TCP/IP: Encapsulation & the Handshake

Two views of the stack. Encapsulation shows a chunk of application data gaining a header at each layer on the way down, then shedding them on the way up. Handshake animates the TCP 3-way handshake with live sequence and acknowledgement numbers.

Sender — press Send to push data down the stack

Client

CLOSED
seq = —
ack = —

Server

LISTEN
seq = —
ack = —
Ready. Encapsulation view — press Send.