The communications technology of the public Internet, local area networks (LANs) and most wide area networks (WANs). The Internet Protocol (IP) is part of the TCP/IP protocol suite, and the terms "IP network" and "TCP/IP network" are synonymous.
The Internet uses a packet-switched architecture, in which data are broken up into smaller "packets," with each packet containing a source address and destination address. Internet protocol (IP) packets are handed over to a data link layer protocol, for the physical transmission to the next node in the network path.
While "IP" refers to the entire TCP/IP protocol suite, "IP layer" refers to just the network-to-network part, occupying layer 3 in the "protocol stack" (see below). To learn about IP networking, see TCP/IP and TCP/IP abc's. See OSI model, IP address and IP on Everything.
Following are the primary standards that keep the Internet running:
Protocol Purpose TCP/IP Network packet transmission TCP Reliable delivery UDP Unreliable delivery IP Network to network HTTP Web transmission HTTPS Secure Web transmission HTML Web page formatting SMTP Email FTP File transfer DNS Domain name management SNMP Network management Telnet Remote execution OSPF Routing protocol RIP Routing protocol ICMP Control messages DHCP Assign IP addresses ARP Find MAC addresses RTP Real-time transmission RTSP Real-time transmission + QoS