Network communication relies on networked resources transmitting digital messages over a networking medium to other networked resources. Just as in human communication, there are rules involved when communicating over networks. Break these rules and others may hear you but they might not understand or listen to your message.

To effectively communicate over a network, you must select a set of language rules from the hundreds of sets that have all been developed for network communication. These sets of rules are called protocols.

Protocols allow devices to decipher the signals sent to them from other devices on the network. Each protocol is a rule of communication and because different networks use different communication methods there have to be many protocols. When installing a network you need to know what protocols the network requires and ensure that they are installed and configured correctly.