Análise do protocolo TCP Fast Open

Abstract

The importance and usage of the internet as a tool for work, study, research, information, communication and entertainment is increasingly frequent at today's world. Thus, it is necessary the optimization of its structure to allow an efficient use of technological resources that are responsible for the proper operation and management of the internet. The TCP protocol is one of such mechanisms, it is responsible to control a reliable and ordered communication of most data through the internet. However, the establishment of connections over TCP demands the dispatch of several control messages that end up consuming a considerable amount of resources, making it inefficient and causing transmission delays between client and server on short-term connections. Considering that many internet applications make intense use of TCP connections, there were developed new mechanisms through the time so that the protocol act efficiently and provide a satisfactory user experience. This work proposes the study of the TCP Fast Open, a new mechanism which strives to make a smarter and more efficient use of net- work resources on short-term connections and, at the same time, it keeps the same properties of the TCP protocol. We applied network tools, like Wireshark, to analyze the protocol operation according to its specifications. Additionally, we tested its performance in specific scenarios, identifying and quantifying its advantages over the conventional protocol. The TCP Fast open presented performance results significantly betters on most scenarios and, throughout its application, it was possible to reduce the average page loading time, resulting in a more pleasant user experience. Beyond that, we divided the most popular pages of Brazil and World in categories, distinguishing which application are benefited more with the use of the TCP Fast Open protocol as an alternative.