Standardized rules and conventions for communication between network devices, including protocols like TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, and others that enable data exchange across networks.
Network Protocols
Network protocols are the standardized rules and conventions that let devices and software communicate across a network without having to agree on anything in advance beyond the protocol itself. They define how connections are established, how data is framed and addressed, how errors are handled, and how endpoints know a message is complete. Layered together — from TCP/IP moving packets, to DNS resolving names, to HTTP carrying requests — they form the stack that everything on the modern internet depends on.
- TCP/IP - The foundational transport and addressing layer that routes packets reliably across networks.
- HTTP/HTTPS - The application protocol that carries the overwhelming majority of API and web traffic.
- DNS - The naming system that translates human-readable hostnames into the addresses machines route on.
- Layered design - Protocols stack so each layer can evolve independently while presenting a stable interface to the one above.
For APIs, network protocols are not an abstraction to ignore — HTTP is the substrate REST, GraphQL, and webhooks all ride on, and understanding its methods, status codes, and headers is understanding how APIs actually behave. TLS, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3 changed the performance and security profile of every API without changing its surface, and today’s agent-driven traffic still bottoms out in the same protocols. When I evaluate an API’s operational posture, correct use of HTTP semantics and transport security is a baseline signal, and it connects directly to sibling concerns like REST and HTTP.
