Networks II

What Is a Protocol?


So what exactly is a protocol? Strictly speaking, a protocol is a set
of rules, and in the context of net- working, a protocol is the set of
rules that govern communication between two systems. A good analogy
for a protocol is a human language. Before two people can communicate,
they must speak the same language; otherwise, no information can be
transferred between them. For example, suppose you were to call
someone on the phone who doesn’t speak your language. Even though they
have picked up the receiver and are listening to the information you
are sending, they don’t understand what you are saying. Why? Because
you don’t share a common language.


The same holds true with computer systems. Before they can share
information, they must be configured to use the same protocol. The
protocol specifies how the information is encoded and sent on the
network so that that receiving system can interpret it and reconstruct
the data that was originally sent.


As discussed previously, there are many different protocols you can
use on a computer net- work. However, for your Linux+/LPIC-1 exam, you
need to be familiar with the IP protocol, which is the networking
protocol used on the Internet. IP works in conjunction with other
protocols, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or the User
Datagram Protocol (UDP) to divide information being transmitted on the
network into chunks.



LX0-104 Exam Objectives (R)









LX0-104 Exam Objectives (R)