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From: pace@spectra.COM (William B. Pace)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Number of TCP retries
Message-ID: <242@spectra.COM>
Date: 12 Oct 89 18:31:13 GMT
Reply-To: pace@spectra.com (William B. Pace)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Spectragraphics, Corp., San Diego, CA
Lines: 26

A friend is implementing TCP/IP and has a couple of simple questions
which someone out there in netland could help him with.  He has looked
through the RFC's but doesn't see his answers there.  The environment
is a common Ethernet lan.  No gateways, routers, bridges, brouters,
long-haul networks, beer, knockwurst or oompah bands are involved.

1) If a packet is not acknowledged, how many times should TCP retry
   sending the packet before giving up?

2) What is a reasonable time for a SYN packet to time out?

3) What is a reasonable fixed TCP/IP timeout for an Ethernet lan when
   you don't want to do fancy retry timing ala Karn's work?

4) When programming an Ethernet controller (e.g. Lance chip), how many
   times should the controller retransmit the packet when it detects
   collisions and other errors before giving up and reporting an error
   to the driver?

Please send responses to pace@spectra.com.  Thanks for the help.

Bill Pace
pace@spectra.com
Disclaimer:  My boss doesn't even know I exist.

"I'm not a real programmer, but I play one on T.V."