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- Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
- Path: sparky!uunet!news.claremont.edu!ucivax!news.service.uci.edu!gordius!gordius!mike
- From: mike@gordian.com (Michael A. Thomas)
- Subject: Large Windows and Delayed Acking
- Message-ID: <1993Jan21.233655.29402@gordian.com>
- Sender: news@gordian.com
- Organization: Gordian; Costa Mesa, CA
- Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 23:36:55 GMT
- Lines: 30
-
-
- I have been playing around with a TCP implementation trying to get
- the throughput up and discovered an interesting anomaly with large
- windows. The setup I have is a program which is an infinite data
- source sending to the discard port (port 9) on a remote machine over
- ethernet. I am merely measuring the bandwidth and occassionally reporting
- that to the user -- nothing complicated.
- What I have found is that with large windows (say 16kb) the sending
- TCP stops sending at about 4k and waits for the receiving TCP to
- send an ACK. The receiving TCP, however is using a defered acking
- scheme which tries to delay sending ACK until a larger window is
- consolidated into one packet. The metric it is using is 1/2 the
- buffer size, and the delayed ack period is on the order of 100ms.
- I can understand why a sending TCP might be leary of sending *so*
- much data without hearing an ack, but my question is what algorithm
- is the sending TCP using to determine how much data it will send
- before going into this quiesent state? Is there an appropriate
- RFC which I should read which describes this situation? Is the
- behavior of the sending TCP correct?
-
- (BTW, I noticed that the IBM/AIX which extends a 16k window
- has the same problem with a Sun running 4.1.2, so the problem
- is not unique to the TCP I'm futzing with...)
- --
-
- Michael Thomas (mike@gordian.com)
- "I don't think Bambi Eyes will get you that flame thrower..."
- -- Hobbes to Calvin
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