Internet Protocol (IP)

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The Internet Protocol (IP) is the principal communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.



IP, as the primary protocol in the Internet layer of the Internet protocol suite, has the task of delivering packets from the source host to the destination host solely based on the IP addresses in the packet headers. For this purpose, IP defines packet structures that encapsulate the data to be delivered. It also defines addressing methods that are used to label the datagram with source and destination information.

Most of the time, the packets of data have to go through a number of internediary machines, called routers, to reach their destination.

If an IP packet ever gets transmitted across your local wired network via an Ethernet cable, the whole packet will get bundled up into Ethernet frame.

The Internet Protocol only provides best effort delivery and its service is characterized as unreliable. In network architectural language, it is a connectionless protocol, in contrast to so-called connection-oriented modes of transmission. Various error conditions may occur, such as data corruption, packet loss, duplication and out-of-order delivery.