What Is TCP/IP?
Updated: March 28, 2003
Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2
What Is TCP/IP?
In this section
Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP
TCP/IP Core Protocols
TCP/IP Services
Related Information
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, is an industry‐standard suite of protocols designed for large
internetworks. TCP/IP, which was developed in 1969 by the U.S. Department of Defense ﴾DoD﴿ Advanced Research Projects
Agency ﴾DARPA﴿, is the result of a resource‐sharing experiment called Advanced Research Projects Agency Network ﴾ARPANET﴿.
The TCP/IP protocol was developed to provide high‐speed communication network links. Since 1969, ARPANET has grown into a
worldwide community of networks known as the Internet.
Before TCP/IP, there was no way for computers to communicate easily and securely on public networks. Windows Server 2003
TCP/IP was designed to make it easy to integrate Microsoft systems into large‐scale corporate, government, and public
networks, and to provide the ability to operate over those networks in a secure manner. The Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP
protocol is installed by default and, unlike previous versions of Windows, cannot be uninstalled. However, you can reset the
TCP/IP configuration to a default state with the netsh interface ip reset command.
The Windows TCP/IP suite contains core protocol elements, services, and the interfaces between them. The Transport Driver
Interface ﴾TDI﴿ and the Network Device Interface Specification ﴾NDIS﴿ are public, and their specifications are available from
Microsoft. In addition, there are a number of higher‐level interfaces available to user‐mode applications. The most commonly
used are Windows Sockets and NetBIOS.
Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP
Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP enables enterprise networking and connectivity. Adding TCP/IP to a Windows Server 2003
configuration offers the following advantages:
A standard, routable enterprise networking protocol that is the most complete and accepted protocol available. All
modern network operating systems offer TCP/IP support, and most large networks rely on TCP/IP for much of their
network traffic.
A technology for connecting dissimilar systems. Many standard connectivity utilities are available to access and transfer
data between dissimilar systems, including File Transfer Protocol ﴾FTP﴿ and Telnet, a terminal emulation protocol. Several
of these standard utilities are included with Windows Server 2003.
A robust, scalable, cross‐platform client/server framework. Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP offers the Windows Sockets
interface, which is ideal for developing client/server applications that can run on Windows Sockets–compliant TCP/IP
protocol implementations from other vendors.
A method of gaining access to the Internet. The Internet consists of thousands of networks worldwide, connecting
research facilities, universities, libraries, private companies, and individuals.
Note
The term Internet refers to the worldwide public Internet. An intranet refers to a private IP‐based internetwork.
Support for Standard Features
Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP supports the following standard features:
Ability to bind to multiple network adapters with different media types.
Logical and physical multihoming.
Internal IP routing capability.
Internet Group Management Protocol ﴾IGMP﴿ ﴾IP multicasting﴿.
Duplicate IP address detection.
Multiple configurable default gateways.
Dead gateway detection.
Automatic Path Maximum Transmission Unit ﴾PMTU﴿ discovery.
Internet Protocol security ﴾IPSec﴿.
Quality of Service ﴾QoS﴿.
Asynchronous Transfer Mode Tutorial ﴾ATM﴿ services.
Virtual Private Networks ﴾VPNs﴿ with the Point‐to‐Point Tunneling Protocol ﴾PPTP﴿ and the Layer Two Tunneling Protocol
with IPSec ﴾L2TP/IPSec﴿.
Windows Server 2003 TCP/IP Features
The features and improvements of TCP/IP for Windows Server 2003 include the following:
Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP ﴾Service Pack 1 or later﴿ now include a production‐quality IPv6 protocol stack. For
more information about IPv6, see IPv6 Technical Reference.
Auto‐negotiation of RFC 1323 options ﴾window scaling and TCP timestamps﴿.
Default support of network interface cards providing large send offload ﴾LSO﴿ and checksum offload.
Internet Group Management Protocol ﴾IGMP﴿ version 3.
Reliable multicast with Pragmatic General Multicast ﴾PGM﴿.
Alternate configuration of a static IP address configuration.
Automatic determination of the interface‐related and default route metrics.
TCP/IP Standards
The standards for TCP/IP are published in a series of documents that are called Requests for Comments ﴾RFCs﴿. RFCs describe the
internal workings of the Internet. Some RFCs describe network services or protocols and their implementations, whereas others
summarize policies. TCP/IP standards are always published as RFCs, although not all RFCs specify standards.
