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Illustrated TCP-IP - A Graphic Guide To The Protocol Suite
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
• The protocol suite of TCP/IP is becoming the world’s most widely implemented network protocol.
• 1970s—WANG
• 1980s—SNA / Novell NetWare
• 1990s—Novell and TCP/IP
• TCP/IP combined with the Web browser is creating a new type of client/server network operating system.
The TCP/IP protocol suite is being used for communications, whether for voice, video, or data. There is a new service being brought out for voice over IP at a consumer cost of 5.5 cents per minute. Radio broadcasts are all over the Web. Video is coming, but the images are still shaky and must be buffered heavily before displaying on the monitor. However, give it time. All great things are refined by time, and applications over TCP/IP are no exception.
Today, you will not find too many data communications installments that have not implemented or have not thought about the TCP/IP protocol. TCP/IP is becoming so common that it is not so much a matter of selecting the TCP/IP protocol stack as it is selecting applications that support it. Many users do not even know they are using the TCP/IP protocol. All they know is that they have a connection to the Web, which many people confuse with the Internet. We’ll get into the details of the differences later, but for now, you just need to understand that the Web is an application of the Internet. The Web uses the communications facilities of the Internet to provide for data flow between clients and servers. The Internet is not the Web and the Web is not the Internet.
In the 1970s, everyone had some type of WANG machine in their office. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Novell’s NetWare applications consumed every office. Today, NetWare continues to dominate the network arena with its installed based of client/server network applications. However, the TCP/IP protocol and Internet browsers, such as NetScape’s Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Web programming languages are combining to produce powerful corporate networks known as intranets, which mimic the facilities of the Internet but on a corporate scale. Intranets from different companies or simply different sites can communicate with each other through the Internet. Consumers can access corporate intranets through an extranet, which is simply part of the corporate intranet that is available to the public. A great example of this is electronic commerce, which is what you use when you purchase something via the Internet. Directory services are provided through Domain Name Services (DNSs) Microsystems. File and print services are provided in many different ways. Finally, the ultimate in full connectivity is the Internet, which allows the corporate intranets to interconnect (within the same corporation or different corporations), providing global connectivity unmatched by any network application today. Therefore, within a short time (possibly 1998), very powerful applications will be built that utilize the TCP/IP software suite that will eventually rival NetWare at the core.
