The protocols within the TCP/IP suite have been tested, modified and improved over time. The original TCP/IP protocol suite had several design goals that intended to make it a viable protocol for the large, evolving internetwork. Some of these goals included:

Hardware independence: A protocol suite that could be used on MAC, PC, mainframe, or any other computer.

Software independence: A protocol suite that could be used by different software vendors and applications. This would enable a host on one site to communicate with a host on another site, without having the same software configuration.

Failure recovery and the ability to handle high error rates: A protocol suite that features automatic recovery from any dropped or lost data. This protocol must be able to recover from an outage of any host on any part of the network and at any point in a data transfer.

Efficient protocol with low overhead: A protocol suite that had a minimal amount of “extra” data moving with the data being transferred. This extra data called overhead, functions as packaging fir the data being transferred and enables the data transmission.

Ability to add new networks to the internetwork without service disruption: A protocol suite that enabled new independent networks to join this network of networks without bringing down the larger network.

Routable Data: A protocol suite on which data could make its way through an internetwork of computers to any possible destination. For this to be possible, a single and meaningful addressing scheme must be used so that every computer that is moving the data can compute the best path for every piece of data as it moves through the network.