Protocol suite

A protocol suite (or protocol family; the term protocol stack, from the layered assemblage, can be seen, but this can also mean 'the collection of software which implements a particular protocol family') is a set of communication protocols which are intended to work together, as a hierarchy of components, to produce the desired overall functionality.

An example is the TCP/IP family, which includes application protocols such as HTTP (the protocol used by the Web), and underneath them the reliable byte stream protocol TCP, which in turn depends on the un-reliable datagram carriage protocol IP.