A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication (1974)
December 9, 2023Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn presented a protocol that supports packet communication between hosts in different packet switching networks in A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication. The protocol assumes that a Transmission Control Program (TCP) in a host handles the transmission and acceptance of messages on behalf of processes. Later, the program was divided into the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). At that time, several protocols that supported exchanging packets between computers were developed, but they assumed the computers were on the same network.
Individual networks may differ in their implementations, and communication may be disrupted due to mutation of transmitted data or packet loss. The protocol supported breaking up messages into segments, the window strategy, and Flow Control, which are main features in the current specification of TCP.