ABSTRACT
TCP and IP are extremely important protocols as they allow hosts to communicate over the Internet in a reliable way. TCP provides a connection between two hosts and supports error handling. This chapter discusses TCP in more detail and shows how a connection is established then maintained. An important concept of TCP/IP communications is the usage of ports and sockets. A port identifies the process type (such as FTP, TELNET, and so on) and the socket identifies a unique connection number. In this way TCP/IP can support multiple simultaneous connections of applications over a network.
