Because of the explosive growth of the Internet in recent years, Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is now used on more networks than any other suite of protocols. This chapter describes the functions of the most commonly used protocols in the TCP/IP suite and examines in detail TCP/IP's self-contained addressing system, one of its most important and unique features.
This chapter requires that you have a basic knowledge of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model, as described in Chapter 1, "Networking Basics," in order to understand the roles of the various TCP/IP protocols in the networking protocol stack. The IP, TCP, and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) protocols referred to in this chapter are introduced in Chapter 6, "Network Layer Protocols," and Chapter 7, "Transport Layer Protocols."