I am starting out in IT and am about to complete A+ cert course. I understand that TCP/IP is a foundation element of the internet and is implemented with many other protocols. I would like to know exactly what it’s function is tho. What does it do, how long has it been around, and how it work in tandem with other protocols? I’ve tried researching it but always end up reading a bunch of high level tech jargon.
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TCP and IP are two different things, which are often used together.
At the lower levels, you have things like Ethernet and Wi-Fi which allow your computer to communicate to a device next to them- one connected by wires in the case of Ethernet or within radio range in the case of Wi-Fi.
The Internet Protocol, or IP is the system that lets you use all the computers connected together as a relay to forward a message from your computer to any other computer connected to the Internet even if it’s not directly connected to your computer.
The problem is that in this giant relay around the world, sometimes messages get lost or arrive out of order. The transmission control protocol, or TCP is a procedure built on top of IP that you and the computer you’re communicating with can use to try to find order in that chaos. It’s got the rules for how to tell the other computer how many messages you’re sending and what order they’re supposed to be arranged in, and the rules for when you should retry sending a message in case it got lost. It makes an Internet connection seem more reliable than it really is.
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