
A P P E N D I X
E
General IP Line Efficiency
Functions
This appendix discusses the following Internet Protocol (IP) line efficiency functions: the
Nagle Algorithm, Path maximum transmission unit (MTU) Discovery, Transmission
Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) header compression, and Real-time Transport
Protocol (RTP) header compression.
The Nagle Algorithm
Terminal applications such as telnet and rlogin generate a 41-byte packet (a 40-byte IP
length and a 1-byte TCP header) for each 1 byte of user data. Such small packets, referred
to as tinygrams, are not a problem on local-area networks (LANs), but they can be
inefficient in using the a ...