TCP/IP standards are not developed by a committee, but rather by consensus. Anyone can submit a document for publication as
an RFC. Documents are reviewed by a technical expert, a task force, or the RFC editor, and then assigned a status. The status
specifies whether a document is being considered for becoming a standard.
There are five RFC status assignments, shown below.
RFC Status Assignments
Status Description
Required Must be implemented on all TCP/IP‐based hosts and gateways.
Recommended Encouraged that all TCP/IP‐based hosts and gateways implement the RFC specifications. Recommended
RFCs are usually implemented.
Elective Implementation is optional. Application has been agreed to but is not a requirement.
Limited Use Not intended for general use.
Not Not recommended for implementation.
Recommended
If a document is being considered for becoming a standard, it goes through stages of development, testing, and acceptance
known as the Internet Standards Process. These stages are formally labeled maturity levels. The following table lists the three
maturity levels for Internet Standards.
Maturity Levels for Internet Standards
Maturity
Description
Level
Proposed This specification is generally stable, has resolved known design issues, is believed to be well understood,
Standard has received significant community review, and appears to hold enough community interest to be
considered valuable.
Draft This must be well understood and known to be quite stable, both in its semantics and as a basis for
Standard developing an implementation.
Internet This specification is characterized by a high degree of technical maturity, and it is generally agreed that the
Standard specified protocol or service provides significant benefit to the Internet community.
When a document is published, it is assigned an RFC number. If changes are required, a new RFC is published with a new
number. The original RFC is never updated. Therefore, it is important to verify that you have the most recent RFC on a particular
topic.
RFCs can be obtained in several ways. To obtain any RFC, or a full and current indexed listing of all RFCs published to date, see
the IETF RFC Database.
TCP/IP Core Protocols
The TCP/IP protocol component that is installed in your network operating system is a series of interconnected protocols called
the TCP/IP core protocols. All other applications and other protocols in the TCP/IP protocol suite rely on the basic services
provided by the following protocols: IP, ARP, ICMP, IGMP, TCP, and UDP. For more information about these protocols, see How
TCP/IP Works.
TCP/IP Services
The Windows Server 2003 operating system provides the following TCP/IP‐related services:
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol ﴾DHCP﴿ client and server and DHCP Relay Agent ﴾with the Routing and Remote
Access service﴿.
In the absence of a DHCP server, Automatic Private IP Addressing ﴾APIPA﴿ or an alternate static IP address configuration is
used.
Windows Internet Name Service ﴾WINS﴿, a NetBIOS name client and server.
Domain Name System ﴾DNS﴿ client and server, including support for DNS dynamic updates.
Dial‐up support using the Point‐to‐Point Protocol ﴾client and server﴿ and Serial Line Internet Protocol ﴾client only﴿.
PPTP and L2TP/IPSec, used for remote access and site‐to‐site VPN connections.
TCP/IP network printing ﴾client only with the Lpr.exe and Lpq.exe tools﴿.
SNMP agent.
NetBIOS interface.
Network Location Service.
Windows Sockets version 2 ﴾Winsock2﴿ interface.
Remote Procedure Call ﴾RPC﴿ support.
Network Dynamic Data Exchange ﴾NetDDE﴿.
Computer browsing ﴾My Network Places﴿ across IP routers.
Reliable multicast with the Pragmatic General Multicast ﴾PGM﴿ protocol.
Basic TCP/IP connectivity utilities, including: finger, ftp, rcp, rexec, rsh, telnet, and tftp.
Server and client software for simple network protocols, including: Character Generator, Daytime, Discard, Echo, and
Quote of the Day.
Routing Information Protocol ﴾RIP﴿ listener ﴾for Windows XP Professional﴿ and RIP and Open Shortest Path First ﴾OSPF﴿
﴾with the Routing and Remote Access service﴿.
Network Address Translator ﴾NAT﴿ capabilities using either the Internet Connection Service ﴾ICS﴿ or the NAT/Basic Firewall
routing protocol component of the Routing and Remote Access Service.
Stateful firewalling capabilities using either the Internet Connection Firewall ﴾ICF﴿ or the NAT/Basic Firewall routing
protocol component of the Routing and Remote Access service.
Multicast forwarding and IGMP router and proxy capabilities with the Routing and Remote Access Service.
TCP/IP management and diagnostic tools, including: arp, ipconfig, nbtstat, netsh, netstat, ping, pathping, route,
nslookup, and tracert.
Related Information
For more information about RFCs, see the IETF RFC Database.
Community Additions
© 2017 Microsoft
