Chapter 3. TCP

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the workhorse of the Internet. First defined in 1974, it lets applications send one another streams of data that, if they arrive at all—that is, unless a connection dies because of a network problem—are guaranteed to arrive intact, in order, and without duplication.

Protocols that carry documents and files nearly always ride atop TCP, including HTTP and all the major ways of transmitting e-mail. It is also the foundation of choice for protocols that carry on long conversations between people or computers, like SSH and many popular chat protocols.

When the Internet was younger, it was sometimes possible to squeeze a little more performance out of a network by building your application atop ...

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