tcp(4)
- NetBSD Manual Pages
TCP(4) NetBSD 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 com-
posed of an Internet address specifying the host and network, with a spe-
cific 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 cre-
ated 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 pre-
sented; 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 advertis-
ing 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 neces-
sary for the administrator to add a tcp-md5 key entry to the
system's security associations database (SADB) using the
setkey(8) utility. This entry must have an SPI of 0x1000
and can therefore 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.
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) erroneously
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(3), and
they include:
· RFC 1323 extensions for high performance
· Send/receive buffer sizes
· Default maximum segment size (MSS)
· SYN cache parameters
· Initial window size
· Hughes/Touch/Heidemann Congestion Window Monitoring algorithm
· Keepalive parameters
· newReno algorithm for congestion control
· Logging of connection refusals
· RST packet rate limits
· SACK (Selective Acknowledgment)
· ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification)
· 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 retrans-
missions;
[ECONNRESET] when the remote peer forces the connection to be closed;
[ECONNREFUSED] when the remote peer actively refuses connection estab-
lishment (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 net-
work address for which no network interface exists.
SEE ALSO
getsockopt(2), socket(2), sysctl(3), inet(4), inet6(4), intro(4), ip(4),
ip6(4)
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.
NetBSD 4.0.1 October 20, 2006 NetBSD 4.0.1
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