With over seven years of experience as a freelance technology writer and reporter, Tim Keary has a range of experience breaking down complex technologies into simple and accessible content. His work has been featured in Forbes Advisor, Techopedia and.
Tim Keary Small Business and Technology WriterWith over seven years of experience as a freelance technology writer and reporter, Tim Keary has a range of experience breaking down complex technologies into simple and accessible content. His work has been featured in Forbes Advisor, Techopedia and.
Written By Tim Keary Small Business and Technology WriterWith over seven years of experience as a freelance technology writer and reporter, Tim Keary has a range of experience breaking down complex technologies into simple and accessible content. His work has been featured in Forbes Advisor, Techopedia and.
Tim Keary Small Business and Technology WriterWith over seven years of experience as a freelance technology writer and reporter, Tim Keary has a range of experience breaking down complex technologies into simple and accessible content. His work has been featured in Forbes Advisor, Techopedia and.
Small Business and Technology Writer Kiran Aditham Deputy EditorWith 20 years of experience, Kiran Aditham has navigated the field in editorial and writing, from working with major pubs like Adweek, AdAge and PSFK to now working at Forbes Advisor.
Kiran Aditham Deputy EditorWith 20 years of experience, Kiran Aditham has navigated the field in editorial and writing, from working with major pubs like Adweek, AdAge and PSFK to now working at Forbes Advisor.
Written By Kiran Aditham Deputy EditorWith 20 years of experience, Kiran Aditham has navigated the field in editorial and writing, from working with major pubs like Adweek, AdAge and PSFK to now working at Forbes Advisor.
Kiran Aditham Deputy EditorWith 20 years of experience, Kiran Aditham has navigated the field in editorial and writing, from working with major pubs like Adweek, AdAge and PSFK to now working at Forbes Advisor.
Deputy Editor
Matt is a proven leader in IT, combining a master’s degree in Management Information Systems and solid experience with a proven track record in IT, leading business initiatives to help organizations meet their goals. He has led the security practices.
Matt is a proven leader in IT, combining a master’s degree in Management Information Systems and solid experience with a proven track record in IT, leading business initiatives to help organizations meet their goals. He has led the security practices.
Matt is a proven leader in IT, combining a master’s degree in Management Information Systems and solid experience with a proven track record in IT, leading business initiatives to help organizations meet their goals. He has led the security practices.
Matt is a proven leader in IT, combining a master’s degree in Management Information Systems and solid experience with a proven track record in IT, leading business initiatives to help organizations meet their goals. He has led the security practices.
Updated: May 30, 2024, 4:12pm
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Network protocols are something that most users don’t think twice about, but they play a critical role in making the internet work. Without them, there would be no way for servers or devices to communicate with each other.
Every piece of online content—from text to images, video and audio—is delivered to the end user via network protocols. But what is a network protocol exactly?
A network protocol is a mechanism or a set of procedures that enables devices to communicate back and forth across the internet. In order to communicate together, two devices must support the same protocol or a gateway will need to be used to translate the communication.
There are three main types of network protocols you need to be aware of:
While there are many different types of network protocols, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the most widely used due to its ability to break down data into packets so they can be transferred (you can read more about TCP further below).
Under the traditional TCP/IP model of networking, TCP is used alongside the Internet Protocol (IP) to identify hosts to send data across the internet.
Within this model, IP identifies and defines the IP address of devices or applications that data will be forwarded to, and then TCP routes the data through a network to guide the content to its final destination.
Network management and communication protocols are two of the most important types of protocols.
Essentially, communication protocols including TCP/IP and HTTP are designed to enable two devices to exchange data, whereas network management protocols are designed to help manage and troubleshoot performance.
For example, network management protocols such as Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) can monitor and troubleshoot the connection between an endpoint and the network so that administrators can better understand the status and availability of infrastructure.
In contrast, communication protocols are mainly concerned with defining formatting and syntax rules to set out a framework for two devices to exchange data with each other.
Below we’re going to look at nine types of network protocols that empower and drive modern networking.
TCP is a protocol that converts data into packets so that it can be sent between a server and a client. Organizations use TCP to transfer content such as files, text, images and emails because it guarantees that the packets will be delivered accurately and in the correct order.
It’s worth noting that TCP will establish a connection between the origin and the destination devices before attempting to transfer data. This three-way handshake is outlined briefly below:
UDP is a communication protocol that’s designed to send packets from one device to another on a network. Many organizations use UDP as an alternative to TCP because it offers higher transfer speeds.
While this increase in speed comes at the cost of accuracy, UDP better supports video/audio streaming services, online games or voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) calls, which can handle some degree of data loss.
Another key difference between the two is that UDP won’t attempt to establish a connection before sending packets on to the destination. At the same time, it also doesn’t guarantee the delivery of data to the other device.
FTP is a network protocol that’s used to transfer files from one device to another over an unencrypted TCP/IP connection. With FTP, a user can load up a web browser or FTP client such as FileZilla or FTP Voyager and send up to 2GB at once.
Many organizations use FTP because of its ability to send large files or lots of files at once in a way that’s fast and efficient. Unfortunately, this efficiency comes at the cost of security as FTP transmits all data in plain text.
For this reason, many organizations opt to use a secure version of FTP called File Transfer Protocol Secure Sockets Layer (FTPS), which functions the same but uses SSL encryption to obscure the transferred data.
HTTP is a communication protocol that enables systems to communicate on the World Wide Web. With HTTP, a client will send a hypertext message request to a web server asking for access to the resources needed to load a web page.
The server hosting the content will then respond and enable the client to load all the necessary text, images and videos featured on the page. HTTP’s request-response cycle is outlined briefly below:
There is also an encrypted version of HTTP called HTTPS, which uses SSL/TLS encryption to encrypt requests and responses so they can’t be accessed by third parties.
SNMP is an application layer protocol that’s used to collect management information from devices such as computers, routers, switchers, firewalls and printers.
Network monitoring platforms often use SNMP to monitor the performance and status of devices throughout a network in real time.
The protocol works with an SNMP manager or software client sending SNMP GET requests to SNMP-enabled devices.
SNMP-enabled devices each have a local SNMP agent that collects performance data from the device and will forward this information to the SNMP manager so that an administrator can get a top-down view of performance and status.
ICMP is a network protocol that devices use to warn about connectivity issues and errors. ICMP can notify devices that a forwarded message was too long or arrived out of order, and will issue an error message requesting that the device resend the content.
Troubleshooting tools such as Ping send ICMP requests to a device and measure the round-trip time, or the time it takes for the device to respond to the request. The amount of delay in the response can then be used to measure the quality of the connection.
Other tools such as traceroute use ICMP to troubleshoot and measure the efficiency of network routes, telling the user how much time it took to traverse from one device to another.
Sometimes, cybercriminals will use the protocol as part of an ICMP flood attack where they attempt to overwhelm a server with illegitimate ICMP requests to take its computing resources away from the end user.
POP3 is a network protocol that enables a server to retrieve emails from a remote server and download them to the local device. Whenever the client connects to the server via TCP, it automatically downloads all the new messages to it, making them accessible to the user both online and off-line.
Email platforms like Microsoft Outlook can use POP3 to collect email messages from remote servers via TCP/IP so that they’re available off-line.
Under the default setting, all emails are deleted from the server automatically once the download is complete, but the user can also configure it to store emails on the server for a certain time period.
IMAP is another protocol that’s used for retrieving emails. With IMAP, whenever a user clicks on an email, it isn’t downloaded or stored on their computer locally but remains on the remote server, enabling the user to check their email from multiple devices.
The main difference between IMAP and POP3 is that the latter only allows users to download and access emails locally on the same computer. IMAP also doesn’t automatically delete emails from the server.
SMTP is a mail delivery protocol that allows a device to send and deploy email to a remote endpoint with a TCP connection. Many providers including Microsoft Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo Mail use SMTP to send messages to remote servers.
Briefly, an organization will first create an SMTP server, which employees can connect to and communicate with via a mail user agent (MUA) or email client such as Gmail. Through this connection, they can deliver emails to the SMTP server and other users.
Unlike POP3, SMTP cannot retrieve emails from a mailbox, and unlike POP3, it doesn’t automatically delete emails.
If you’re struggling to get to grips with the different types of network protocols, try to focus on understanding TCP/IP first, as this is the technical foundation that many of the most important communication protocols will use to communicate.
The TCP/IP model has four distinct layers. The application layer is where messages are encoded into a format where they can be read by the sender and the recipient, the transport layer is where messages are broken down into packets, the network layer is where the sender and recipient’s IP addresses are defined, and the link layer, which enables packets to be transferred from one endpoint to another.
IPv4 and IPv6 are different versions of the IP. IPv4 provides devices with a 32-bit IP address whereas IPv6 provides them with a 128-bit address length. IPv6 is faster than IPv4 and supports auto-configuration, and can support many more unique addresses than IPv4.
Not entirely. FTP doesn’t have encryption in place, which means that if an unauthorized user enters or hacks your network, they have the ability to intercept files and data transferred via FTP. Likewise, FTP relies on passwords that are stored in plain text, and thus susceptible to being harvested. You can make FTP safer by using the encrypted version FTPS.
Network protocols are mechanisms or procedures that enable devices to communicate back and forth across the internet. Network management protocols are designed to monitor, manage and maintain a network. Network communication protocols establish rules and formatting (such as syntax, synchronization and semantics) for exchanging data across a network. Network security protocols use security measures such as cryptography and encryption to protect data.
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Small Business and Technology WriterWith over seven years of experience as a freelance technology writer and reporter, Tim Keary has a range of experience breaking down complex technologies into simple and accessible content. His work has been featured in Forbes Advisor, Techopedia and VentureBeat.
Deputy EditorWith 20 years of experience, Kiran Aditham has navigated the field in editorial and writing, from working with major pubs like Adweek, AdAge and PSFK to now working at Forbes Advisor.
Matt is a proven leader in IT, combining a master’s degree in Management Information Systems and solid experience with a proven track record in IT, leading business initiatives to help organizations meet their goals. He has led the security practices at 2 different MSPs, been a Health IT Director, a project manager, business analyst, system administrator, systems architect. if it has to do with IT, he's probably done it. He helped author the CMMC Certified Professional and CMMC Certified Assessor field guides and has spoken at conferences all over the country regarding CMMC, IT security, risk. Matt has worked with Fortune 500 companies and small businesses, in areas ranging from engineering to marketing and supply chain to health care.
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