Common use of Internet Protocol Clause in Contracts

Internet Protocol. ‌ Once the network has been established, and the IP numbers have been assigned, data can be transacted over a network with one of several protocols. By far the most prevalent protocol is the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which runs on top of the Internet Protocol in what is collectively known as the TCP/IP protocol. The TCP/IP protocol was developed by the Department of Defense to connect different computers from different vendors by a “network of networks,” which has become what is known as the Internet today. The primary purpose of the TCP/IP protocol was to prevent a complete network outage in the case of a nuclear attack, by automatically rerouting data traffic through the functioning part of the network. As such, the TCP/IP mechanism guaranteed delivery of data packets by introducing a system of acknowledgements and sequence numbers for the data packets. This mechanism, while good for transacting large amounts of data (such as email or file transfers), is unsuitable in the real-time type environment in which the Cyclone operates. Because the Cyclone needs to transact data as quickly as possible to the target, it takes advantage of TCP/IP’s alternative, the UDP/IP protocol. Unlike TCP/IP, the UDP/IP protocol is a connectionless, single-packet protocol that sends short data packets at the expense of not guaranteeing their delivery. This makes the UDP/IP protocol efficient in real-time applications such as broadcasting video over the Internet, where the occasional loss of a frame of data is not going to hamper the overall viewing experience. Left unmodified, the UDP/IP, with its lack of guarantees for packet delivery, would be unusable in an environment where the delivery of a single byte of data needs to be guaranteed. The Cyclone firmware adds mechanisms to the UDP/IP protocol, without affecting its underlying efficiency, to guarantee delivery of data packets.