For questions about Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), a transport protocol used to encapsulate data across a network for reliable communication.
TCP operates at the transport layer of the ISO OSI model. It provides a connection orientated, reliable, error free, ordered delivery of data packets between two communicating devices. This reliable nature often causes problems though for efficient communication. Originally defined in RFC675 it has been revised and modified many times over the years with improvements such as fast retransmit and fast recovery, Tahoe, Reno, New Reno, Vegas etc. As the most widely used protocol on the Internet, it faces continual scrutiny and improvement.
