Glossary
- communications protocol
- A common signaling language used for communications purposes. Such protocols predate the advent of electronic computing, e.g., viewed broadly, speech, writing systems, smoke signals, semaphore code, sign language, and telegraphy codes are all communications protocols. In the ICT context, the signals making up a communication may be transmitted by any of numerous methods such as copper wire, electrical circuits, radio frequencies, microwave, fiber optic cable, quantum mechanics, etc. See also definition in State of New York v. Microsoft, pp. 35-36. The line between communications protocol and data formats is difficult to draw in a consistent fashion. E.g., TTS is unmistakably both.
See also: ASCII, TTS
