IndexWhat is TCP/UDP?How it worksConclusionThe Internet as we know it plays a huge role in everyday life. Every business, school, company and individual relies heavily on it for the work they do or simply for recreational activities. However, most people don't fully understand how it all works. It seems intimidating to take the time and fully understand what's going on between every link you click or every email a person sends, but if you take the time to learn what's going on behind the scenes, you'll gain unfounded appreciation of what is really happening. and don't take everything we do on the Internet for granted. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay What is TCP/UDP? TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is a process that establishes and maintains connection in a given network. It allows the programs and applications we use every day to exchange data with users who are trying to achieve what they need. Combining this with the Internet Protocol, we get the foundations of what we know as the Internet. TCP is used for services that don't require a fast connection such as accessing the World Wide Web, sending and receiving emails, and performing file transfers. UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is an alternative communication method to TCP. It is mainly used for applications that require a low latency connection between each other. This includes things like online gaming, DNS, streaming online media like movies and videos, and Voice over IP. How It Works Although both protocols are used to send and receive data packets, they each work slightly differently. They both send data that ends up being resolved to an IP address, but they have different purposes for which we use each of them specifically. When you open your browser and try to connect to a web page, your computer begins sending TCP packets to the website's server address, requesting permission to view the web page. It then responds by sending yet another instance of TCP packets to your computer where your web browser puts all the information together and displays the website you are requesting access to. This happens for everything you do on a web page. Every link you click or comment you post is just a stream of these packets going back and forth between your computer and the website's server address. TCP is the most reliable option because of the way it sends packets back and forth. Each package is numbered and sent in numerical order to ensure the recipient receives all the necessary information. The user's computer will then respond to the server confirming that it actually received the message. If they don't get the right response they are looking for, the server will respond once again with the same packets to make sure the user has gotten all the information they need. Data sent via TCP is also tracked, so no information is damaged when downloading a file. This is why when you download something from the Internet it never gets corrupted or damaged because it constantly checks the information sent for errors, further increasing the reliability of this service. UDP eliminates the error checking process during packet transfer, making this service much faster. It also doesn't guarantee that the user requesting packages from the service they're trying to access is actually getting them..