New England Data Services Blog

It’s Only Protocol

I find it amazing how often something is taken for granted.  Like for instance, right now, do you know how many protocols you have activated just to access this site.  Before I get into that, let’s look at what protocol is.  Protocol, in terms of the computing world, is the standard that allows a user to connect, communicate, or transfer data between two endpoints.  To clarify, there are several standards that are met for you to simply open up your web browser and start surfing.  Everything you do that is affiliated with hardware connectivity adheres to certain protocols.  

How often do you sign on to a web-browser and just type in ‘www.thissite.com’ for example?  More importantly, how often do you neglect to place the http:// before this site?  Before doing a little research myself, I had no idea that http stood for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which is essentially one of the most used protocols daily, along with Internet Protocol, which is your IP address.  This blog focuses on some of the more common protocols accessed everyday, as well as what their main functionalities are.

Transmission Control Protocol
Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, is more commonly associated with Internet Protocol (IP), however it works at a much greater level than the standard IP transmission.  In a nutshell, every time you wish to send a message, it is sorted via size and destination, much like typical mail is.  In comparison, if you have a standard size piece of mail (file), you will most likely grab a stamp for it and throw it any outgoing mail slot (IP).  However, if you have a large package that you wish to send, instead of breaking it down and sending out little pieces of it, you can send it out directly with a delivery service (TCP).  

TCPs are designed specifically to handle the larger messages, files, data transfers that IPs would handle at a much slower rate.  TCPs are used daily for services such as the worldwide web, emails, as well as file transferring.  Among these services, it is the TCP’s job to control the size of each message, the rate at which this message is transferred, as well as control the amount of the network’s congestion.  

Hypertext Transfer Protocol
Hypertext transfer protocol, or http, is what eventually led to worldwide web as we know it.  The two endpoints for this protocol would be the user and the server.  Because of the amount of data on any given webpage, http works in direct affiliation with the aforementioned TCP.  Simplified, the way http works, is an end user (such as yourself) opens up a web browser and the http, connects to a TCP, and sends out a message.  This message is received by the other end user (the server), and reciprocates a message back to the original user.  If all goes well, your homepage will load up and you will be ready to surf the web.

Some other common protocols that were not defined or looked into might be Internet Protocol (IP), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), and Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3).  These three can all be found, with a more in-depth analysis at this blog’s website, at blog.neds.com.