Hence, they synchronize their 'view' of time by communicating numbers.

Then, the sender's view of time would be different from the receivers. Imagine if we didn't have a universal notion of time. So your friend asks you to resend the letter at position 3 (this is the idea behind the expected acknowledgement number).Īs mentioned in the article, it may be just that ('c', 3) is taking longer to arrive and so in that case, the sender sends a duplicate message, but duplicates are typically dropped by the receiver.Ī helpful way to think about these numbers is that they synchronize the data so both parties have the same 'view' of it.

It's missing 'c' because it expects a continuous increase of numbers and 3 is missing. The IP part of TCP/IP handles the most fundamental task of getting your data to the source device, whether its a website, a network printer, or maybe that Xbox in your kids bedroom. Now, suppose the friend gets ('b', 2), but then ('d', 4). (Image credit: Shutterstock) The best IP address tools make it simple and easy to manage a the allocation, management, and filtering of IP addresses in a network. The numbers are used in case the packets/messages arrive out of order.

Imagine you want to send the letters of the alphabet to a friend over the Internet.

Tcp ip view