The purpose of the network layer is to help route messages between different local networks. Central to this layer is the concept of exclusive network addresses, where every terminal connected to the ...

The Web pages you visit, the e-mail you read, the music you download and the radio stations you listen to on the Internet are all delivered to you by applications using TCP/IP. TCP/IP makes it ...

Ethernet is a layer 2 data link protocol that is widely used with the TCP/IP protocol, which resides at layers 3 and 4. To understand network communications, it is essential to learn about the ...

The current IP address scheme of 32-bit words is fast becoming inadequate. It would appear that 2 32 = 4 294 967 296 combinations of addresses should be enough for everybody, but in practice this is ...

What is a network protocol? Most textbook writers state something like this: A network protocol is a set of guidelines or standards for the operation of network devices, the methods of operation, and ...

I like to think of the transport layer as the layer of the OSI Model that enables more interesting traffic. While we network engineers may love a lot of the simpler uses of the IP protocol and ...

Layers 7 through 4 are geared more to the application than the lower layers, which are designed to move packets from one place to another no matter what they contain. This top layer defines the ...

Like many words in the English language, “network” and “protocol” have different meanings, depending on the context. In the context of digital communications, Merriam-Webster defines network as “a ...

Terms can sometimes play tricks on the mind. Take EtherNet/IP, for example. Many people will read “IP” as internet protocol and think that EtherNet/IP refers to plain old, standard industrial Ethernet ...

The next version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)—the network protocol that defines how browsers talk to Web servers—is going to make a major break from the versions in use today. Today’s ...