Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) (
RFC 793) is one of the
main protocols in the Internet Protocol (IP) suite, and is so prevalent
that it is frequently referenced together with IP as
TCP/IP.
TCP is considered a reliable transport protocol because it provides
error-checking while transmitting and receiving segments, acknowledges
segments received, and reorders segments that arrive in the wrong
order. TCP also requests and provides retransmission of segments
that were dropped. TCP is stateful and connection-oriented, meaning
a connection between the sender and receiver is established for the
duration of the session. TCP provides flow control of packets, so
it can handle congestion over networks.