protocol

n. As used by hackers, this never refers to niceties about the proper form
for addressing letters to the Papal Nuncio or the order in which one should
use the forks in a Russian-style place setting; hackers don't care about
such things. It is used instead to describe any set of rules that allow
different machines or pieces of software to coordinate with each other
without ambiguity. So, for example, it does include niceties about the
proper form for addressing packets on a network or the order in which one
should use the forks in the Dining Philosophers Problem. It implies that
there is some common message format and an accepted set of primitives or
commands that all parties involved understand, and that transactions among
them follow predictable logical sequences. See also handshaking , do
protocol.

