Protocolos de Comunicacin (IP, TCP, UDP)

Un protocolo es un mtodo estndar que permite la comunicacin entre procesos (que potencialmente se ejecutan en diferentes equipos). TCP (que significa Protocolo de Control de Transmisin) es uno de los principales protocolos de la capa de transporte del modelo TCP/IP. En el nivel de aplicacin, posibilita la administracin de datos que vienen del nivel ms bajo del modelo, o van hacia l, (es decir, el protocolo IP). Cuando se proporcionan los datos al protocolo IP, los agrupa en datagramas IP, fijando el campo del protocolo en 6 (para que sepa con anticipacin que el protocolo es TCP). TCP es un protocolo orientado a conexin, es decir, que permite que dos mquinas que estn comunicadas controlen el estado de la transmisin. Las principales caractersticas del protocolo TCP son las siguientes: TCP permite colocar los datagramas nuevamente en orden cuando vienen del protocolo IP. TCP permite que el monitoreo del flujo de los datos y as evita la saturacin de la red. TCP permite que los datos se formen en segmentos de longitud variada para "entregarlos" al protocolo IP. TCP permite multiplexar los datos, es decir, que la informacin que viene de diferentes fuentes (por ejemplo, aplicaciones) en la misma lnea pueda circular simultneamente. Por ltimo, TCP permite comenzar y finalizar la comunicacin amablemente. El objetivo de TCP Con el uso del protocolo TCP, las aplicaciones pueden comunicarse en forma segura (gracias al sistema de acuse de recibo del protocolo TCP) independientemente de las capas inferiores. Esto significa que los routers (que funcionan en la capa de Internet) slo tienen que enviar los datos en forma de datagramas, sin preocuparse con el monitoreo de datos porque esta funcin la cumple la capa de transporte (o ms especficamente el protocolo TCP).

La funcin multiplexin TCP posibilita la realizacin de una tarea importante: multiplexar/demultiplexar; es decir transmitir datos desde diversas aplicaciones en la misma lnea o, en otras palabras, ordenar la informacin que llega en paralelo.

Figura 4. Multiplexion Estas operaciones se realizan empleando el concepto de puertos (o conexiones), es decir, un nmero vinculado a un tipo de aplicacin que, cuando se combina con una direccion de IP, permite determinar en forma exclusiva una aplicacin que se ejecuta en una mquina determinada. IP, TCP, and UDP IP, the Internet Protocol, has a number of advantages over other competing protocols such as AppleTalk and IPX, most stemming from its history. It was developed with military sponsorship during the Cold War, and ended up with a lot of features that the military was interested in. First, it had to be robust. The entire network couldn't stop functioning if the Soviets nuked a router in Cleveland; all messages still had to get through to their intended destinations (except those going to Cleveland, of course). Therefore, IP was designed to allow multiple routes between any two points and to route packets of data around damaged routers. Second, the military had many different kinds of computers, and they needed all of them to be able to talk to each other. Therefore, the protocol had to be open and platform independent. It wasn't good enough to have one protocol for IBM mainframes and another for PDP-11s.

The IBM mainframes needed to talk to the PDP-11s and any other strange computers that might be around. Since there are multiple routes between two points and since the quickest path between two points may change over time as a function of network traffic and other factors (for example, the existence of Cleveland), the packets that make up a particular data stream may not all take the same route. Furthermore, they may not arrive in the order they were sent, if they even arrive at all. To improve on the basic scheme, the TCP was layered on top of IP to give each end of a connection the ability to acknowledge receipt of IP packets and request retransmission of lost or corrupted packets. Furthermore, TCP allows the packets to be put back together at the receiving end in the same order they were sent at the sending end. TCP, however, carries a fair amount of overhead. Therefore, if the order of the data isn't particularly important and if the loss of individual packets won't completely corrupt the data stream, packets are sometimes sent without the guarantees that TCP provides. This is accomplished through the use of the UDP protocol.