview of the internet protocol suite and how it works.
The TCP/IP model, as defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), is a conceptual model that describes the internal protocols of the Internet protocol suite.
What is the TCP/IP Model?
The TCP/IP model is a conceptual design model. It represents the structure of communications between multiple networked devices using the Internet protocol suite. This model allows us to examine the communication processes that take place between web clients and servers and also between hosts on a local network.
It defines the 7 layers in the OSI networking model that run on top of one another to accomplish various communication tasks between computers connected in one way or another. These protocols were developed to ensure that all systems, regardless of location or type can communicate with each other as if they are on the same local area network.
While we have come to rely on these protocols for communication, some people understand them from a technical standpoint. The model was created to reduce the complexity of the existing protocol specifications, namely UDP and TCP.
It is a theory from which both TCP/IP and Internet Protocol itself was developed. This theory is essential to understand the way networks function. It consists of several layers, each with its own function.
The Need for TCP/IP Model
This model is quite complex and acts as the foundation for the current Internet Protocol Suite. It also acts as a fundamental underpinning for IPv6, the successor to IPv4.
TCP/IP is designed to unify the need for systems that need to communicate with one another over a network. These include various types of networked computers, networks, routers, and networks on computers. Within the model, there are 3 features that act as the foundation:
- Session Reliability.
- Communication Quality.
- Reliable Synchronous Delivery and Latency.
This is essentially all of the fundamental properties and features of a system that needs to be able to communicate with another system (or multiple systems).
How Does the TCP/IP Model Work?
The TCP/IP model is one of the cornerstones of internet technology. An understanding of the TCP/IP model is essential to create safer, more secure, and properly functioning networking systems.
The basic purpose of the TCP/IP model is to provide a way for different networks to interact with each other and the internet as a whole. The overall goal of the model is to enable multiple computer networks to talk to each other using a structured and convenient set of rules.
As networks come online, they broadcast their presence by sending out messages containing packets to a specific network to allow it to discover them. Once a computer on a certain network sees the packet, it will then query its counterpart on the opposite network to see what information it might be able to retrieve.
If the network can get something useful from the packet, it will store it in memory and write it back out. If the packet contains nothing of value, it will discard it.
Benefits of TCP/IP
The TCP/IP model is the foundation for computer networking, so it’s vital for organizations to understand it. This is because this model has many benefits that can help your business. Most people are even somewhat afraid of using it and often avoid using it because of the possible complications involved with it.
The TCP/IP model, or protocol stack, as many people like to call it, allows communication between two computers. They talk by a series of packets being sent back and forth through different protocols at each step of the way. TCP/IP is ubiquitous in modern networking. This is because it allows seamlessly transferring information from one entity to another, irrespective of the distance.
Understanding the TCP/IP model is extremely important because it’s the key to understand the basics of Internet protocols. You can understand how protocol stacks work if you understand TCP/IP.
Internet Protocols use a set of communication layers (protocols) to talk to each other. In order for you to get a hold of some software, you need a “protocol stack” that is able to talk to other protocols on your computer (the network), on another computer (the server), or on the Internet (the transport layer).
It’s important to note that this concept is not exclusive to Internet protocols, and it is common across the entire computer networking realm. For instance, Windows software can use TCP/IP to talk to the Linux operating system.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you’ll find this brief guide helpful for knowing the specifics of the TCP/IP model. As a network grows in complexity, the TCP/IP model becomes essential. It helps you understand how a single application can communicate with a wide range of devices and data sources over the internet.
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