This tutorial marks the first of a series of tutorials that will teach you the mechanics of a grid and how to develop a grid using Python as your supporting language. At the end of the series, you should have a good idea both of the technicalities surrounding grid development, but also a complete API in Python for building your own grid applications.Grid components need to talk to each other. The distributor needs to talk to the grid providers, the providers need to talk back, and clients and management tools need to talk to the distributor and providers. Providers may need to talk to each other, or they may need to look up information from another machine to determine information or status information from the grid. In this tutorial we look at ways to handle communication in a Python grid framework, from the basics of the TCP/IP system to the simplified, externally managed e-mail solution.You can jump straight to the tutorial.