Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol or simply TCP/IP is the communication “language” or “protocol” used by the computers and devices connected to the Internet to communicate to each other.

When you connect to the Internet, your internet browser uses TCP/IP to communicate with a web server and a web server uses TCP/IP to send the web page to your browser.

Your favorite e-mail client uses TCP/IP to connect to the Internet to send and receive e-mails.

The IP address of your computer and your domain name (www.reodica.org) are part of the standard TCP/IP protocol.

Behind the TCP/IP standard are different protocols that handle data communication, they are:

a.) TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) communication between applications
b.) UDP (User Datagram Protocol) simple communication between applications
c.) IP (Internet Protocol) communication between computers
d.) ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) for errors and statistics
e.) DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) for dynamic addressing

Transmission Control Protocol is the reliable transport protocol within the TCP/IP protocol suite and uses a “fixed connection” (and requires handshake before a session can start) to ensure that all data arrive accurately and 100% intact at the other end. TCP is mostly used as communication protocol between applications.

Internet Protocol is a “connection-less” communication protocol responsible for the communication between computers in a network. IP is responsible for routing each packet to its destination.

In layman’s term TCP is used by your web-browsers (e.g. firefox, Internet Explorer) and web-server-software (e.g. Apache) while IP is used by your computer and the computer where the web-server-software is running.

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