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From: tcp-ip@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Withholding Acks
Message-ID: <9671@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 5-Aug-85 14:10:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.9671
Posted: Mon Aug  5 14:10:37 1985
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From: Lixia Zhang <Lixia@MIT-XX.ARPA>

Dave,

Thanks for your msg.  From yours and other replies I got, it seems that I
didn't make the inquiry clear.  By withholding acks I mean WITHHOLDING
ACKs, i.e. do not acknowledge every incoming data segment so that the total
number of acks sent out will be smaller that the number of incoming data
packets.

From your msg,
      "The Symbolics implementation for 3600s sets a flag in a connection
      saying "send an ack when you get a chance."  Therefore, we do withhold
      ACKs in a sense."
Do you mean the acks are polled by the sender only (i.e. the receiving end
does not ack until it sees a flag) ?

Withholding window enlargement may have an effect, but surely the two
are not the same. I'm more concerned with the internet data traffic. I
don't know how much percentage of the total is due to the acknowledgment
packets.  For telnet connections it is possible to do piggybacking (how
well this is done is still up to the implementation), but for FTP or mail
data basically flow in one direction only, do they generate as many acks as
data pkts or substantially less?

Lixia
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