Emergency pages for ISM103 due to technical hitches with studentcentral

TCP/IP

Literally

TCP = Transmission Control Protocol
IP = Internet Protocol

But actually...

Refers to a suite of several hundred protocols and standards (e.g. ICMP, IGMP, SMTP, SNMP, HTTP, FTP, Gopher, Telnet, IMAP, LDAP, ARP, DNS, SSH and many many more). You can find everything you would ever wish to know about these protocols at http://www.rfc-editor.org/ as well as explanations of how standards come to be and how they evolve.

TCP/IP is the language of the Internet - it defines the protocols that make it work.

The pages on this site will take you on a rushed tour through the world of TCP/IP, and in the process explain some of the concepts behind the Internet.

How to use this site

Read and inwardly digest!

You will be expected to engage in a number of tasks as you go through which will generally be highlighted in red.

The practical activities including reading the site should take a maximum of 3 hours, but you may find yourself spending longer doing further background reading and research.

Once studentcentral is working again and I can get online to set it up (probably Tuesday night) we will be attempting a couple of online tasks, including modifying these pages through the wiki and discussing a thorny issue of Internet ownership. There will also eventually be a few simple questions so that you can test your own knowledge.

If at any point you don't understand something or want to know more, start by searching on the Web, reading a book or asking a friend. If and when that fails, while studentcentral is down, feel free to mail me (jon.dron@brighton.ac.uk) and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Once studentcentral is working again, I will be setting up a discussion forum for this purpose and/or we will be able to use the comment system on the Wiki.

Getting around this site

There are links at the end of each page of content if you wish to follow a linear path, which define the following general sequence:

Layers -What happens when you click a link - IP - TCP - HTTP

However, you are welcome to take a more circuitous route and there are direct links to most pages in the navigation bar at the base of each page. You will find links to simplified explanations that you may wish to avoid if you are comfortable with the general idea.

Next: an intro to layers