Bummer! This is just a preview. You need to be signed in with a Basic account to view the entire video.
Start a free Basic trial
to watch this video
Sending and receiving of data on the Internet is made possible by two protocols: TCP and IP. TCP, is the Transmission Control Protocol; it splits data up into packets and puts them back together at their destination. IP, the Internet Protocol, tells the packets where to go and where they should return to.
-
0:00
The internet makes it possible for one computer in one place to talk to
-
0:04
another computer in a completely different place, but it hasn't always been this way.
-
0:09
in the mid 1970's and early 1980's, the set
-
0:12
of protocols that enables computers to talk to each other was being developed.
-
0:17
The sending and receiving of data on the internet
-
0:20
was made possible by two protocols, TCP and IP.
-
0:24
TCP is the transmission control protocol and it splits data up into packets and
-
0:30
puts them back together again at their destination.
-
0:33
IP, the internet protocol, tells the packets where to go and
-
0:37
to where they should return.
-
0:39
Let's see what this looks like.
-
0:41
The things you get from the internet, like an HTML page or a YouTube video, and
-
0:46
the things you send over the internet, like an e-mail to a friend, are all data.
-
0:51
In order for data to be sent over the internet,
-
0:53
it needs to be broken into packets.
-
0:56
A packet isn't an entire web page, or even usually a whole e-mail.
-
1:00
It's a small chunk of data, like a puzzle piece of the whole picture.
-
1:04
By breaking data into these small,
-
1:06
manageable chunks, many users can transmit data at the same time very quickly.
-
1:12
In essence, these packets are a way of sharing access to the network, so
-
1:16
that no single transmission dominates the pipeline.
-
1:20
The TCP/IP Protocol Suite is responsible for creating packets, making sure they get
-
1:26
where they need to go, and putting them back together again at their destination.
-
1:31
If something gets lost along the way, TCP will request the packets to be resent.
-
1:37
The directions on how to accomplish this are written in a header and
-
1:41
wraps every TCP packet.
-
1:44
Once TCP makes a packet and wraps it with header, the packet is handed off
-
1:49
to the next layer which will handle the details of how to transmit the data.
-
1:54
Now every computer on the internet can be identified by its own unique number called
-
1:59
an IP address, and the IP protocol uses IP addresses to route the TCP packets.
-
2:07
In order to transmit the data to the correct location, the IP protocol
-
2:11
also adds a small header of information to the packet, just like TCP.
-
2:15
The IP header contains information on how to send the packets,
-
2:21
such as the source IP address and the destination IP address.
-
2:25
Now, because packets often travel through a number of routers on their way to their
-
2:29
final destination, to make this process really fast,
-
2:33
each packet is designed to work independently.
-
2:37
This means that each packet can travel from router to router in
-
2:40
the fastest way possible to reach its destination.
-
2:44
When all the packets are received,
-
2:46
TCP will reassemble them, making sure they're all there and in the right order.
-
2:51
Now that we understand a little bit more about how the TCP/IP Protocols get
-
2:55
data from one place to another, let's find out about the other pieces of hardware and
-
3:00
software used to bridge the distance between computers.
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign up