Protocol suite

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A protocol suite (or protocol family) is a set of communication protocols which are intended to work together, as a hierarchy of components (the layered assemblage is sometimes called a protocol stack), 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.