In a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) stack, which layer is responsible for negotiating and establishing a connection with another node?

The Transport layer uses TCP to perform the three-way handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK) to negotiate and establish a reliable connection between two nodes. TCP operates at this layer and provides connection-oriented communication, flow control, and error recovery, making it directly responsible for connection establishment.

The Application layer provides network services directly to end-user applications (e.g., HTTP, FTP, DNS) and does not handle the low-level mechanics of connection establishment.

The Network layer is responsible for logical addressing and routing packets between networks (e.g., IP), not for establishing end-to-end connections between nodes.

The Session layer exists in the OSI model, not as a distinct layer in the TCP/IP model; its functions are absorbed into the Application and Transport layers in the TCP/IP stack.