TCP Connection Establishment and Termination

Three-Way Handshake

The following scenario occurs when a TCP connection is established:

1. The server must be prepared to accept an incoming connection. This is normally done by calling socket, bind, and listen and is called a passive open.

2. The client issues an active open by calling connect. This causes the client TCP to send a "synchronize" (SYN) segment, which tells the server the client's initial sequence number for the data that the client will send on the connection. Normally, there is no data sent with the SYN; it just contains an IP header, a TCP header, and possible TCP options (which we will talk about shortly).

3. The server must acknowledge (ACK) the client's SYN and the server must also send its own SYN containing the initial sequence number for the data that the server will send on the connection. The server sends its SYN and the ACK of the client's SYN in a single segment.

4. The client must acknowledge(ACK) the server's SYN.

The minimum number of packets required for this exchange is three; hence, this is called TCP's three-way handshake.

We show the client's initial sequence number as J and the server's initial sequence number as K. The acknowledgment number in an ACK is the next expected sequence number for the end sending the ACK. Since a SYN occupies one byte of the sequence number space, the acknowledgment number in the ACK of each SYN is the initial sequence number plus one. Similarly, the ACK of each FIN is the sequence number of the FIN plus one.

An everyday analogy for establishing a TCP connection is the telephone system [Nemeth 1997]. The socket function is the equivalent of having a telephone to use. bind is telling other people your telephone number so that they can call you. listen is turning on the ringer so that you will hear when an incoming call arrives. connect requires that we know the other person's phone number and dial it. accept is when the person being called answers the phone. Having the client's identity returned by accept (where the identify is the client's IP address and port number) is similar to having the caller ID feature show the caller's phone number. One difference, however, is that accept returns the client's identity only after the connection has been established, whereas the caller ID feature shows the caller's phone number before we choose whether to answer the phone or not. If the DNS is used, it provides a service analogous to a telephone book. getaddrinfo is similar to looking up a person's phone number in the phone book. getnameinfo would be the equivalent of having a phone book sorted by telephone numbers that we could search, instead of a book sorted by name.

TCP Options

Each SYN can contain TCP options. Commonly used options include the following:

• MSS option. With this option, the TCP sending the SYN announces its maximum segment size, the maximum amount of data that it is willing to accept in each TCP segment, on this connection. The sending TCP uses the receiver's MSS value as the maximum size of a segment that it sends. We can fetch and set this TCP option with the TCP_MAXSEG socket option.

• Window scale option. The maximum window that either TCP can advertise to the other TCP is 65,535, because the corresponding field in the TCP header occupies 16 bits. But, high-speed connections, common in today's Internet (45 Mbits/sec and faster, as described in RFC 1323 [Jacobson, Braden, and Borman 1992]), or long delay paths (satellite links) require a larger window to obtain the maximum throughput possible. This newer option specifies that the advertised window in the TCP header must be scaled (left-shifted) by 0–14 bits, providing a maximum window of almost one gigabyte (65,535 x 2¹⁴). Both end-systems must support this option for the window scale to be used on a connection. We can affect this option with the SO_RCVBUF socket option.

  To provide interoperability with older implementations that do not support this option, the following rules apply. TCP can send the option with its SYN as part of an active open. But, it can scale its windows only if the other end also sends the option with its SYN. Similarly, the server's TCP can send this option only if it receives the option with the client's SYN. This logic assumes that implementations ignore options that they do not understand, which is required and common, but unfortunately, not guaranteed with all implementations.

• Timestamp option. This option is needed for high-speed connections to prevent possible data corruption caused by old, delayed, or duplicated segments. Since it is a newer option, it is negotiated similarly to the window scale option. As network programmers there is nothing we need to worry about with this option.

These common options are supported by most implementations. The latter two are sometimes called the "RFC 1323 options," as that RFC [Jacobson, Braden, and Borman 1992] specifies the options. They are also called the "long fat pipe options," since a network with either a high bandwidth or a long delay is called a long fat pipe.

TCP Connection Termination

While it takes three segments to establish a connection, it takes four to terminate a connection.

1. One application calls close first, and we say that this end performs the active close. This end's TCP sends a FIN segment, which means it is finished sending data.

2. The other end that receives the FIN performs the passive close. The received FIN is acknowledged by TCP. The receipt of the FIN is also passed to the application as an end-of-file (after any data that may have already been queued for the application to receive), since the receipt of the FIN means the application will not receive any additional data on the connection.

3. Sometime later, the application that received the end-of-file will close its socket. This causes its TCP to send a FIN.

4. The TCP on the system that receives this final FIN (the end that did the active close)  acknowledges the FIN.

Since a FIN and an ACK are required in each direction, four segments are normally required. We use the qualifier "normally" because in some scenarios, the FIN in Step 1 is sent with data. Also, the segments in Steps 2 and 3 are both from the end performing the passive close and could be combined into one segment.

A FIN occupies one byte of sequence number space just like a SYN. Therefore, the ACK of each FIN is the sequence number of the FIN plus one.

Between Steps 2 and 3 it is possible for data to flow from the end doing the passive close to the end doing the active close. This is called a half-close and we will talk about this in detail with the shutdown.

The sending of each FIN occurs when a socket is closed. We indicated that the application calls close for this to happen, but realize that when a Unix process terminates, either voluntarily (calling exit or having the main function return) or involuntarily (receiving a signal that terminates the process), all open descriptors are closed, which will also cause a FIN to be sent on any TCP connection that is still open.

Although we show the client in Figure performing the active close, either end—the client or the server—can perform the active close. Often the client performs the active close, but with some protocols (notably HTTP/1.0), the server performs the active close.