Shakeel's Work Page

TCP/IP Tutorial

Introduction

This tutorial contains only one view of the salient points of TCP/IP, and therefore it is the "bare bones" of TCP/IP technology. It omits the history of development and funding, the business case for its use, and its future as compared to ISO OSI. Indeed, a great deal of technical information is also omitted. What remains is a minimum of information that must be understood by the professional working in a TCP/IP environment. These professionals include the systems administrator, the systems programmer, and the network manager.

This tutorial uses examples from the UNIX TCP/IP environment, however the main points apply across all implementations of TCP/IP.

Note that the purpose of this memo is explanation, not definition. If any question arises about the correct specification of a protocol, please refer to the actual standards defining RFC.

The next section is an overview of TCP/IP, followed by detailed descriptions of individual components.

1. TCP/IP Overview
2. Ethernet
3. ARP
4. Internet Protocol
5. User Datagram Protocol
6. Transmission Control Protocol
7. Network Applications