In this section I am going to be talking about what is a protocol relating to standards. A protocol is a set of communication rules which control:

• The format of the message

• The type of error checking to be used

• Any compression

• How the sending device indicates it as finished sending

• How the receiving device indicates that it has received the message

 

A protocol is a set of rules which define:

• How to establish communication between the machines

• The format of any data which is to be exchanged between the machines

• How errors in the data will be detected

• How errors will be corrected

• Methods of compressing the data to transmit it faster and more efficiently

• How the connection between the machines is to be terminated

The protocol that is used on most LANs and the Internet is known as the TCP/IP protocol. If any computers on the Internet are not using this standard then they will not be able to communicate with others that are.