What type of service does TCP provide?

TCP, or Transmission Control Protocol, provides a reliable, connection-oriented service. This means that before any data can be transferred, a connection must be established between the sender and the receiver, ensuring that both parties are ready for data transmission. This characteristic is crucial for applications that require guaranteed delivery of data, such as file transfers, web pages, and email.

Moreover, the reliability of TCP is achieved through several mechanisms, including error checking, acknowledgment of received packets, and retransmission of lost packets. If packets are lost during transmission, TCP ensures they are resent, thus maintaining the integrity of the data being transferred.

In contrast, connectionless services do not establish a reliable connection before sending data and do not guarantee delivery, which is why that option does not describe TCP. Additionally, TCP operates on a point-to-point basis, enabling communications between two specific hosts, rather than broadcasting to multiple devices or using unicast transmission methods that don’t inherently provide reliability. Thus, the service provided by TCP is defined by its reliability and the establishment of connections, making it the appropriate choice.