In our discussions on the transport layer, we considered many cases where the host would break a string into fragments before sending it – i.e. we put a ceiling on the amount of data that could be sent in one segment. We could have sent all the data in one huge segment and not worry about sequence numbers. What are two reasons to not do this?
Answer:-
The reason is that the TCP implementation checks sequence numbers, rearrange the packets at destination, and request what is missing so source re-sends the missing packets. This is obviously a very simplistic explanation, but you get the idea.
If using TCP protocol, your application does not need to worry about delivery details. The TCP protocol takes care of the delivery, and in that sense is reliable.
UDP (the other protocol in the trasport layer of the TCP/IP suite) is unreliable because does not warrant the delivery and is the application the one that needs to implement mechanism to confirm the delivery (if that is something required)
Get Answers For Free
Most questions answered within 1 hours.