Describing TCP
TCP is a connection-oriented protocol that has end-to-end reliability. These two significant features are described as follows:
- Connection-oriented means that both endpoints must set up a connection before any data is transferred. To begin a session, TCP starts with a (three-way) handshake and ends with a series of finis (FIN) packets to close the session.
- End-to-end reliability means that the data is sequenced and acknowledged during the data transfer. All data is carefully monitored, and if there are any gaps in transmission, TCP will request any missing packets.
Once two hosts establish a connection, TCP monitors the session to ensure the data transfer is complete, without causing undue strain on the host or the network. In the next section, we'll summarize what happens during a TCP connection.
Establishing and maintaining a connection
When using TCP, prior to any exchange of data, the session must begin with a three-way handshake between...