Understanding TCP/IP

The TCP/IP protocol suite is often referred to as the Internet protocol suite because it was created during the development of the Internet. As it later became integrated into all UNIX servers, TCP/IP entered wide use with large networks (often referred to as enterprise networks). TCP/IP’s scalability from small to large networks and the current heavy interest in connecting LANs to the Internet has enabled TCP/IP to evolve into the most widely used network protocol today. TCP/IP is installed by default on your server running Windows Server 2008. TCP/IP is actually required by the Active Directory and the access protocols that are used to access Active Directory information.

Figure 7.1 shows the TCP/IP stack mapped to the OSI model (it doesn’t map exactly to the seven layers, but it does provide some insight into what the TCP/IP protocols do). The list that follows describes a number of the protocols in the TCP/IP stack, which pop up in other hours in this book.