What Is TCP/IP & DNS
TCP/IP & DNS
TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. It’s the Internet’s fundamental
“control system”, and it’s really two systems in one. In the computer world, a “protocol” is simply a
standard way of doing things—a tried and trusted method that everybody follows to ensure things
get done properly. So what do TCP and IP actually do?
Internet Protocol (IP) is simply the Internet’s addressing system. All the machines on the Internet—
yours, mine, and everyone else’s—are identified by an Internet Protocol (IP) address that takes the
form of a series of digits separated by dots or colons. If all the machines have numeric addresses,
every machine knows exactly how (and where) to contact every other machine.
When it comes to websites, we usually refer to them by easy-to-remember names (like https://blog.zsec.uk)
rather than their actual IP addresses—and there’s a relatively simple system called DNS (Domain
Name System) that enables a computer to look up the IP address for any given website. In the
original version of IP, known as IPv4, addresses consisted of four sets of digits, such as 12.34.56.78
or 123.255.212.55, but the rapid growth in Internet use meant that all possible addresses were used
up by January 2011.
This prompted the introduction of a “new” IP system with more addresses, which is known as IPv6,
where each address is much longer and looks something like this: 123a:b716:7291:0da2:912c:0321:0ffe:1da2.
However, IPv6 has been around for a while it’s still not fully integrated as normality, many
businesses have it setup for sites, but it is not as mainstream as IPv4.
The other part of the control system, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), sorts out how packets
of data move back and forth between one computer (in other words, one IP address) and another.
It’s TCP that figures out how to get the data from the source to the destination, arranging for it to
be broken into packets, transmitted, resent if they get lost, and reassembled into the correct order at
the other end.
TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. It’s the Internet’s fundamental
“control system”, and it’s really two systems in one. In the computer world, a “protocol” is simply a
standard way of doing things—a tried and trusted method that everybody follows to ensure things
get done properly. So what do TCP and IP actually do?
Internet Protocol (IP) is simply the Internet’s addressing system. All the machines on the Internet—
yours, mine, and everyone else’s—are identified by an Internet Protocol (IP) address that takes the
form of a series of digits separated by dots or colons. If all the machines have numeric addresses,
every machine knows exactly how (and where) to contact every other machine.
When it comes to websites, we usually refer to them by easy-to-remember names (like https://blog.zsec.uk)
rather than their actual IP addresses—and there’s a relatively simple system called DNS (Domain
Name System) that enables a computer to look up the IP address for any given website. In the
original version of IP, known as IPv4, addresses consisted of four sets of digits, such as 12.34.56.78
or 123.255.212.55, but the rapid growth in Internet use meant that all possible addresses were used
up by January 2011.
This prompted the introduction of a “new” IP system with more addresses, which is known as IPv6,
where each address is much longer and looks something like this: 123a:b716:7291:0da2:912c:0321:0ffe:1da2.
However, IPv6 has been around for a while it’s still not fully integrated as normality, many
businesses have it setup for sites, but it is not as mainstream as IPv4.
The other part of the control system, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), sorts out how packets
of data move back and forth between one computer (in other words, one IP address) and another.
It’s TCP that figures out how to get the data from the source to the destination, arranging for it to
be broken into packets, transmitted, resent if they get lost, and reassembled into the correct order at
the other end.
No comments