These are the protocols used on the Internet and on most local
Ethernets. It is highly recommended to say Y here (this will enlarge
your kernel by about 400 KB), since some programs (e.g. the X window
system) use TCP/IP even if your machine is not connected to any
other computer. You will get the so-called loopback device which
allows you to ping yourself (great fun, that!).

For an excellent introduction to Linux networking, please read the
Linux Networking HOWTO, available from
<http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>.

If you say Y here and also to "/proc file system support" and
"Sysctl support" below, you can change various aspects of the
behavior of the TCP/IP code by writing to the (virtual) files in
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/*; the options are explained in the file
Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt.

Short answer: say Y.

source code:

net/ipv6/