Protocols

Earlier I was talking about HTTP which is the protocol used as the foundation for World. Wide Web. Then comes the problem of "What exactly is a protocol?". The name doesn't imply any meaning at all. So here is the explanation.

A protocol is a set of rules and standards defined to be used when communicating  digital messages between computers systems and in telecommunications. These rules govern how data is transferred over networks, how they are compressed, how they are presented on the screen, etc. Are these protocol essential for communicating data over the network? Actually, yes!! Without protocols to facilitate data communication, it would be like two people trying to talk to each other in two different foreign language. Thus, it is necessary to implement protocols.

There are various types of protocols used for various purposes. For example,

• TCP >>  Stands for Transmission Control Protocol; Is used for the reliable transmission of data over a network.
• IP >>Stands for Internet Protocol; It defines a set of rules governing the way computers use IP packets to send data over the Internet or any other IP-based network. It also defines addressing in IP
• HTTP >> Stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol; used for transmitting and displaying information in the form of web pages on browsers
• Ethernet >> Used for data transmission over a LAN.
• Wi-Fi >> One of the wireless protocols
• FTP >> Stands for File Transfer Protocol. used for file transferring (uploading and downloading) over the Internet
• SMTP >> Stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol; Used for email

are just some of the protocols which are being used in data communication. So then comes the question of  what 'protocol suites' are. Protocol Suites are groups of protocols, that work together to ensure successful communication (e.g.:- TCP/IP). Systems do not actually use a single protocol to handle a transmission. Instead they use a set of cooperating protocols belonging to protocol suites.

How to implement a protocol?

For this, the protocol software modules have to be interfaced with a framework which is assumed to be implemented on the machine's operating system

The basic requirements of Protocols revolve around in specifying rules governing the transmission. These rules concern the following areas of the messages being exchanged.

• Data Formats for data exchange
• Detection of transmission errors
• Acknowledgments  
• Loss of information - timeouts and retries
• Direction of information flow 
• Sequence control
• Flow Control