NETWORK PROTOCOL SUITES: TCP/IP SUITE

Network Protocol Suites

A protocol suite is a hierarchical collection of protocols. Similar to individual protocols, protocol suites can either be developed by a standards organization or a vendor.
Some of the protocol suites are:

• TCP/IP protocol suite
• IPX/SPX protocol suite
• NetBEUI protocol suite
• AppleTalk protocol suite
• DLC protocol suite
• SNA protocol suite

TCP/IP Protocol Suite

Department of Defense (DOD) developed this protocol suite in collaboration with a number of research organizations and universities in the 1970s. Initially, this protocol suite was referred to as the Internet protocol suite because it evolved with the Internet. However, with the emergence of two of its protocols, TCP and IP, this suite is better known as the TCP/IP protocol suite.

The following figure shows the TCP/IP protocol suite mapped to the seven layers of the OSI reference model:

In the preceding figure, the TCP/IP protocol suite consists of the following protocols:


File Transfer Protocol (FTP): This protocol enables the transfer of files from one computer or node to another.
Telnet: This terminal emulation protocol enables access to remote nodes and works on the node as if you were working on it locally.
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP): This protocol enables the exchange of electronic mails (e-mails) between two nodes.
Routing Information Protocol (RIP): This protocol provides routing-related information to the Network layer.
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF): This protocol helps the Network layer to discover the shortest available path across networks between two communicating nodes.
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP): This protocol enables reliable, connection-oriented data transfers between two nodes.

User Datagram Protocol (UDP): This protocol enables fast but unreliable connectionless data transfers between two nodes.
Internet Protocol (IP): This protocol moves data between the intermediate networks that lie between the source and destination nodes.
Domain Name Service (DNS): This protocol resolves the names of hosts to their corresponding logical addresses, known as IP addresses.
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP): This protocol generates control messages related to any error in connection or flow control.
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP): This protocol resolves the MAC address of a node given its logical address.