[ProgSoc] TCP quiz. HELP!!!!

jedd jedd at progsoc.org
Sun Jun 6 21:19:21 EST 2010


On Friday 04 June 2010 09:57:43 Noah O'Donoghue wrote:
> If TCP sends packet for packet wouldn't that require nearly equal bandwidth
> each way? At least for small packets.. 

 Do not assume that because it's hugely popular, TCP/IP is incredibly
 well designed (with the potential caveat 'for the networks it now
 finds itself on').

 Mind, OSI was probably worse.

 As has been observed, window scaling and selective acknowledgements
 have been introduced to alleviate some of the observed problems.

 And as you observe, for small data your I/O approaches equivalence.
 Consider a login prompt on a remote box - for every character that
 I type I'm sending a 41 (?) byte packet, and it's sending a 41-byte
 packet back.  At the end of it, I've sent four or five* characters of
 'useful' information, but there's been 160-200 bytes in and out.

 This is why we like big MTU's and non-chatty protocols.  Regrettably
 we're working against developers who have other ideas here.  ;)

 j.



 * You might count CR as useful in this context.



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