Key Features of the Transmission Control Protocol
Here are some key properties of TCP. These are important to know to understand the design of the protocol.
We'll cover the following
Connection Oriented#
TCP itself is connection-oriented and creates a long term connection between hosts. The connection remains until a certain termination procedure is followed.
Full Duplex#
Furthermore, TCP is full-duplex, which means that both hosts on a TCP connection can send messages to each other simultaneously.
Point-to-point Transmission#
TCP connections have exactly two endpoints! This means that broadcasting or multicasting is not possible with TCP.
Error Control
TCP can detect errors in segments and make corrections to them.
Flow Control
TCP on the sending side controls the amount of data being sent at once based on the receiver’s specified capacity to accept and process it. The sender adjusts the sending rate accordingly.
Congestion Control
As specified in a previous lesson, TCP has in-built mechanisms to control the amount of congestion on the network.
Now we understand what TCP is and its general design principles. Let’s study TCP headers in the next lesson!
