Protocol and Standards

New technologies seem to be continuously emerging. As soon as you can get a handle on one, a new and better one is being released. So how does someone know what to use and how to use it? The answer to that is to ensure that you follow the set industry protocols and standards.

The goal of a protocol/standard is to offer the great advantage of being networked while adhering to the constraints of diverse operating systems and architectures. Be aware that even though you may use a protocol, it is essential that the other system(s) you may be trying to communicate with must use the same protocol. A standard on the other hand is as the name implies a standard for networking, and if you are doing your networking in-house, this is what you should be looking at using.

How does a Protocol become a Standard

There are many groups world wide that work to change protocols to standards, and they range from organizations where that is one of their business objectives to industry groups only interested in the progress of certain technologies. They both work in a similar fashion, basically seeking consensus from their peers on what should be accepted as a standard. This may seem fairly straight forward, however, with anything requiring consensus from a group, there are many drafts before being accepted. In fact in some instances in may take years.

One of the most widely heard and adhered to standards is TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. Its roots can be traced back to a research project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1969, where it was an experimental network called ARPNET. It was changed into an operational network in 1975 and was made into a standard in 1983. When ARPNET evolved into the Internet (ARPNET became extinct in 1990) the use of TCP/IP spread to networks outside the Internet.

As this example shows - it can take YEARS!

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