Questions TCP

1. You say, transport layer is an end-to-end layer. What do you mean by this?
2. What are the main services provided by TCP?
3. TCP provides the functions of multiplexing and de-multiplexing services.
What exactly does it multiplex or demultiplex?
4. What exactly do you mean by flow control and error control? Why do you
need these?
5. The transport and data link layers both provide flow control and error
control. Why do you have such redundancy in the network protocol stack?
6. TCP is connection oriented – what do you mean by this?
7. Explain what you mean by the following feature of TCP?
 Stream orientation,
 Buffered transfer,
 Unstructured data transfer,
 Full duplex data transfer.
8. How does TCP provide the following services?
 Reliability.
 Flow control.
9. What do you mean by a TCP connection? What is meant by end-points in a
TCP connection?
10. Does TCP provide a sequence number to each segment or to each byte?
What might be the reason?
11. Explain with an example what you mean by the statement: “TCP uses
cumulative acknowledgement.” What is the advantage of this approach? Is
there any drawback? Explain.
12 What is the maximum size of a TCP segment?
13. What is the length of a TCP header?
14. Briefly describe the function of the following fields in a TCP segment:
  Source/Destination port address,
 Sequence number.
15. What is the role of each the following flags in a TCP segment header?
URG, ACK, PSH RST, SYN, FIN
16. The transport layer generally waits for the application layer to fill a
maximum sized segment so as to minimize the number of packets to be
transmitted. Then, how interactive applications such as internet chatting,
which need to transfer small data bursts, use TCP?
17. TCP uses a slight variation of the sliding window protocol to implement
flow control. This variation is reflected in the TCP segment header. Explain
what it is.
18. How is the ‘Checksum’ field in the TCP segment header computed?
19. What is (are) the content(s) of the pseudoheader used in computing the TCP
checksum? What is its use?
20. TCP handles lost segment through timeout and retransmission. But a
problem with this approach is the difficulty in correctly estimating the
timeout period. What make(s) it difficult to predict the timeout period
accurately.
21. TCP is said to possess acknowledgement ambiguity. What do you mean by
this?
22. Describe Karn’s algorithm used to estimate the timeout period in TCP.
23. Describe the additive increase multiplicative decrease (AIMD) approach for
congestion control in TCP.