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Originally Posted by superbungalow21
As you can see I am absolutely bogged down by all this new information. I'll just say a couple of things I don't understand. What is a protocol, what does it do, how is it used, what uses it? What is TCP? WHat does it do exactly. What's port 80? Where is that? What does it do?
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First off: Google is your friend!
A protocol simply means a communications standard. Think of it like a language that Computer A uses to speak to Computer B. TCP is the communications standard by which information is transmitted across the internet.
Your computer has thousands of
ports. Think of a computer as an office building. There are lots of phone numbers by which can call into the building. However, for some things (let's say, Maintenance personnel) you have to call a specific number. On the web "port 80" is the standard port through which a software web server (Apache or IIS, usually) "listens" for traffic. The web server will ignore requests coming into other ports, but when a request comes through port 80, the web server responds.