Protocol operation

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 avoidanceThe 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