RFC 3390 (rfc3390) - Page 1 of 15

Increasing TCP's Initial Window

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Network Working Group                                          M. Allman
Request for Comments: 3390                                  BBN/NASA GRC
Obsoletes: 2414                                                 S. Floyd
Updates: 2581                                                       ICIR
Category: Standards Track                                   C. Partridge
                                                        BBN Technologies
                                                            October 2002


                    Increasing TCP's Initial Window

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 (2002).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document specifies an optional standard for TCP to increase the
   permitted initial window from one or two segment(s) to roughly 4K
   bytes, replacing RFC 2414.  It discusses the advantages and
   disadvantages of the higher initial window, and includes discussion
   of experiments and simulations showing that the higher initial window
   does not lead to congestion collapse.  Finally, this document
   provides guidance on implementation issues.

Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC 2119].

1.  TCP Modification

   This document obsoletes [RFC 2414] and updates [RFC 2581] and specifies
   an increase in the permitted upper bound for TCP's initial window
   from one or two segment(s) to between two and four segments.  In most
   cases, this change results in an upper bound on the initial window of
   roughly 4K bytes (although given a large segment size, the permitted
   initial window of two segments may be significantly larger than 4K
   bytes).



Allman, et. al.             Standards Track
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