Slow Start

Slow start
Under AIMD, it can take some time for a flow to actually reach link capacity. Slow start was
introduced to help TCP flows reach link capacity faster.
Slow start is in effect during the congestion control phase. During this phase, the cwnd is
increased by the number of segments acknowledged each time an acknowledgement is received.
This phase continues until a loss event occurs, or until a slow start threshold (ssthresh) is
reached.
With slow start, the cwnd grows exponentially (rather than linearly) at the beginning of the
connection. Once the ssthresh is reached (or a packet loss is detected), then the TCP flow enters
the congestion avoidance phase. At this point, the cwnd of the flow grows linearly.