Communication protocols

What are communication protocols?
Communication protocols are formal descriptions of digital message formats and rules. They have to exchange messages in or between computer systems and are required in telecommunications.

Communication protocols include authentication, error detection and correction, and signaling. You can also describe the syntax, semantics and synchronization of analog and digital communication. Communication protocols are implemented in hardware and software. There are thousands of communication protocols used ubiquitously in analog and digital communication. Computer networks cannot exist without them.

Communication devices must negotiate many physical aspects of the data to be exchanged before a successful transmission can take place. Rules that define transfers are called protocols.

There are many properties of a transmission that a protocol can define. Common ones include packet size, transmission speed, error correction types, handshaking and synchronization techniques, address assignment, confirmation processes, flow control, packet sequence control, routing, address formatting

Popular protocols include: FTP (File Transfer Protocol), TCP / IP, UDP (User Datagram Protocol), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Post Office Protocol (POP3), IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ).