An analysis of TCP processing overhead

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Abstract
The transport layer of the protocol suite, especially in connectionless protocols, has considerable functionality and is typically executed in software by the host processor at the end points of the network. It is thus considered a likely source of processing overhead. However, a preliminary examination has suggested to the authors that other aspects of networking may be a more serious source of overhead. To test this proposition, a detailed study was made of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the transport protocol from the Internet protocol suite. In this set of protocols, the functions of detecting and recovering lost or corrupted packets, flow control, and multiplexing are performed at the transport level. The results of that study are presented. It is concluded that TCP is in fact not the source of the overhead often observed in packet processing, and that it could support very high speeds if properly implemented.

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