University of Virginia Department of Computer Science

Internet Standards

The Internet Engineering Task Force has set forth this document in order to organize the development of new protocols.

HTTP

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol enables transmission of a mixture of pictures and text over the Internet. Currently there is much debate over the use of thus far nonstandard elements for document formatting being by the Netscape company.

TCP

The Transmission Control Protocol provides a means of establishing, maintaining, and terminating connections between two hosts. It coordinates the use of logical connections in order to facilitate transmission of streams of data.

IP

Internet Protocol is the connectionless means of transmitting information packets (datagrams) across a network. At each router in the transmission path, a packet is directed to its destination based on its addressing information. This enables data to travel from one point to another without a set path, thereby bypassing unavailable transmission lines.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol enables users to quickly transmit files quickly around the world. One must be careful to set software to binary transmission for files that can be corrupted by ASCII conversion.

NNTP

Originally implemented for BSD Unix, the Network News Transport Protocol was designed for distribution, inquiry, retrieval and posting of news articles.

Internet Mail

E-mail has lately become a fact of life for many people because it offers fast, dependable, and cheap delivery of messages to people anywhere in the world.

SLIP

Along with PPP, Serial Line Internet Protocol is used primarily by modem users. It's often criticized for its lack of error-correction and compression.

PPP

PPP, Point to Point Protocol, is the internet standard for transmitting IP packets over serial lines (such as using by the telephone company). It is often used by computers dialing-in over the modem.

Gopher

Before there was the World Wide Web, there was Gopher, the text-based means of distributing information. According to RFC1436, "gopher is software following a simple protocol for burrowing through a TCP/IP internet".
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