Best Practices for TCP Optimization in 2019

submited by

Style Pass

2024-05-10 08:00:10

If you want to really understand TCP optimization techniques, how to decide which to use, and how to implement them, you have come to the right place. This post was so long and rich we decided to split it into sections and give it a table of contents. Enjoy!

Today's internet is a large and global TCP/IP network that sends web pages and huge files of all types across great distances. A lot has changed since the internet was initially built, when small academic and government networks largely used the Telnet and Network Control Program (NCP) protocols. The internet has grown exponentially since its inception, and as more types of traffic, devices, and protocols have come online, the importance of managing this traffic efficiently has grown as well.

When the TCP/IP stack took over as the dominant protocol in the early 1980s, leaving Telnet to more specialized purposes, there were finally settings available to optimize traffic flow and avoid congestion and data loss. Even now, though, it can be difficult to know when and how to use these settings. This article will make clear some of the best use cases for common TCP optimization settings and techniques, specifically Nagle's Algorithm, TCP_NODELAY, Delayed ACK and TCP_QUICKACK.