What occurs once the data packets arrive at their destination in TCP/IP?

When data packets arrive at their destination using TCP/IP, they may not necessarily arrive in the order they were sent due to the nature of packet-switching networks. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is designed to provide reliable and ordered delivery of data. As a result, once the packets reach their destination, they are rearranged in the correct order to ensure that the data is reconstructed accurately and appears as intended to the receiving application.

This ordering is crucial for many applications where the sequence of data is important, such as in video streaming or file transfers. TCP maintains a sequence number for each packet, which allows the receiving system to identify the correct order when assembling the complete message from the individual packets. This process ensures data integrity and reliable transmission, which are key principles of the TCP/IP protocol suite.

The other options do not accurately describe what happens to the packets once they arrive. For instance, packets are not deleted upon arrival; breaking them down into smaller segments would typically occur before transmission rather than after, and transferring to a backup server is not a standard operation at the receiving end for completed data packets.