What is TCP ?
Why is TCP popular ?
These TCP technology has become immensely popular due to its numerous benefits and widely deployed infrastructure. Especially since the growth of streaming video traffic. In fact TCP has superior congestion controlling mechanism which directly influences video streaming. However TCP cannot be guaranteed as an ideal solution for every environment. It carries certain limitations that needs to be considered for service providers before making use of its benefits.
In this article, I will be illustrating about 5 Advantages and Disadvantages of TCP | Limitations & Benefits of TCP Protocol. Through this post you will know the pros and cons of using TCP protocol.
Let's get started,
Advantages of TCP
1. Data Re-transmission
During every handshake, TCP segments are being transmitted from sender to receiver. Sometimes in between the transport, the segments may get lost failing to reach its destination. Due to this an acknowledgement will be sent to the sender from the receiver, so that the sender can re transmit the segment back again.
2. Congestion Control
In order for avoiding congestions, TCP uses a separate congestion control policy. Basically congestion happens when the sender send out too many data packets in a given time. For preventing these the receiver sends signals to the sender in order for slowing the process down or delaying the transmission. Right amount of data is being transmitted to keep the network saturated.
3. Unique Identification
In TCP each computer on the network has been assigned with an unique IP address making it identifiable over the network. Besides that each domain is assigned with a name. Therefore, ultimately TCP provides benefits of name and address resolution services.
4. In Order Delivery
Whenever a packet is sent, it cannot be guaranteed that it will be in order once it reaches its host. The order might get lost in between. Therefore, before reaching the application, TCP takes necessary steps to rearrange them in order.
5. Error Detection
Error in the TCP can negatively impact on performance and connectivity services. Detecting errors like corrupted and missing segments is relatively easy in TCP. It is generally done through 3 steps. Those are the checksum, re transmission and acknowledgement.
Disadvantages of TCP
1. Slow Start
The process of TCP is always slow at the beginning. Only after a certain period of time the speed will get accelerated. This can be especially disadvantageous when downloading larger streams of data. Always you cannot acquire the full speed once you try to download larger files, the process will be slow at the beginning and eventually the speed will get increased until the download process is finished.
2. Image Blockings
If there are more than one image present in a webpage and in case one of them is lost. TCP will not be able to deliver other parts of the stream. Which means that other images will not load if there are problems in one of them (The data will not be delivered to the browser until all the images are loaded). These types of similar problems can be especially noticeable when watching online videos. Once the connection is lost, the TCP will be retrieving even if other parts of the video is watchable.
3. Loss Result of Congestion
Whenever there is a data congestion, TCP will be slowing down so that it can send traffic in a steady rate. Although this can be beneficial for wired networking, it is not advantageous in the case of a wireless connection. Even if there is a connection drop in a wireless network, the TCP has to assume that the connection is unreliable and keep sending traffic at the same rate.
4. Slow Handshake
Always when a connection is established, the TCP will be performing a handshake between the sender and the receiver. This process can ultimately cause the connection establishment to slowdown. However this won't be problematic until there is a use of devices with high latency. Generally such devices can experience long time to establish a TCP connection.
5. Network Optimization
Originally a TCP connection is optimized only for Wide Area Networks (WAN). It was not designed for small networks such as Local Area Network (LAN) and Personal Area Network (PAN). Therefore, the user has to switch to WAN services for acquiring maximum benefits out of this connection.
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