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 ...

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 ...

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the basic communication protocol of the Internet as well as many private networks throughout the world. Along with User Data Protocol (UDP), TCP represents the ...

Getting started on designing a network is a task of formidable proportions, but all the more so if you are looking to build a secure IT network. Often, IT system administrators are not fully familiar ...

In the past few newsletters, we described in considerable detail the mechanisms that are in place in TCP to ensure efficient transport of information. In particular, we concentrated on the ability of ...

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 ...

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 ...