Sorry if that came out wrong.. I didnt mean you wouldnt care care. I was in a bit of a flippant mode when I wrote it and its not something that can be explained in a few paragraphs, and I didnt think youd care to know the actual intricacies if you know what I mean.
TCP/IP and the various other protocols arent always too easy to get your head around, but its all to do with data transmission and it can go very deep. I suppose its kind of akin to someone asking you how a car works - and you have to go right down to brass roots and explain how the car battery works or the light bulb inside the indicator works kind of thing.
Theres tons and tons of stuff to read, and it would take a mini book to explain it all. There's text books almost as thick as a bible just on TCP/IP alone.
Ive studied it in the past, but I still dont know all of it when it comes to protocols - theres too many of them.
However if you want to know the basic stuff.. it all revolves around the various stages that data goes through so that it can be transmitted over the Internet.
The first thing you have to know is something called the OSI layer, theres a lot of detail about it on the Internet if you really want to read.. but to make it simple some pretty
pictures below that I've drawn in the past, which show the process. Each of these protocols wrap the data parcels up like lil packets with details on them such as where they've come from and where they have to go to, and what to do when they get at the other end. Different bits get wrapped up with other bits and more labels added as you down the chain - eg so say http requests use tcp/ip.. which is later wrapped with PPP, then you get things like PPPoverATM. Each of these protocols adding their own instructions on where or how to send the data packets next, which are the 'overheads' which you may have heard of before.
Real basic stuff - vastly simplified, so you get a little bit of an idea.
- When data is transmitted it goes through various stages and various protocols that can be used. If you like think of this as a chain, to get data out on to the internet.
LSP is just one tiny part of that chain, which sets up your internet access. - See the pics.
- Each piece of software that connects to the internet has a special way of doing so written within it. (a socket - or for windows perhaps better known as Winsock). Its this
that tells it how (which ports it can use) and where to connect to. (and it 'plugs in' to the socket)
- Some 'nasties' or even just badly written programs, when you delete them dont do so properly and also remove part of TCP/IP which it shouldnt. - Think of it like yanking a
electrical plug out of a socket really hard and the front of the plug socket gets pulled away too. So you cant plug anything else back into that socket.
.. and thats exactly what these nasties did when you removed them - they broke the chain for the operating system to be able to get to the internet.
Because the link in the chain was broken nothing else, or no other programs could connect.
In otherwords - remove the nasty.. and hey no more internet access.
BTW.. theres an excellent movie intended to give a very gentle and basic introduction to how data gets transmitted on the internet by
Warriers of the Net. - Direct download
linky.
Enjoy the movie