IL (network protocol)

The Internet Link protocol or IL is a connection-based transport-layer protocol designed at Bell Labs originally as part of the Plan 9 operating system and is used to carry 9P. It is assigned the Internet Protocol number of 40. It is similar to TCP but much simpler.

Its main features are:
 * Reliable datagram service
 * In-sequence delivery
 * Internetworking using IP
 * Low complexity, high performance
 * Adaptive timeouts

As of the Fourth Edition of Plan 9, 2003, IL is deprecated in favor of TCP/IP because it doesn't handle long-distance connections well.