The information exchanged between devices on a network or other communications medium is governed by rules or conventions that can be set out in a technical specification called a communication protocol standard. To reach agreement a protocol is developed into a technical standard. Д¬ommunications protocols have to be agreed upon by the parties involved. This is where the analogies come into play for the TCP/IP model, because the designers of TCP/IP employed the same techniques used to conquer the complexity of programming language compilers (design by analogy) in the implementation of its protocols and its layering scheme. Obviously the number of layers of a layering scheme and the way the layers are defined can have a drastic impact on the protocols involved. The group responsible for this design is called the Internet Engineering Task Force ( IETF). The actual protocols are collectively called the Internet protocol suite. The layering scheme in use on the Internet is called the TCP/IP model. The TCP/IP model or Internet layering scheme and its relation to some common protocols. Instead of using a single universal protocol to handle all transmission tasks, a set of cooperating protocols fitting the layering scheme is used. To ease design, communications protocols are structured using a layering scheme as a basis. The communications protocols in use on the Internet are designed to function in very complex and diverse settings.

A programming language describes the same for computations, so there is a close analogy between protocols and programming languages: protocols are to communications what programming languages are to computations.

A protocol therefore describes the syntax, semantics, and synchronization of communication. Each message has an exact meaning intended to provoke a defined response of the receiver. In [[comphe word algorithm is a synonym for the word procedure so a protocol is to communications what an algorithm is to mathematics.Д¬ommunicating systems use well-defined formats for exchanging messages. While there is no generally accepted formal definition of 'protocol' in computer science, an informal definition, based on the previous, could be 'a set of procedures to be followed when communicating'.

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