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1.4. Interfaces
The TCP interfaces on one side to user or application processes and on
the other side to a lower level protocol such as Internet Protocol.
The interface between an application process and the TCP is
illustrated in reasonable detail. This interface consists of a set of
calls much like the calls an operating system provides to an
application process for manipulating files. For example, there are
calls to open and close connections and to send and receive data on
established connections. It is also expected that the TCP can
asynchronously communicate with application programs. Although
considerable freedom is permitted to TCP implementors to design
interfaces which are appropriate to a particular operating system
environment, a minimum functionality is required at the TCP/user
interface for any valid implementation.
The interface between TCP and lower level protocol is essentially
unspecified except that it is assumed there is a mechanism whereby the
two levels can asynchronously pass information to each other.
Typically, one expects the lower level protocol to specify this
interface. TCP is designed to work in a very general environment of
interconnected networks. The lower level protocol which is assumed
throughout this document is the Internet Protocol [2].
1.5. Operation
As noted above, the primary purpose of the TCP is to provide reliable,
securable logical circuit or connection service between pairs of
processes. To provide this service on top of a less reliable internet
communication system requires facilities in the following areas:
Basic Data Transfer
Reliability
Flow Control
Multiplexing
Connections
Precedence and Security
The basic operation of the TCP in each of these areas is described in
the following paragraphs.
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Introduction
Basic Data Transfer:
The TCP is able to transfer a continuous stream of octets in each
direction between its users by packaging some number of octets into
segments for transmission through the internet system. In general,
the TCPs decide when to block and forward data at their own
convenience.
Sometimes users need to be sure that all the data they have
submitted to the TCP has been transmitted. For this purpose a push
function is defined. To assure that data submitted to a TCP is
actually transmitted the sending user indicates that it should be
pushed through to the receiving user. A push causes the TCPs to
promptly forward and deliver data up to that point to the receiver.
The exact push point might not be visible to the receiving user and
the push function does not supply a record boundary marker.
Reliability:
The TCP must recover from data that is damaged, lost, duplicated, or
delivered out of order by the internet communication system. This
is achieved by assigning a sequence number to each octet
transmitted, and requiring a positive acknowledgment (ACK) from the
receiving TCP. If the ACK is not received within a timeout
interval, the data is retransmitted. At the receiver, the sequence
numbers are used to correctly order segments that may be received
out of order and to eliminate duplicates. Damage is handled by
adding a checksum to each segment transmitted, checking it at the
receiver, and discarding damaged segments.
As long as the TCPs continue to function properly and the internet
system does not become completely partitioned, no transmission
errors will affect the correct delivery of data. TCP recovers from
internet communication system errors.
Flow Control:
TCP provides a means for the receiver to govern the amount of data
sent by the sender. This is achieved by returning a "window" with
every ACK indicating a range of acceptable sequence numbers beyond
the last segment successfully received. The window indicates an
allowed number of octets that the sender may transmit before
receiving further permission.
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Multiplexing:
To allow for many processes within a single Host to use TCP
communication facilities simultaneously, the TCP provides a set of
addresses or ports within each host. Concatenated with the network
and host addresses from the internet communication layer, this forms
a socket. A pair of sockets uniquely identifies each connection.
That is, a socket may be simultaneously used in multiple
connections.
The binding of ports to processes is handled independently by each
Host. However, it proves useful to attach frequently used processes
(e.g., a "logger" or timesharing service) to fixed sockets which are
made known to the public. These services can then be accessed
through the known addresses. Establishing and learning the port
addresses of other processes may involve more dynamic mechanisms.
Connections:
The reliability and flow control mechanisms described above require
that TCPs initialize and maintain certain status information for
each data stream. The combination of this information, including
sockets, sequence numbers, and window sizes, is called a connection.
Each connection is uniquely specified by a pair of sockets
identifying its two sides.
When two processes wish to communicate, their TCP's must first
establish a connection (initialize the status information on each
side). When their communication is complete, the connection is
terminated or closed to free the resources for other uses.
Since connections must be established between unreliable hosts and
over the unreliable internet communication system, a handshake
mechanism with clock-based sequence numbers is used to avoid
erroneous initialization of connections.
