Network Working Group V. Paxson Request for Comments: 2988 ACIRI Category: Standards Track M. Allman NASA GRC/BBN November 2000 Computing TCP's Retransmission Timer Status of this Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document defines the standard algorithm that Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) senders are required to use to compute and manage their retransmission timer. It expands on the discussion in section 4.2.3.1 of RFC 1122 and upgrades the requirement of supporting the algorithm from a SHOULD to a MUST. 1 Introduction The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) [Pos81] uses a retransmission timer to ensure data delivery in the absence of any feedback from the remote data receiver. The duration of this timer is referred to as RTO (retransmission timeout). RFC 1122 [Bra89] specifies that the RTO should be calculated as outlined in [Jac88]. This document codifies the algorithm for setting the RTO. In addition, this document expands on the discussion in section 4.2.3.1 of RFC 1122 and upgrades the requirement of supporting the algorithm from a SHOULD to a MUST. RFC 2581 [APS99] outlines the algorithm TCP uses to begin sending after the RTO expires and a retransmission is sent. This document does not alter the behavior outlined in RFC 2581 [APS99]. Paxson & Allman Standards Track