Tale of nets - 02 ( Agreements ) ~ Kalpa Gunarathna`s Blog

OK then. One common term we most of the time use in networking is “protocol”. The word itself seems a bit technical and some what dangerous,isn’t it. But actually its not. Its very simple concept when you understand it right.

Image1 - HTTP protocol used for communication between web server and a client

Everyone has eaten some toffees right. Lest take toffees for example. Say you made some toffees for an event and you want to send them to your friend Joey. (This is the same Joey from friends : p). There is a way you send them to him and there is a way joey eats them and its something simple we follow in our day today life..

First you made the toffees. And you wrap each and everyone one of them and put them in a box. And you label Joeys address on the box and send him it. Now of course when joey recived your toffee box he just can't eat it right. The simple things he has to do is first open the box and then unwrap the toffees and eat them.

Why does he has to follow these instructions ??? Because you have made them that way.

So a protocol is an agreement or set of instructions that both parties in the communication have to follow. Take our toffee example again. What happens if either one of us does not follow the required convention. It s gonna be messy. Either I can't send the toffees to joey or he cant eat them properly. So the bottom line is if you want to eat toffees properly you have to follow a certain protocol. :P

And This thing also should be said.

In Order to a communication to happen you need 3 thing.

A message sender
A message reciver
A communication medium.

(and of course a message :D)

image 2

Forget about computer networks. Let's say we are talking, like in a conversation. For real. There is me, message sender.There is you, message receiver. And there is our communication medium, the air. And that’s communication.

And also for the communication to be successful. There should be some things like protocols, timing, synchronisation stuff like that. Without these things the messages will be transferred and communication will be happened. But it will be gibberish to the recevier.

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