TCP

• The objective of TCP is to provide a reliable flow of information between sender and receiver.
• As such, it must break up an information sequence into packets.
• Specify, which application program on the remote host the packet is for (port).
• TCP must be able to cope with:
  • lost packets
  • duplicate packets
  • packets arriving out of order
  • packets arriving faster than they can be processed
• Sequence numbers and sliding windows are used for this purpose.
• Connections must be established before data exchange can commence to agree on parameters such as initial sequence numbers, port numbers, etc.