IP

Tags

networking

The internet protocol is the networking layer of the internet stack. It describes how a stream of bytes are transmitted between two hosts on the internet network.

[With TCP/IP] people who write network protocols almost never have to think about all the packetizing, packet reassembly, error checking, checksumming, and re-transmission that goes on below that level.

IP is implemented using a mixture of a lower level internet protocol described below and the higher level transfer control protocol. Because of this IP is often referred to as TCP/IP. IP handles the labelling of packets with source and destination IP addresses.

The protocol works by splitting the data into tiny packets, passing them to a router that directs the data to nearing local networks until it reaches the destination IP. The process of switching packets between multiple routers is known as packet switching. Once the packet reaches the destination address the machine will use the service number to feed the packet to the correct web server.

The combined TCP/IP protocol also attaches checksums to each packet to detect packet corruption.

We define the bandwidth as the transmission rate (number of bits transferred per second).