Windows Server® 2008 TCP/IP Protocols and Services

Summary

TCP connections are created through the TCP connection establishment process, where two TCP peers exchange SYN segments and determine starting sequence numbers, window sizes, window scaling factors, maximum segment sizes, and other TCP options. TCP connections can be maintained through the exchange of periodic keepalive segments, although this is not common. To terminate a TCP connection gracefully, each TCP peer must send a FIN segment and have it acknowledged. A TCP peer uses a TCP connection reset segment to either abort a current connection or refuse a connection attempt.