Tutorial
What is a Packet?
Manager, Developer Education
Packets are the basic units of data transmitted through a TCP/IP network. Originally conceived as a way to transmit data without a pre-established connection, packets make dynamic data transference possible.
Packet data falls into two categories: control information (source and destination network addresses, sequence information, and error detection codes), and user data (the content of the message itself).
To learn more about packets, check out our article, “An Introduction to Networking Terminology, Interfaces, and Protocols.”
Thanks for learning with the DigitalOcean Community. Check out our offerings for compute, storage, networking, and managed databases.
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
Featured on Community
Get our biweekly newsletter
Sign up for Infrastructure as a Newsletter.
Hollie's Hub for Good
Working on improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth? We'd like to help.
Become a contributor
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.