TCP: protocol performance and evolution

The Transport Control Protocol (TCP) is described in the from the point of view of the basic algorithms implemented to ensure a reliable transport service. We focus here on TCP's performance, particularly with regard to congestion control mechanisms. We also present some protocol evolutions that have been proposed by the research community and adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), aimed at alleviating some of TCP's performance problems.

It's important to stress that some of the solutions and techniques studied are still experimental. However, they have all been the subject of RFC (Request for Comments) documents at the IETF, and could therefore be deployed on the Internet in the near future.