🔗 The internet is cool. Thank you, TCP

The Internet is Cool. Thank you, TCP

The internet is incredible. It’s nearly impossible to keep people away from. But it can also be unreliable: packets drop, links congest, bits mangle, and data corrupts. Oh, it’s dangerous out there! (I’m writing this in Kramer’s tone)

So how is it possible that our apps just work? If you’ve networked your app before, you know the drill: socket()/bind() here, accept() there, maybe a connect() over there, and it just works. Reliable, orderly, uncorrupted data flows to and fro.

Websites (HTTP), email (SMTP) or remote access (SSH) are all built on top of TCP and just work.