Why is Network Latency so Important for TCP/IP?
In order to understand why this is the case it is appropriate to start with the IP protocol itself. IP is a ‘datagram’ protocol. For data to be transferred across an IP network the data is first segmented into packets. Prepended to each packet is an IP protocol header. IP itself makes remarkably few assumptions about the characteristics of the underlying transmission system. IP packets can be discarded, reordered or fragmented into a number of smaller IP packets and remain within the scope of the protocol. The IP protocol does not assume any particular network service quality, bandwidth, reliability, delay, variation in delay or even reordering of packets as they pass through the network. In itself this unreliable services sounds like its not overly useful. If sending a packet through an IP network is an exercise in probability theory rather than a reliable transaction, then how does the Internet work at all? If we want reliable service then we need to look at a protocol that sits dire
