Short for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet protocol suite. Using TCP, applications on networked hosts can create connections to one another, over which they can exchange data or packets. The protocol guarantees reliable and in-order delivery of sender to receiver data. TCP also distinguishes data for multiple, concurrent applications (e.g. Web server and email server) running on the same host.
TCP supports many of the Internet's most popular application protocols and resulting applications, including the World Wide Web, email and Secure Shell.