The Transmission
Control Protocol
(TCP)
is one of the core protocols of the Internet protocol suite. TCP is one of the
two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol (IP),
and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP.
TCP provides reliable, ordered delivery of a stream of octets from a program on
one computer to another program on another computer. TCP is the protocol used by
major Internet applications such as the World Wide Web, email, remote
administration and file transfer. Other applications, which do not require
reliable data stream service, may use the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which
provides a datagram service that emphasizes reduced latency over
reliability.
