First, we will say a little bit more about the possible performance problems that can occur when using the TCP protocol. The classic TCP problems are as follows:
- Connection setup: We have already seen that it takes at least one network round-trip. The final client ACK reply can be used to send some data along (piggy-backing).
- Head-of-line (HOL) blocking: This term describes a situation where one lost or corrupted packet will block consecutive packets. Even if we physically received all packets after the lost/corrupted one, we cannot access their data for as long as the lost packet hasn't been re-transmitted!
- Slow start and exponential backoff: Because we do not want to overload the network, a TCP connection will start with ...