In
computer networking
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...
, out-of-order delivery is the delivery of
data packets in a different order from which they were sent. Out-of-order delivery can be caused by packets following multiple paths through a network, by lower-layer
retransmission procedures (such as
automatic repeat request), or via parallel processing paths within network equipment that are not designed to ensure that packet ordering is preserved. One of the functions of
TCP
TCP may refer to:
Science and technology
* Transformer coupled plasma
* Tool Center Point, see Robot end effector
Computing
* Transmission Control Protocol, a fundamental Internet standard
* Telephony control protocol, a Bluetooth communication s ...
is to prevent the out-of-order delivery of data, either by reassembling packets in order or requesting retransmission of out-of-order packets.
See also
*
Packet loss
*
Selective ACK
*
IP fragmentation
400px, An example of the fragmentation of a protocol data unit in a given layer into smaller fragments.
IP fragmentation is an Internet Protocol (IP) process that breaks packets into smaller pieces (fragments), so that the resulting pieces can ...
*
Head-of-line blocking
External links
* RFC 4737, ''Packet Reordering Metrics'', A. Morton, L. Ciavattone, G. Ramachandran, S. Shalunov, J. Perser, November 2006
* RFC 5236, ''Improved Packet Reordering Metrics'', A. Jayasumana, N. Piratla, T. Banka, A. Bare, R. Whitner, June 2008
* https://web.archive.org/web/20171022053352/http://kb.pert.geant.net/PERTKB/PacketReordering
* http://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/monitoring/reorder/
* https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi12/minion-unordered-delivery-wire-compatible-tcp-and-tls
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Packets (information technology)