TCP6

Transmission Control Protocol Version 6 (TCP6) provides a mechanism to establish virtual circuits between processes of two endpoints. A TCP6 virtual circuit is similar to the full-duplex circuit that transmits data between systems. Providing reliable data transmission between processes, TCP6 is called a reliable protocol. TCP6 also provides a mechanism to optimize the transmission performance according to the network status. When all the data can be received and acknowledged, the transmission rate increases gradually. However, delay causes the sending host to decrease the sending rate before it receives Acknowledgement packets.

TCP6 is generally used in interactive applications, such as the Web. However, certain errors in data receiving affect the normal operation of devices. TCP6 establishes virtual circuits by using the three-way handshake mechanism, and all the virtual circuits are deleted through the four-way handshake. TCP6 connections provide multiple checksums and reliability functions, but increase the cost. As a result, TCP6 has lower efficiency than User Datagram Protocol Version 6 (UDP6).

Figure 1 shows the establishment and removal of a TCP6 connection.

Figure 1:  Establishment and removal of a TCP6 connection