TCP fast retransmission
During analysis of my ESX server, vsphere client communication I have encountered the following packet capture. My vsphere client keeps asking for a lost segment with ACK number 1583183 for 9 times after which according to wireshark analysis TCP Fast Retransmission which is one of the ways of handling congestion is engaged.
When I check RFC2581, it says :
After receiving 3 duplicate ACKs, TCP performs a retransmission of what appears to be the missing segment, without waiting for the retransmission timer to expire.
TCP doesn’t wait for the re-transmission timer but isn’t this quite long to engage fast re-transmit? It is 9 duplicate acks in total. Maybe some of my duplicate acks are also lost? It might be. Anyway, it was good to check RFC once again for this retransmit incident.
