TRANSMISSION CONTROL PROTOCOL
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet protocol suite. Using TCP, applications on networked hosts can create connections to one another, over which they can exchange data in packets. The protocol guarantees reliable and in-order delivery of data from sender to receiver. TCP also distinguishes data for multiple connections by concurrent applications (e.g. Web server and e-mail server) running on the same host.
TCP supports many of the Internet's most popular application protocols and resulting applications, including the World Wide Web, e-mail and Secure Shell.
In the Internet protocol suite, TCP is the intermediate layer between the Internet Protocol (IP) below it, and an application above it. Applications often need reliable pipe-like connections to each other, whereas the Internet Protocol does not provide such streams, but rather only unreliable packets. TCP does the task of the transport layer in the simplified OSI model of computer networks.
Applications send streams of octets (8-bit bytes) to TCP for delivery through the network, and TCP divides the byte stream into appropriately sized segments (usually delineated by the maximum transmission unit (MTU) size of the data link layer of the network the computer is attached to). TCP then passes the resulting packets to the Internet Protocol, for delivery through a network to the TCP module of the entity at the other end. TCP checks to make sure that no packets are lost by giving each packet a sequence number, which is also used to make sure that the data are delivered to the entity at the other end in the correct order. The TCP module at the far end sends back an acknowledgement for packets which have been successfully received; a timer at the sending TCP will cause a timeout if an acknowledgement is not received within a reasonable round-trip time (or RTT), and the (presumably lost) data will then be re-transmitted. The TCP checks that no bytes are damaged by using a checksum; one is computed at the sender for each block of data before it is sent, and checked at the receiver
Protocol operation
Unlike TCP's traditional counterpart — User Datagram Protocol — that can immediately start sending packets, TCP provides connections that need to be established before sending data. TCP connections have three phases:
1. connection establishment
2. data transfer
3. connection termination
Connection establishment
To establish a connection, TCP uses a 3-way handshake. Before a client attempts to connect with a server, the server must first bind to a port to open it up for connections: this is called a passive open. Once the passive open is established, a client may initiate an active open. To establish a connection, the 3-way (or 3-step) handshake occurs:
1. The active open is performed by sending a SYN to the server.
2. In response, the server replies with a SYN-ACK.
3. Finally the client sends an ACK back to the server.
Data transfer
There are a few key features that set TCP apart from User Datagram Protocol:
• Error-free data transfer
• Ordered-data transfer
• Retransmission of lost packets
• Discarding duplicate packets
• Congestion throttling
Congestion avoidance
The final part to TCP is congestion throttling. Acknowledgements for data sent, or lack of acknowledgements, are used by senders to implicitly interpret network conditions between the TCP sender and receiver. Coupled with timers, TCP senders and receivers can alter the behavior of the flow of data. This is more generally referred to as flow control, congestion control and/or network congestion avoidance. TCP uses a number of mechanisms to achieve high performance and avoid congesting the network (i.e., send data faster than either the network, or the host on the other end, can utilize it). These mechanisms include the use of a sliding window, the slow-start algorithm, the congestion avoidance algorithm, the fast retransmit and fast recovery algorithms, and more.
Enhancing TCP to reliably handle loss, minimize errors, manage congestion and go fast in very high-speed environments are ongoing areas of research and standards development
TCP ports
TCP uses the notion of port numbers to identify sending and receiving application end-points on a host, or Internet sockets. Each side of a TCP connection has an associated 16-bit unsigned port number (1-65535) reserved by the sending or receiving application. Arriving TCP data packets are identified as belonging to a specific TCP connection by its sockets, that is, the combination of source host address, source port, destination host address, and destination port. This means that a server computer can serve simultaneously several services and to several clients, as long as a client doesn't use same source port to connect multiple times to one destionation port.
Port numbers are categorized into three basic categories: well-known, registered and dynamic/private. The well-known ports are assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and are typically used by system-level or root processes. Well-known applications running as servers and passively listening for connections typically use these ports. Some examples include: FTP (21), TELNET (23), SMTP (25) and HTTP (80). Registered ports are typically used by end user applications as ephemeral source ports when contacting servers, but they can also identify named services that have been registered by a third party. Dynamic/private ports can also be used by end user applications, but are less commonly so. Dynamic/private ports do not contain any meaning outside of any particular TCP connection.
