Every byte (of data send via TCP) has it's own sequence number. This sequence number features in the TCP header (the sequence number field).
I read that this is separate from the sequence number used for the sliding window protocol. This makes me wonder:
Q:
If the sequence number field in the TCP header does not contain the sequence number used for the sliding window protocol - where can the sliding window sequence number be found in the TCP header (or segment)?
The TCP sequence number is used by the protocol to signal the acknowledgement of data acknowledgement.
That is, the sender sends out data with a sequence number in the header of the last byte in the packet.
The receiver returns acknowledgements containing the sequence number of the last byte of data known to have been received. If the transmitter sees the receiver acking data "too long ago" it retransmits the data presumed to have been lost.
If in fact the receiver has received the data retransmitted it knows because of its own highest sequence number that this is so, and can drop part or all of the data received, and send an ack back with the correct sequence so the transmitter can continue.
I think your informant is incorrect BTW. The best book I know of for TCP internals is "TCP/IP Illustrated" by Wright & Stevens, which is well worth getting. See Vol 2 pp 807..812 for all the details...
Related
In a situation where both client and server sets their respective sequence number to 0, I read that the following is true:
C-->S: SYN=1, SEQ=0 (No data bytes)
C<--S: SYN=1, SEQ=0, ACK=1 (No data bytes)
C-->S: SEQ=1, ACK=1 (Data bytes optional)
In the third part, I understand the server is expecting the next sequence number to be 1, but aren't sequence numbers supposed to be set to initial_seq_num + sent_data_bytes_num? Since there was no data bytes sent in the first part of the handshake shouldn't the seq # be 0?
Is this just an exception during the handshake or are segments sent to with no data bytes supposed to increment the sequence number by 1 if they can be sent at all?
(There is a similar Q & A but the answer doesn't explain if this is an exception during the handshake phase OR if this happens after a TCP connection has been establish. I'm not even sure if a segment with no data bytes can even be sent. I'm assuming you can't)
ADDED It seems TCP keep-alive packets have no payload either. RFC 1122 says in these packets, SEG.SEQ = SND.NXT-1, and because this sequence number will be an already ACKed number, and a duplicate ACK will be sent, so as to keep the sequence number of the server the same.
Otherwise, I couldn't find any indications of what needs to be done when the sequence number is correct but there is no payload. I might be wrong since I only briefly scanned the document, but there is also no statement of rules of sequence numbering during the handshake except for examples.
In RFC 1122, it says
Unfortunately, some misbehaved TCP implementations fail to respond to a segment with SEG.SEQ = SND.NXT-1 unless the segment contains data.
So I'm assuming it depends on each implementation, but if there is any statement of a) the sequence numbering during handshake, and b) how to behave when the sequence # is correct but there is no payload, I would really appreciate it if someone could point me to that part.
Thanks!
The first ACK (that occurs as part of Handshake) acknowledges the reception of SYN from the other end. The SYN segment does not carry any data. But to allow the provision for acknowledging the reception of SYN, the first ACK is incremented though no payload is present.
The 32-bit acknowledgement field, say x, on the TCP header
tells the other host that "I received all the bytes up until and including x-1,
now expecting
the bytes from x and on". In this case, the receiver may have received some
further bytes, say x+100 through x+180,
but it hasn't yet received x-th byte yet.
Is there a case that, although the receiver hasn't received
x through x+100 bytes but received the bytes say x+100 through x+180,
the receiver is acknowledging that it received x+180?
One resource I read indicates the acknowledgement of bytes received despite a gap in the earlier bytes.
However, every other source tells
"acknowledgement of x tells all bytes up until x-1 are received".
Are there any exceptional cases? I'm looking to verify this.
TIA.
This can be achieved by TCP option called SACK.
Here, client can say through a duplicate ACK that it has only up to particular packet number 2 (sequence number of packet) in order and append SACK(Selective Acknowledgement) option for the range of contiguous packets received like packets numbered 4 to 5 (sequence number). This in turn shall enable the server to retransmit only the packets(3 sequence number) that were not received by the client.
Provided below an extract from RFC 2018 : TCP Selective Acknowledgement Options
The SACK option is to be sent by a data receiver to inform the data
sender of non-contiguous blocks of data that have been received and
queued. The data receiver awaits the receipt of data (perhaps by
means of retransmissions) to fill the gaps in sequence space between
received blocks. When missing segments are received, the data
receiver acknowledges the data normally by advancing the left window
edge in the Acknowledgement Number Field of the TCP header. The SACK
option does not change the meaning of the Acknowledgement Number
field.
From the TCP RFC at https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793.txt:
3.3. Sequence Numbers
A fundamental notion in the design is that every octet of data sent
over a TCP connection has a sequence number. Since every octet is
sequenced, each of them can be acknowledged. The acknowledgment
mechanism employed is cumulative so that an acknowledgment of sequence
number X indicates that all octets up to but not including X have been
received.
That seems pretty clear to me, the sequence number stops at the first missing data.
Why do we need the sequence number and the next sequence number field in the TCP header?
Below is a TCP header from a packet captured using wireshark.
First, fields in Wireshark enclosed by [brackets] are computed fields - they're not in the packet. That next sequence number field shown by Wireshark is one such field. Wireshark is computing that by taking the 'sequence number' field and adding it to the payload size of your packet. It's no surprise then that the difference between these two numbers is 1430 - a common TCP payload size.
Sequence numbers in TCP are in units of bytes - they basically say, what byte location in the TCP stream this packet's payload is inserted at.
The 'acknowledged' sequence number shows how many bytes I'm acknowledging as having received.
Since TCP is bidirectional, each end has to declare
Where the bytes its transmitting should go in the stream and
What bytes that you've sent me that I've received.
As such, each TCP packet has two fields that refer to sequence numbers - the 'sequence number' field, and the 'acknowledgment number' field.
Without the 'sequence number' field, the receiving end wouldn't be able to tell if packets were received out of order. Without the 'acknowledgment number' field, the transmitting end wouldn't know if some of his packets had been dropped and the receiver never received them.
Because TCP is a reliable pipe. This means that packets are delivered in sequence (and only once) even though the lower layers don't offer that guarantee. IN order to do this TCP needs housekeeping data, acks, nacks,....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol
The 'next sequence' is an artifact of wireshark, its not actually in the TCP header, ws is just telling you the next packet in its capture file
Can somebody just simplely describe the retransmission mechanism in TCP?
I want to know how it deal in this situation?
A send a packet to B:
A send a packet.
B receive and send ack,but this ack is lose.
A timeout and resend.
In this situation B will receive 2 same packets, how can B do to avoid dealing the same packet again?
Thanks.
Each packet has a sequence number associated with it. As data is sent, the sequence number is incremented by the amount of original data in the packet. You can think of the sequence number as the offset of the first byte in the packet from the beginning of the data stream although it may not, likely will not, start at zero. When A sends the retry, it will use the same sequence number it used the first time. B tracks the sequence numbers as it receives data and can know that it has seen the retry's sequence number before. If it has already made that data available to the (upper layer) client, then it knows that it should not do so again.
In class, we were learning about principles of reliable data transfer. When we went over the alternating bit protocol, we learned that the segment had a type field (seq or ack), a sequence number and an acknowledgement number field. I'm wondering what the purpose is of having both a sequence number and an acknowledgment number? Couldn't we just have one field that is sequence number unless the type field denotes an acknowledgement, then we know that the number is an acknowledgement number?
The sequence number is for outgoing packets; the acknowledgement number acknowledges the sequence number of incoming packets.