TCP/IP Is the Internet
By now, it should be apparent that TCP/IP basically comprises the Internet itself. It is a complex collection of protocols, many of which remain invisible to the user. On most Internet servers, a minimum of these protocols exist:
• Transmission Control Protocol
• Internet Protocol
• Internet Control Message Protocol
• Address Resolution Protocol
• File Transfer Protocol
• The Telnet protocol
• The Gopher protocol
• Network News Transfer Protocol
• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol
Now, prepare yourself for a shock. These are only a handful of protocols run on the Internet. There are actually hundreds of them. Better than half of the primary protocols have had one or more security holes. In essence, the point I would like to make is this: The Internet was designed as a system with multiple avenues of communication. Each protocol is one such avenue. As such, there are hundreds of ways to move data across the Net. Until recently, utilizing these protocols called for accessing them one at a time. That is, to arrest a Gopher session and start a Telnet session, the user had to physically terminate the Gopher connection.
The HTTP browser changed all that and granted the average user much greater power and functionality. Indeed, FTP, Telnet, NTTP, and HTTP are all available at the click of a button.
