The TCP protocol is a byte stream service. It does not know
anything about the format of the data being sent. It simply takes the
data, encapsulates it into the TCP packet, and sends it to the
remote peer. The TCP socket then keeps the last packet in memory and
waits for an acknowledge from the remote peer.
If the packet is not acknowledged when the timeout expires, it
resends the same packet. This process is repeated a couple of times
before the packet is either acknowledged or the TCP socket aborts the
connection.
The main goal is to keep it small and not resource hungry. For
this reason, the TCP socket cannot keep a large amount of data in the
buffer waiting to be acknowledged. It only keeps the last packet
sent, in memory, until it is acknowledged. When the packet is
acknowledged, it is released from memory.
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