TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is most well known for being used as the networking protocol of the &link_internet;. However, it can also be used as a protocol in a private network.

TCP/IP in turn consists of two layers.

For each data chunk broken into packets, an individual connection between two computers is established. There is no permanent connection after the data has been received. This greatly reduces network traffic and makes global communication possible in the first place.

Note that when you temporarily connect to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to get access to the Internet, you will usually do so with the use of an additional protocol, the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). This encapsulates the IP packets so that they can be sent over a dial-up phone connection to an access provider's modem.

Internet services such as the World Wide Web (WWW) and e-mail are also implemented as additional protocol layers on top of TCP/IP. Those layers however are not integrated into the operating system's networking components, but rather provided by the individual Internet applications such as your Web browser. These protocols include the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) used by the WWW, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet (Telnet), and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for mail.