Learn TCP/IP basics in 5 minutes!

First things first alright. Yes I mentioned two strange acronyms in my title, which you know nothing about! But you will, in 5 minutes starting from now you will know everything that you didn't! So lets get started, shall we eh!?

Okay, TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol and IP for Internet Protocol. They're just protocols. WHAT! WHAT'S A PROTOCOL YOU ASK! Protocols are rules. They're used to communicate - in other words they let computers talk to each other.

And that's pretty much what TCP/IP is! Keep on reading to find out what exactly they're there for and how they work. I promise, you'll understand every single bit of it!

Did you know that TCP/IP have for different layers. There's a network interface layer, Internet layer, Transport layer and Application layer.

Here's cute picture I found on https://technet.microsoft.com

On the left hand side are 4 layers I mentioned above.

Now you gotta wonder, okay I see the layers but what's that on right hand side!? Not to be afraid my friend, they're also protocols, each layer of TCP/IP has its own set of protocols.

Some of the protocols that exists in Application layer are following: HTTP, Telnet, FTP, TFTP, SNMP, DNS, SMTP, X Windows, other application protocols. You can read more about HTTP here by the way, it's quite important to know to be honest.


Here's a quick example, lets say there's two different computers and computer A is transferring a file to computer B. What TCP will do is cut the file into small pieces. Note that it doesn't just cut it randomly it does it in a certain way so that when computer B receives it, it can paste the chunks and form a file again. Quick question: How does the computer know what computer to send data to? hm? Correct answer is, IP! Unique address. Every network has it like I mentioned above.

You should also know that these layers interact with each other, for example. Application layer includes application that uses Transport, so when this layer receives data it cuts data into small pieces using TCP.

What else should you know, well as a beginner that's pretty much  it! now we could continue talking about it all day long but as I promised in the title this tutorial wont take more than 5 minutes.

If you want to go more in depth have a read, here.

So what you know now:
- TCP/IP is a protocol - set of rules.
- It's used for computers to communicate with each other on internet.
- It consists of 4 different layers.
- Each layer has its own protocols.
- We learned about packets(chunks)
- We now know what identifies our computer on internet, IP address.
- Layers interact with each other.

I hope you now have abetter understanding of TCP/IP, if you couldn't understand something, leave a comment.