Introduction

The TCP/IP protocol suite allow computers of all sizes, from many different computer vendors, running totally different operating systems, to communicated with each other. It is quite amazing because its use has far exceeded its original estimates. What started in the late 1960s as a government financed research project into packet switching network has, in the 1990s, turned into the most widely used form of networking between computers. It is truly an open system in that the definition of the protocol suite and many of its implementations are publicly available at litte or no charge. It forms the basis for what is called the worldwide Internet, or the Internet, a wide area network (WAN) of more than one million computer that literelly spans the globe.