When talking to someone who does not speak English as there first language you will have difficulties being understood. At some point you will have to decide on how you will communicate. Maybe they speak a little English so you decide to use simple English. Maybe you speak a little of their language. Or maybe you decide to mime what you want to say. You could even try and draw or use symbols. If your lucky you may have a translator handy who could act as a go between.

What ever way you decide to communicate you will of needed to make a conscious choice of the communication style. You will then follow the rules of this style in order to pass your information or data across. The exact same situation happens for computers.

In the early days of computers there were many different ways of doing the exact same job. This problem became very apparent when computers started to become networked. There are two main ways of communicating over a network. The first is IPX (internetwork packet exchange) and the second is TCP/IP (Transmission control protocol / Internet protocol). How can one computer, using IPX, communicate with another computer using TCP/IP?

The simple answer is that they can not! IP addresses take the form of 4 sets of numbers ranging from 0 to 255. IPX uses a 32 bit hexadecimal address. There is no way to convert from one to another. This is why protocols are so important. If each computers knows exactly how data sent over the network will arrive then they will know exactly how to process it. If data arrives in a different format it will not be able to process it.