The ___________ protocol is used to establish a connection-oriented communication between two hosts.

The correct option is "TCP." TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is a connection-oriented protocol in the TCP/IP suite. It provides reliable and ordered delivery of data between two hosts by establishing a connection, acknowledging data receipt, and handling retransmissions if packets are lost. UDP (Option 1), on the other hand, is a connectionless protocol that is faster but less reliable. HTTP (Option 2) is a protocol used for web communication, operating at the Application layer. IP (Option 4) is a network layer protocol responsible for addressing and routing.