Precedence and Security:
The users of TCP may indicate the security and precedence of their
communication. Provision is made for default values to be used when
these features are not needed.
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2. PHILOSOPHY
2.1. Elements of the Internetwork System
The internetwork environment consists of hosts connected to networks
which are in turn interconnected via gateways. It is assumed here
that the networks may be either local networks (e.g., the ETHERNET) or
large networks (e.g., the ARPANET), but in any case are based on
packet switching technology. The active agents that produce and
consume messages are processes. Various levels of protocols in the
networks, the gateways, and the hosts support an interprocess
communication system that provides two-way data flow on logical
connections between process ports.
The term packet is used generically here to mean the data of one
transaction between a host and its network. The format of data blocks
exchanged within the a network will generally not be of concern to us.
Hosts are computers attached to a network, and from the communication
network's point of view, are the sources and destinations of packets.
Processes are viewed as the active elements in host computers (in
accordance with the fairly common definition of a process as a program
in execution). Even terminals and files or other I/O devices are
viewed as communicating with each other through the use of processes.
Thus, all communication is viewed as inter-process communication.
Since a process may need to distinguish among several communication
streams between itself and another process (or processes), we imagine
that each process may have a number of ports through which it
communicates with the ports of other processes.
2.2. Model of Operation
Processes transmit data by calling on the TCP and passing buffers of
data as arguments. The TCP packages the data from these buffers into
segments and calls on the internet module to transmit each segment to
the destination TCP. The receiving TCP places the data from a segment
into the receiving user's buffer and notifies the receiving user. The
TCPs include control information in the segments which they use to
ensure reliable ordered data transmission.
The model of internet communication is that there is an internet
protocol module associated with each TCP which provides an interface
to the local network. This internet module packages TCP segments
inside internet datagrams and routes these datagrams to a destination
internet module or intermediate gateway. To transmit the datagram
through the local network, it is embedded in a local network packet.
The packet switches may perform further packaging, fragmentation, or
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Philosophy
other operations to achieve the delivery of the local packet to the
destination internet module.
At a gateway between networks, the internet datagram is "unwrapped"
from its local packet and examined to determine through which network
the internet datagram should travel next. The internet datagram is
then "wrapped" in a local packet suitable to the next network and
routed to the next gateway, or to the final destination.
A gateway is permitted to break up an internet datagram into smaller
internet datagram fragments if this is necessary for transmission
through the next network. To do this, the gateway produces a set of
internet datagrams; each carrying a fragment. Fragments may be
further broken into smaller fragments at subsequent gateways. The
internet datagram fragment format is designed so that the destination
internet module can reassemble fragments into internet datagrams.
A destination internet module unwraps the segment from the datagram
(after reassembling the datagram, if necessary) and passes it to the
destination TCP.
This simple model of the operation glosses over many details. One
important feature is the type of service. This provides information
to the gateway (or internet module) to guide it in selecting the
service parameters to be used in traversing the next network.
Included in the type of service information is the precedence of the
datagram. Datagrams may also carry security information to permit
host and gateways that operate in multilevel secure environments to
properly segregate datagrams for security considerations.
2.3. The Host Environment
The TCP is assumed to be a module in an operating system. The users
access the TCP much like they would access the file system. The TCP
may call on other operating system functions, for example, to manage
data structures. The actual interface to the network is assumed to be
controlled by a device driver module. The TCP does not call on the
network device driver directly, but rather calls on the internet
datagram protocol module which may in turn call on the device driver.
The mechanisms of TCP do not preclude implementation of the TCP in a
front-end processor. However, in such an implementation, a
host-to-front-end protocol must provide the functionality to support
the type of TCP-user interface described in this document.
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2.4. Interfaces
The TCP/user interface provides for calls made by the user on the TCP
to OPEN or CLOSE a connection, to SEND or RECEIVE data, or to obtain
STATUS about a connection. These calls are like other calls from user
programs on the operating system, for example, the calls to open, read
from, and close a file.
The TCP/internet interface provides calls to send and receive
datagrams addressed to TCP modules in hosts anywhere in the internet
system. These calls have parameters for passing the address, type of
service, precedence, security, and other control information.
2.5. Relation to Other Protocols
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