The Layered Architecture of the TCP/IP Model

TCP/IP is the most widely used networking protocol on the Internet. Both TCP and IP work together to facilitate safe and fast delivery of data through a network. To increase the transmission speed of large blocks of data, the data is split into smaller data fragments. These fragments are called data packets. TCP/IP plays a pivotal role in this context. TCP affixes a header to the data packet, which contains information pertaining to the destination address, source address, and length of the data. The role of IP is to ensure that once the data packets reach the destination address, they are reassembled into the original data block, and sent for use by the intended application. TCP/IP is a condensed version of the OSI model and has fewer layers. Figure 1.6 displays the layered architecture of the TCP/IP model.

Figure 1.6: The layered architecture of the TCP/IP model.

As shown, the TCP/IP model consists of four layers:

• Network Access layer

• Internet layer

• Transport layer

• Application layer