The TCP sliding window mechanism works as follows:
- After the connection is established, the sender sends data to the receiver, filling the receiver window.
- After several packets, the receiver sends an ACK to the sender, confirming the acceptance of the bytes sent by it. Sending the ACK empties the receiver window.
- This process is continuous when the sender is filling the window, and the receiving party empties them and sends confirmation of the information.
- Increasing the receiver window size tells the sender to increase the throughput, and decreasing it tells them to decrease the throughput. It works according to the following WS/RTT rule (with some changes according to the TCP version):
The window size field in TCP header ...