Basic of computer Network 7：The importance of Network Protocol and Network Standards

Network protocol is a set of rules governing data communication which include three elements: Syntax refers to the structure and format of communication data; Semantics are used to explain what the communicating parties should do, it also control information for coordination and error handling; and Timing defines when to communicate, what to say first, what to say later, the speed of communication, etc. Such as the use of synchronous transmission or asynchronous transmission.
Network standard is the agreed standard which is under IEEE 802 and develop by IEEE in the fields of information technology.
They are the set of rules, standards for data exchange over the network. For example, in network, a microcomputer user and a mainframe operator communicate. Because the two data terminals use different character sets, the commands entered by the operators do not recognize each other. In order to be able to communicate, protocol and network standard stipulate each terminal shall convert their characters set into standard character set before entering the network for transmission. After reaching the destination terminal, the characters will be converted into the character set of the terminal. Of course, for those incompatible terminals, in addition to the need of character set transform. Other features, such as display format, line length, line count, and the way of screen scrolling, also need to be changed accordingly.
There are three main types of local area network (LAN) structure: Ethernet, Token Ring, Token Bus, and the backbone of these three networks – Optic Fibre, which use Fibre Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) protocol. They all follow the IEEE standard that starts with 802.
Overall, Protocol is about What data need to transmit and When the data can transmit, Network standard is more about How to transmit, they both are very important, without them, the machine would not able to communicate with each other.

Reference:
时间财富网， 网络协议的三个要素, 2020/5/14， available at: http://www.680.com/it/2005/wangl-269759.html 【Accessed on 27 Sep 2020】
一万HOURS， CSDN, 网络协议的概念
2017-06-19, available at https://blog.csdn.net/qq_20233867/article/details/73456535 【Accessed on 27 Sep 2020】