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet protocol suite. Using TCP, applications on networked hosts can create connections to one another, over which they can exchange data in packets. The protocol guarantees reliable and in-order delivery of data from sender to receiver. TCP also distinguishes data for multiple connections by concurrent applications (e.g. Web server and e-mail server) running on the same host.
TCP supports many of the Internet's most popular application protocols and resulting applications, including the World Wide Web, e-mail and Secure Shell.
In the Internet protocol suite, TCP is the intermediate layer between the Internet Protocol (IP) below it, and an application above it. Applications often need reliable pipe-like connections to each other, whereas the Internet Protocol does not provide such streams, but rather only unreliable packets. TCP does the task of the transport layer in the simplified OSI model of computer networks.
Applications send streams of octets (8-bit bytes) to TCP for delivery through the network, and TCP divides the byte stream into appropriately sized segments (usually delineated by the maximum transmission unit (MTU) size of the data link layer of the network the computer is attached to). TCP then passes the resulting packets to the Internet Protocol, for delivery through a network to the TCP module of the entity at the other end. TCP checks to make sure that no packets are lost by giving each packet a sequence number, which is also used to make sure that the data are delivered to the entity at the other end in the correct order. The TCP module at the far end sends back an acknowledgement for packets which have been successfully received; a timer at the sending TCP will cause a timeout if an acknowledgement is not received within a reasonable round-trip time (or RTT), and the (presumably lost) data will then be re-transmitted. The TCP checks that no bytes are damaged by using a checksum; one is computed at the sender for each block of data before it is sent, and checked at the receiver
Protocol operation
Unlike TCP's traditional counterpart — User Datagram Protocol — that can immediately start sending packets, TCP provides connections that need to be established before sending data. TCP connections have three phases:
1. connection establishment
2. data transfer
3. connection termination
Connection establishment
To establish a connection, TCP uses a 3-way handshake. Before a client attempts to connect with a server, the server must first bind to a port to open it up for connections: this is called a passive open. Once the passive open is established, a client may initiate an active open. To establish a connection, the 3-way (or 3-step) handshake occurs:
1. The active open is performed by sending a SYN to the server.
2. In response, the server replies with a SYN-ACK.
3. Finally the client sends an ACK back to the server.
Data transfer
There are a few key features that set TCP apart from User Datagram Protocol:
• Error-free data transfer
• Ordered-data transfer
• Retransmission of lost packets
• Discarding duplicate packets
• Congestion throttling
Congestion avoidance
The final part to TCP is congestion throttling. Acknowledgements for data sent, or lack of acknowledgements, are used by senders to implicitly interpret network conditions between the TCP sender and receiver. Coupled with timers, TCP senders and receivers can alter the behavior of the flow of data. This is more generally referred to as flow control, congestion control and/or network congestion avoidance. TCP uses a number of mechanisms to achieve high performance and avoid congesting the network (i.e., send data faster than either the network, or the host on the other end, can utilize it). These mechanisms include the use of a sliding window, the slow-start algorithm, the congestion avoidance algorithm, the fast retransmit and fast recovery algorithms, and more.
Enhancing TCP to reliably handle loss, minimize errors, manage congestion and go fast in very high-speed environments are ongoing areas of research and standards development
TCP ports
TCP uses the notion of port numbers to identify sending and receiving application end-points on a host, or Internet sockets. Each side of a TCP connection has an associated 16-bit unsigned port number (1-65535) reserved by the sending or receiving application. Arriving TCP data packets are identified as belonging to a specific TCP connection by its sockets, that is, the combination of source host address, source port, destination host address, and destination port. This means that a server computer can serve simultaneously several services and to several clients, as long as a client doesn't use same source port to connect multiple times to one destionation port.
Port numbers are categorized into three basic categories: well-known, registered and dynamic/private. The well-known ports are assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and are typically used by system-level or root processes. Well-known applications running as servers and passively listening for connections typically use these ports. Some examples include: FTP (21), TELNET (23), SMTP (25) and HTTP (80). Registered ports are typically used by end user applications as ephemeral source ports when contacting servers, but they can also identify named services that have been registered by a third party. Dynamic/private ports can also be used by end user applications, but are less commonly so. Dynamic/private ports do not contain any meaning outside of any particular TCP connection.
