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I am currently in college learning about networks, and I just wanted to make sure that I understood part of the TCP correctly.

The question is "What does TCP use to reassemble packets in the correct order?"

Is it IPv4 or IPv6? I guess I am confused about the two.

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  • It doesn't matter if IPv4 or IPv6. Both are network layer protocols and TCP is a transport layer protocol.
    – Ron Trunk
    Oct 19, 2018 at 16:20
  • Ah I Understand now. The answer would then just be Internet Protocol
    – LessTalkMoretech
    Oct 19, 2018 at 16:23
  • No, that's incorrect. TCP has it's own feature to reassemble data that makes IPv4 or IPv6 irrelevant.
    – Ron Trunk
    Oct 19, 2018 at 21:49
  • Did any answer help you? If so, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer. Alternatively, you can provide and accept your own answer.
    – Ron Maupin ♦
    Dec 25, 2018 at 9:50

1 Answer 1

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TCP uses segments, but IP uses packets.

TCP will get a stream of data from the application, and it segments the data, passing the segments to IP (either IPv4 or IPv6). IP encapsulates the TCP segments into packets. IP may need to fragment the packets (IPv4 can fragment along the path, but IPv6 cannot), and IP in the destination host will reassemble the packet fragments, passing the original segment up to TCP in the destination host.

TCP will have no idea that packets were fragmented and reassembled.

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  • If this answered your question, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer.
    – Ron Maupin ♦
    Oct 19, 2018 at 16:27
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    It's worth adding that after the any fragmentation/de-fragmentation, TCP reassembles the segments in the right order according to the sequence number field in the TCP header
    – jonathanjo
    Oct 19, 2018 at 16:52

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