What is TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)?

What is TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)?

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is a protocol created and developed by the US Department of Defense. TCP, which serves for the smoothness of the basic communication between computers, also authenticates in addition to ensuring data integrity in data exchange.

The reason for the creation of TCP also prevents the loss of communication between computers. Today, data exchange of protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, POP3, SSH, SMTP, SNMP, TELNET, and FTP is TCP.

How Does the TCP Protocol Work?

TCP is a connection-oriented protocol, which means that the connection is established and maintained until the application programs at both ends have finished exchanging messages.

It determines how the application data is divided into packets that networks can deliver, sends packets to the network layer and accepts packets from these layers, manages flow control, and manages the retransmission of dropped or corrupted ones as it is intended to provide error-free data transmission packets and acknowledges all incoming packets.

In the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) communication model, TCP encompasses parts of Layer 4, the transport layer, and parts of Layer 5, the session layer.

When a web server sends an HTML file to a client or another server, it uses the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) to do so. The HTTP program layer asks the TCP layer to establish the connection and send the file. The TCP stack splits the file into data packets, enumerates it, and then transmits it to the individual IP layer for distribution.

Packets can be sent over multiple routes, although each packet in the transmission has the same source and destination IP address. The TCP program layer on the client computer waits until all packets arrive, then acknowledges their received and requests retransmissions of those that do not receive due to missing packet numbers. The TCP layer then combines the packets into a file and delivers the file to the receiving application.

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