TCP is a connection-oriented, reliable transport protocol that provides stream delivery, connection-oriented, and reliable services. It uses sequence numbers, acknowledgment numbers, and other features like flow control, error control, and congestion control to reliably deliver data between two endpoints. A TCP connection involves three phases - connection establishment using a three-way handshake, reliable data transfer with acknowledgments, and connection termination with another three-way handshake or four-way handshake with half-close option. TCP works well for both low and high-speed networks.