Introduction - If you have any usage issues, please Google them yourself
We have said that protocols allow one to specify or understand communication
without knowing the details of a particular vendor s network hardware. They are to
computer communication what programming languages are to computation. It should
be apparent by now how closely the analogy fits. Like assembly language, some protocols
describe communication across a physical network. For example, the details of the
Ethernet frame format, network access policy, and frame error handling comprise a protocol
that describes communication on an Ethernet. Similarly, like a high-level
language, the Internet Protocol specifies higher-level abstractions (e.g., IP addressing,
datagram format, and the concept of unreliable, connectionless delivery)