mcr@Sandelman.OCUnix.On.Ca (Michael Richardson) (02/12/91)
In article <1383@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU> bjames@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU (Binoy James [890904]) writes: >Could somebody please take some time to explain what TCP/IP, SLIP and the other >weird "datacomm" terminology stands for. TCP/IP stands for 'Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol' SLIP stands for 'Serial Line Internet Protocol' The Internet Protocol is a method of encoding packets with such things as source, destination addresses and port numbers (sort of like apartment numbers in a building). The User Datagram Protocol is a protocol that provides the ability to send a packet (up to 8K usually) to another machine (or all machines on that network) using IP. It provides no guarantee that the packets will ever get there (not be lost) or will arrive in any sort of sequence. Things like 'rwhod' often use this to broadcast that 'who' listing to all machines on a network. I believe that RPC (Remote Procedure Call) also uses UDP. (NFS is implemented in terms of RPC) The Transport Control Protocol provides a stream of bytes (which may also be a STREAMS interface) to the network. It looks just like a file (more or less) and makes sure that the bytes will get there, in the right order, etc. It takes care of resending the data if things get corrupted, etc.. It is like X or Zmodem in a sense. SLIP is a method of sending Internet Protocol packets (UDP, TCP) over a serial line (modem, packet radio, piece of copper that runs between cities...) -- :!mcr!: | The postmaster never | - Pay attention only Michael Richardson | resolves twice. | to _MY_ opinions. - HOME: mcr@sandelman.ocunix.on.ca + Small Ottawa nodes contact me Bell: (613) 237-5629 + about joining ocunix.on.ca!