IP (Internet Protocol)
IP - Internet Protocol. One of a number of protocols, or set of rules, that governs the transmission of data across a network. IP has become the most common, standard, and widely adopted protocol across the world.
Each computer or device on a Wide Area Network has at least one IP address that uniquely identifies it from all other computers on that network. When data is sent or received it gets divided into little chunks called packets. Each of these packets contains both the sender's IP address, a portion of data and the receiver's address. Any packet is sent first to a gateway device that understands the structure of the network. The gateway device reads the destination address and forwards the packet to the next gateway device that in turn reads the destination address. This process is repeated until one gateway recognizes the packet as belonging to a computer within its immediate neighbourhood or domain. That gateway then forwards the packet directly to the computer whose address is specified, and the data transfer is complete.
IP is a “connectionless” protocol, which means that there is no continuing connection between the end points that are communicating. Each packet that travels through the network is treated as an independent unit of data without any relation to any other unit of data. Each packet can, if necessary, be sent by a different route across the network and packets can arrive in a different order than the order they were sent in. The Internet Protocol just delivers them. The packets get put in the right order because of TCP, a connection-oriented protocol that works closely with IP to keep track of the packet sequence in a message.
Because of IP becoming the dominant protocol for most applications, devices and organisations, types of data that were previously sent using different protocols can now be sent over IP – voice, video, and so on. This has opened the door to many organisations consolidating the delivery of all types of data over a single network architecture – increasing flexibility & manageability and reducing cost & overhead.
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