Introduction
Everyone who has any knowledge of the internet is well-aware of the Transport Control Protocol (TCP). Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf invented TCP in the 1970s for satellite communications. In their work building a satellite communications network, they realized the need for a hardware-independent mechanism to move data from one computer to another. All prior work – remember, there was no internet – used systems highly customized for specific hardware implementations. They thought that a more general mechanism would make it easier to add connectivity to new systems.
They built TCP as a general communication mechanism that could easily be adapted to different computer systems. They architected it as a connection-oriented protocol that managed connections between client devices (initiators) and servers (responders).