Author:  Terry Crawford

September 24, 2006

     By the mid-1970s, many government agencies were on the ARPAnet, but each was running on a network put together by whoever happened to be the lowest bidder. Hence, different computers spoke different languages. This created a need for a set of standard protocols that would tie all networks together, regardless of the language being used, and enable them to communicate with each other.

     In 1982, this solution was implemented as TCP/IP. TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol; IP is the abbreviation for Internet Protocol.

     The TCP portion of the TCP/IP provides data transmission verification between client and server. The IP portion moves the data packets from one node to another. It decodes addresses and routes data to the designated destinations. IP can be used by small computers to communicate across a LAN (Local Area Network) in the same room or with computer networks located around the world. Once the Department of Defense declared the TCP/IP suite as the standard protocol for internetworking military computers, it was quickly ported to most computer systems, including personal computers.

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