The Transport Layer
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number of hops in the path between source and destination, and other factors,
it is relatively impossible to have an exact expected delay prior to a station
assuming data is lost and retransmitting. Recognizing this situation, the devel-
opers of TCP included an adaptive retransmission algorithm in the protocol.
Under this algorithm, when TCP submits a segment for transmission, the
protocol records the segment sequence number and time. When an acknowl-
edgment is received to that segment, TCP also records the time, obtaining a
round-trip delay. TCP uses such timing information to construct an average
round-trip delay that is used by a timer to denote, when the timer expires,
that a retransmission should occur. When a new transmit-response ...