From the course: Computer Science Principles: The Internet

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Reliability and TCP

Reliability and TCP

From the course: Computer Science Principles: The Internet

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Reliability and TCP

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- When hundreds or even thousands of packets are transmitted from one location to another, they can take different paths based on changing network conditions and other factors. When they get to the destination, they are unorganized and sometimes not complete. So the message needs to be audited and reviewed in order to put it together in the right way. The Transmission Control Protocol or TCP does exactly that. TCP uses a process where it looks at all the packets in a message and checks them. Using the header information in each packet it knows how many there are, how large they should be, and in which order the packets should be in. Using this checklist, it is able to rearrange the packets. If it finds that a packet doesn't match the expected size or other characteristic, it is discarded and using the header information again, sends a request back to the sender for a specific packet to be resent. After assembling the packets received, if TCP finds that packets are missing, it goes…

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