Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!grand!jwkhong
From: jwkhong@grand.waterloo.edu (James W. Hong)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Implicit acks in TCP?
Keywords: TCP, Implicit ack
Message-ID: <17229@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 3 Mar 88 02:36:20 GMT
Sender: daemon@watmath.waterloo.edu
Distribution: comp
Lines: 19


I wonder if someone could clarify a point for me regarding acks in
TCP.  Are implicit acks allowed in TCP?  What I mean by an implicit
ack is that each request or response message serves as an implicit
ack for the previous response or reqeust message from that client,
respectively.

What BSD4.3 version TCP seems to do is to ack a request packet immediately
and sends the requested data in a separate packet.  This requires 
4 packet exchanges rather than 2 if an implicit ack is used.

Does the TCP spec. disallow using implicit acks?  Or does it depend on
TCP implementations?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
James W. Hong                              	  jwkhong@grand.waterloo.cdn
Dept. of Computer Science              	        jwkhong%grand%waterloo.csnet
Univ. of Waterloo      	       jwkhong%grand%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Tel: (519) 885-1211 x6178