TCP(4)							   BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual 						    TCP(4)

NAME

     tcp -- Internet Transmission Control Protocol

SYNOPSIS

     #include <sys/socket.h>
     #include <netinet/in.h>

     int
     socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);

     int
     socket(AF_INET6, SOCK_STREAM, 0);

DESCRIPTION

     The TCP provides reliable, flow-controlled, two-way transmission of data.	It is a byte-stream protocol used to support the SOCK_STREAM
     abstraction.  TCP uses the standard Internet address format and, in addition, provides a per-host collection of ``port addresses''.  Thus,
     each address is composed of an Internet address specifying the host and network, with a specific TCP port on the host identifying the peer
     entity.

     Sockets using TCP are either ``active'' or ``passive''.  Active sockets initiate connections to passive sockets.  By default TCP sockets are
     created active; to create a passive socket the listen(2) system call must be used after binding the socket with the bind(2) system call.
     Only passive sockets may use the accept(2) call to accept incoming connections.  Only active sockets may use the connect(2) call to initiate
     connections.

     Passive sockets may ``underspecify'' their location to match incoming connection requests from multiple networks.	This technique, termed
     ``wildcard addressing'', allows a single server to provide service to clients on multiple networks.  To create a socket which listens on all
     networks, the Internet address INADDR_ANY must be bound.  The TCP port may still be specified at this time; if the port is not specified the
     system will assign one.  Once a connection has been established the socket's address is fixed by the peer entity's location.  The address
     assigned the socket is the address associated with the network interface through which packets are being transmitted and received.  Normally
     this address corresponds to the peer entity's network.

     TCP supports a number of socket options which can be set with setsockopt(2) and tested with getsockopt(2):

     TCP_NODELAY    Under most circumstances, TCP sends data when it is presented; when outstanding data has not yet been acknowledged, it gathers
		    small amounts of output to be sent in a single packet once an acknowledgement is received.	For a small number of clients,
		    such as window systems that send a stream of mouse events which receive no replies, this packetization may cause significant
		    delays.  Therefore, TCP provides a boolean option, TCP_NODELAY (from <netinet/tcp.h>, to defeat this algorithm.

     TCP_MAXSEG     By default, a sender- and receiver-TCP will negotiate among themselves to determine the maximum segment size to be used for
		    each connection.  The TCP_MAXSEG option allows the user to determine the result of this negotiation, and to reduce it if
		    desired.

     TCP_MD5SIG     This option enables the use of MD5 digests (also known as TCP-MD5) on writes to the specified socket.  In the current release,
		    only outgoing traffic is digested; digests on incoming traffic are not verified.  The current default behavior for the system
		    is to respond to a system advertising this option with TCP-MD5; this may change.

		    One common use for this in a NetBSD router deployment is to enable based routers to interwork with Cisco equipment at peering
		    points.  Support for this feature conforms to RFC 2385.  Only IPv4 (AF_INET) sessions are supported.

		    In order for this option to function correctly, it is necessary for the administrator to add a tcp-md5 key entry to the sys-
		    tem's security associations database (SADB) using the setkey(8) utility.  This entry must have an SPI of 0x1000 and can there-
		    fore only be specified on a per-host basis at this time.

		    If an SADB entry cannot be found for the destination, the outgoing traffic will have an invalid digest option prepended, and
		    the following error message will be visible on the system console: tcp_signature_compute: SADB lookup failed for %d.%d.%d.%d.

     TCP_KEEPIDLE   TCP probes a connection that has been idle for some amount of time.  The default value for this idle period is 4 hours.  The
		    TCP_KEEPIDLE option can be used to affect this value for a given socket, and specifies the number of seconds of idle time
		    between keepalive probes.  This option takes an unsigned int value, with a value greater than 0.

     TCP_KEEPINTVL  When the SO_KEEPALIVE option is enabled, TCP probes a connection that has been idle for some amount of time.  If the remote
		    system does not respond to a keepalive probe, TCP retransmits the probe after some amount of time.	The default value for this
		    retransmit interval is 150 seconds.  The TCP_KEEPINTVL option can be used to affect this value for a given socket, and speci-
		    fies the number of seconds to wait before retransmitting a keepalive probe.  This option takes an unsigned int value, with a
		    value greater than 0.

     TCP_KEEPCNT    When the SO_KEEPALIVE option is enabled, TCP probes a connection that has been idle for some amount of time.  If the remote
		    system does not respond to a keepalive probe, TCP retransmits the probe a certain number of times before a connection is con-
		    sidered to be broken.  The default value for this keepalive probe retransmit limit is 8.  The TCP_KEEPCNT option can be used
		    to affect this value for a given socket, and specifies the maximum number of keepalive probes to be sent.  This option takes
		    an unsigned int value, with a value greater than 0.

     TCP_KEEPINIT   If a TCP connection cannot be established within some amount of time, TCP will time out the connect attempt.  The default
		    value for this initial connection establishment timeout is 150 seconds.  The TCP_KEEPINIT option can be used to affect this
		    initial timeout period for a given socket, and specifies the number of seconds to wait before the connect attempt is timed
		    out.  For passive connections, the TCP_KEEPINIT option value is inherited from the listening socket.  This option takes an
		    unsigned int value, with a value greater than 0.

     The option level for the setsockopt(2) call is the protocol number for TCP, available from getprotobyname(3).

     In the historical BSD TCP implementation, if the TCP_NODELAY option was set on a passive socket, the sockets returned by accept(2) erro-
     neously did not have the TCP_NODELAY option set; the behavior was corrected to inherit TCP_NODELAY in NetBSD 1.6.

     Options at the IP network level may be used with TCP; see ip(4) or ip6(4).  Incoming connection requests that are source-routed are noted,
     and the reverse source route is used in responding.

     There are many adjustable parameters that control various aspects of the NetBSD TCP behavior; these parameters are documented in sysctl(7),
     and they include:
     o	 RFC 1323 extensions for high performance
     o	 Send/receive buffer sizes
     o	 Default maximum segment size (MSS)
     o	 SYN cache parameters
     o	 Initial window size
     o	 Hughes/Touch/Heidemann Congestion Window Monitoring algorithm
     o	 Keepalive parameters
     o	 newReno algorithm for congestion control
     o	 Logging of connection refusals
     o	 RST packet rate limits
     o	 SACK (Selective Acknowledgment)
     o	 ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification)
     o	 Congestion window increase methods; the traditional packet counting or RFC 3465 Appropriate Byte Counting

DIAGNOSTICS

     A socket operation may fail with one of the following errors returned:

     [EISCONN]	      when trying to establish a connection on a socket which already has one;

     [ENOBUFS]	      when the system runs out of memory for an internal data structure;

     [ETIMEDOUT]      when a connection was dropped due to excessive retransmissions;

     [ECONNRESET]     when the remote peer forces the connection to be closed;

     [ECONNREFUSED]   when the remote peer actively refuses connection establishment (usually because no process is listening to the port);

     [EADDRINUSE]     when an attempt is made to create a socket with a port which has already been allocated;

     [EADDRNOTAVAIL]  when an attempt is made to create a socket with a network address for which no network interface exists.

SEE ALSO

     getsockopt(2), socket(2), inet(4), inet6(4), intro(4), ip(4), ip6(4), sysctl(7)

     Transmission Control Protocol, RFC, 793, September 1981.

     Requirements for Internet Hosts -- Communication Layers, RFC, 1122, October 1989.

HISTORY

     The tcp protocol stack appeared in 4.2BSD.

BSD
								   June 19, 2007							       BSD