I have read what is available on neural coding on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_coding) but I am quite perplexed.

So far I know that nerves consist of fascicles which consist of individual axons (neurons). The basic encoding used for instance with muscles is simple "firing rate" aka "rate coding". But it is not sufficiently fast to explain for instance sound localization so further "temporal coding" is suspected(?). Further "population coding" and "sparse coding" between neurons is suspected/required(?).

Can you summarize what we really know and liken it to a computer communication protocol?