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Note: The following is an excerpt from the official IETF RFC. It is provided here as a connivence and is not authoritative. Refer to the original document as the authoritative reference.

The Internet Protocol is designed for use in interconnected systems of packet-switched computer communication networks. Such a system has been called a “catenet” [1]. The internet protocol provides for transmitting blocks of data called datagrams from sources to destinations, where sources and destinations are hosts identified by fixed length addresses. The internet protocol also provides for fragmentation and reassembly of long datagrams, if necessary, for transmission through “small packet” networks.