The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
reliable communication
Communication where messages are guaranteed
to reach their destination complete and uncorrupted and in the
order they were sent. This reliability can be built on top of
an unreliable protocol by adding sequencing information and
some kind of checksum or cyclic redundancy check to each
message or packet. If the communication fails, the sender
will be notified. Transmission Control Protocol is a
reliable protocol used on Ethernet.
(2004-09-14)