What does TCP stand for?

What does TCP stand for? TCP means Transmission Control Protocol. It is a connection-oriented transport-layer protocol that helps applications exchange data reliably across IP networks.

TCP divides an application's stream of bytes into segments, numbers them, and uses acknowledgments, checksums, retransmission, and sequencing to deliver data in order. Before sending application data, two endpoints normally establish a connection through the familiar three-way handshake: SYN, SYN-ACK, and ACK. TCP also regulates traffic with flow control and congestion control.

TCP is one half of the Internet's best-known TCP/IP suite. It supports applications such as HTTP and HTTPS web traffic, email protocols, and file transfers. Unlike UDP, TCP prioritizes reliable, ordered delivery, which can introduce delay when lost packets must be retransmitted. The word “transport” is important: TCP carries application data between processes, while IP handles addressing and routing between hosts. “Transmission Control Protocol” is the standard expansion; the distractors are not recognized protocol names.