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To: Nate Williams <nate@sri.mt.net>
Cc: dennis@etinc.com (dennis), hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: TCP Window question 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 15 Apr 1996 21:42:34 MDT."
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From: bmah@cs.berkeley.edu (Bruce A. Mah)
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Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 08:09:17 -0700
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Nate Williams writes:
> > Will BSD TCP accept packets received out of order? If so, how does it
> > handle delayed delivery to upper layers, and how long does it wait
> > for the missing data?
> 
> If you are truly interested in this, you're best bet would be to be the
> Stevens Network book, Volume II, which goes into great detail on
> subjects such as this.

Perhaps a better bet would be Volume *1*. [1]  Volume 2 handles the actual 
implementation in all glory, but if you want a description of the *behavior* 
of the various protocols, including BSD 4.4Lite TCP/IP, Volume 1 may actually 
be better-suited to your needs.

Short answers to the original questions (which apply to all TCP 
implementations I know of):

1.  Yes, it accepts packets delivered out of order.

2.  It handles "delayed delivery" by buffering received TCP segments and 
delivering them to the receiving process in order.

3.  How long it waits to do this is not determined by any interval of time, 
but rather, by how much data the receiver is willing to buffer (the "receive 
window").

Bruce.

[1]  W. Richard Stevens.  _TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1_, Addison-Wesley, 
Reading, MA, 1994.