CertiGuide to A+ (Core Hardware)  9  Chapter 1011:  Networking

Star Topology 1 IPX/SPX

When someone calls you on a telephone, a common response would sound something like 'Hello?'

That is how you inform the caller that you heard the request to talk, and you are ready for them to say something. In other words, that is protocol. Networking has all sorts of protocols. The ones we are concerned about at this point are transport protocols. This means some standard way of how data moves.

If I called you and the response was 'hola,' I might repeat, “"hello," you repeat 'hola,' and within a few moments we would most likely both give up, and hang up the phones. This is because while I was following protocol in English, you were following protocol in Spanish. We are both attempting to talk, but we had a failure to agree on a protocol (of language).

The same thing can happen in network Transport Protocols. We have to agree on a common way of communicating, or no communication happens. There are several transport protocols that are in use in networking. Lets look at a few popular network transport protocols next.

Star Topology 1 IPX/SPX