What are Network protocols?
Network protocols are sets of established rules that determine how data is to be formatted, transmitted and received so that computer network equipment - from servers and routers to endpoints - can communicate, regardless of differences in their underlying infrastructures, designs or standards.
In order to send and receive information successfully, the devices on both sides of a communication exchange must accept and comply with protocol conventions. Support for network protocols can be built into the software, hardware, or both.
Standardized network protocols offer a common language for network devices. Without them, computers would not know how to interact. As a result, except for special networks built around a specific architecture, few networks could function and the internet as we know it would not exist. Almost all network end users rely on network protocols for connectivity
How network protocols work
Network protocols break down larger processes into separate, well-defined functions and tasks at every level of the network. In the standard model, known as the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, one or more network protocols determine the activities at each layer in the telecommunication exchange.
A set of collaborative network protocols is known as protocol suite. The TCP / IP suite contains different protocols in different layers - such as the data, network, transport and application layers - that work together to enable internet connectivity. These include:
UDP (User Datagram Protocol), which serves as an alternative communication protocol for TCP and is used to establish low latency and loss tolerance connections between applications and the Internet.
Internet Protocol (IP), which uses a set of rules to send and receive messages at the Internet address level; Y
Additional network protocols containing Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP), each of which have defined sets of exchange and display information rules
Every packet sent and received over a network contains binary data. Most protocols add a header at the beginning of each package to store information about the sender and the intended destination of the message. Some protocols may also include a footer with additional information at the end. Network protocols process these headers and footers as part of the data being moved between devices to identify messages of their own type.
Network protocols are often set out in an industry standard - developed, defined and published by groups such as:
- the International Telecommunication Union
- the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
- the Internet Engineering Task Force
- the international organization for standardization
- the World Wide Web Consortium
Major types of network protocols
In general, networks have three types of protocols: Management, such as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP); communication, such as Ethernet; And security, such as Secure Shell (SSH).
These three broad categories include thousands of network protocols that uniformly perform a wide variety of defined tasks, including authentication, automation, correction, compression, error handling, file retrieval, file transfer, link aggregation, routing, semantics, synchronization, and syntax.
Implementing network protocols
For network protocols to work, they must be encrypted in software, either part of the computer's operating system (OS) or as an application, or implemented in the computer's hardware. Most modern operating systems have built-in software services that are prepared to implement some network protocols. Other applications, such as web browsers, are designed with software libraries that support all the protocols needed for the application to work. In addition, support for TCP / IP and routing protocols has been implemented in direct hardware for improved performance.
When a new protocol is implemented, it is added to the protocol suite. The organization of protocol suites is considered monolithic because all protocols are stored at the same address and built on each other
Vulnerabilities of network protocols
A major problem with network protocols is that they are not designed for security. Their lack of protection can sometimes affect malicious attacks, such as eavesdropping and cache poisoning, on the system. The most common attack on network protocols is the advertising of fake routes, which means that traffic goes through compromised hosts instead of the right ones.
Network protocol analyzers are designed and installed in response to these vulnerabilities. Network protocol analyzers protect systems against harmful activity by supplementing firewalls, antivirus programs and antispyware software.
Use of network protocols
Network protocols make the modern Internet possible because they enable computers to communicate via networks without users having to see or know what background operations are taking place. Some specific examples of network protocols and their use are:
Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), the latest version of a standard protocol that is used to receive incoming emails.
Simple main transport protocol, which is used to send and distribute outgoing emails.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP), which is used to transfer files from one machine to another.
Telnet, a collection of rules that are used to connect one system to another via an external login. In this protocol, the system that sends the connection request is the local computer and the system that accepts the connection is the remote computer.
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