Hour 6. The Transport Layer

What You'll Learn in This Hour:

• Connections oriented and connectionless protocols

• Ports and sockets

• TCP

• UDP

The Transport layer provides an interface for network applications and offers optional error checking, flow control, and verification for network transmissions. This hour describes some important Transport layer concepts and introduces the TCP and UDP protocols.

At the completion of this hour, you will be able to

• Describe the basic duties of the Transport layer

• Explain the difference between a connection-oriented protocol and a connectionless protocol

• Explain how Transport layer protocols provide an interface to network applications through ports and sockets

• Describe the differences between TCP and UDP

• Identify the fields that make up the TCP header

• Describe how TCP opens and closes a connection

• Describe how TCP sequences and acknowledges data transmissions

• Identify the four fields that comprise the UDP header