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So on Twitter, somebody asked this question:
I have a very basic computer networking question: when sending a TCP packet, is the packet ACK'ed at every node in the route between the sender and the recipient, or just by the final recipient?
This isn't just a basic question, it is
the basic question, the defining aspect of TCP/IP that makes the Internet different from the telephone network that predated it.
Remember that the telephone network was already a cyberspace before the Internet came around. It allowed anybody to create a connection to anybody else. Most circuits/connections were 56-kilobits-per-secondl using the "T" system, these could be aggregated into faster circuits/connections. The "T1" line consisting of 1.544-mbps was an important standard back in the day.
In the phone system, when a connection is established, resources must be allocated in every switch along the path between the source and destination. When the phone system is overloaded, such as when you call loved ones when there's been an earthquake/tornado in their area, you'll sometimes get a message "No circuits are available". Due to congestion, it can't reserve the necessary resources in one of the switches along the route, so the call can't be
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