Information technology and society: Google offers to modernize the TCP protocol

Google continues to promote its web technology SPDY which enables, according to the company representatives, to significantly accelerate the operation of the modern global network. The day before Google offered to make a series of changes to the concept of TCP protocol which supports the communication between computers and servers in Internet.

Google representatives believe that these changes will reduce the delays in communication between clients’ computers and servers owing to the decrease in number of technical manipulations required by TCP for computers communication. Google criticize in the first place the fact that the current architecture of TCP obliges to receive network packets and then confirm the receipt with a special answer. On the whole, the entire architecture of TCP is based on confirmations in communication process which is, according to Google, no more topical in modern conditions.

The company officials say that considering the fact that the majority of users work in Internet using this or that kind of Internet access with high speed and low delay of connections, computers during their communication spend more resources for confirmation of various packets rather than for the communication process itself.

Google recognizes that change in TCP protocol is not an easy process as it affects the network layer and discrepancies might literally cripple the network, when several large servers will not be able to "talk" to each other, and this can lead to failure in the routing. However, if the modernization is carried out smoothly, then the problems will be minimized.   

Earlier, Google already offered another development - a new network protocol SPDY, which will replace the traditional HTTP. Today, SPDY is being tested by Google.

Independent experts say that Google’s new development is definitely a promising one, but it won’t be successful until such servers as Microsoft IIS or Apache, on the one hand, and browsers like Opera, IE and Firefox on the other hand, support it.