[e2e] Some questions about TCP.

[Detlef Bosau]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Detlef Bosau <detlef.bosau at web.de>
>
>     > 1.: Recently, I was told, however I did not find a reference in some
>     > RFC, we had two distinct packet types in TCP:
>     > - those _with_ payload, which are _data_ _segments_,
>     > - those _without_ payload, which are _acknowledgements_.
>     > If this is correct, I would appreciate some reference.
>
> No, not really. 

Argh! :-[

> All TCP packets contain both i) an ack field (for acking
>   

Correct. So, basically I would expect acks to flow "piggypack" on the 
data packets.

The problem occurs when you clock out several segments from a TCP peer. 
In that case, several segments / TCP packets will contain the same ack 
number.

Now, the RFC states explicitly that a segment _MUST_ _NOT_ be acknowled 
more than once. So, how do we avoid
incoming packets to be mistaken for dup acks?

So, I asked a number of people and was told the above....


> data bytes sent from the other end), and ii) provisions for carriage of
> data. (Well, putting data in with a SYN is allowed, but is a bit odd.)
>
> Iff there is bi-directional data flow, a packet with data in it (going in
> one direction) can _also_ ack bytes received from the other side. An ack
>   

O.k.. One thought of mine was that the ACK flag will indicate a 
significant ack number. However, RFC 793 states that in "established" 
state, a packet's ACK flag is always set.

So, there's some confusion....

Meanwhile, I looked into some real TCP connections using wireshark - and 
found the aforementioned statement confirmed...

> packet is just a normal TCP data packet with 0 bytes of data in it. You
> sometimes see the term 'ack packet' used to describe such packets.
>   

Hm....

So, my confusion retains....

Detlef
> 	Noel
>   


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