AP Computer Science Practice Test 2025 – Complete Exam Prep

The correct answer highlights the role of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) in the process of breaking messages into packets for transmission. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol that ensures reliable communication between devices over a network. When a message is sent, TCP segments the data into smaller, manageable packets. This segmentation is crucial because it helps to efficiently transmit large messages over the network, manages the flow of information, and allows for error-checking and resending of lost packets.

The process involves establishing a connection, breaking the message into packets, numbering them for reassembly, and ensuring that they arrive in order. This functionality is key in maintaining the integrity and order of the data being transmitted, making TCP an essential element of reliable data transmission in networking.

In contrast, other protocols mentioned may serve different purposes. For example, HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is used primarily for transferring hypertext, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is used for sending emails, and IP (Internet Protocol) deals with addressing and routing but does not handle the segmentation of messages into packets like TCP does.