Friday, January 30, 2009

Need for Protocols

As all we know that basic communication hardware consists of mechanisms that can transfer bits from one point to another.However,using raw hardware to communicate is analogous to programming by entering 1s and 0s but it is cumbersome and inconvenient.To aid programmers,computers attached to a network use complex software that provides a convenient,high level interface for applications.The software handles most low level communication details and problems automatically,making it possible for applications to communicate easily.Thus,most application programs rely on network software to communicate that means hey do not interact with network hardware directly.All parties involved in a communication must agree on a set of rules to be used when exchanging messages and such type of agreement is known as protocol.This term is also applied to computer communications meaning of which "a set of rules that specify the format of messages and the appropriate action required for each message is known as a network protocol or a computer communication protocol."The software that implement such rules is called as protocol software.

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