Chapter 8

In the first two parts of this "TCP/IP Overview and Background Information" section, I have laid the groundwork for understanding how networks function in general terms. Now we can begin to turn our attention to the main subject of this book: TCP/IP. Just as Ethernet rules the roost when it comes to local area network (LAN) technologies, and IEEE 802.11 is the boss of the wireless LAN (WLAN) world, TCP/IP dominates and even defines the world of modern internetworking, including the Internet.

Since TCP/IP is the subject of this entire book, you might be wondering why this part is so small, containing only a single chapter. The reason is that it provides only a high-level overview of the TCP/IP protocol suite. TCP/IP is a collection of several dozen constituent protocols and technologies. These are described in the following two sections of the book, which cover lower-layer and application protocols, respectively. These protocols are summarized in the TCP/IP introduction chapter that follows, which also provides a brief history of TCP/IP and describes its services and model.