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TCP is it possible to achieve higher transfer rate with multiple connections?

Asked 2008-11-03T18:45:18.330
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Is it possible to achieve better data transfer rate with multiple parallel TCP connections in high-latency environment (public internet with large geographical distance assuming no traffic shaping per connection or stuff like that) or can TCP utilize the whole bandwidth with a single connection?

Is TCP sending data as fast as it cans if receiver doesn't report buffer congestion with 0 windows size? So if RTT is for example like 60 seconds it doesn't affect the rate at all? Is there some maximum window size or something else limiting the rate?

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Muz's description of the issue is spot on.

Keep in mind that taking advantage of it may depend on the implementation of TCP in your operating system. In particular, for best results you want a TCP stack that supports the Window Scale option from RFC 1323.

Further, you may need to tweak some OS settings to make this work. On Windows there is a Registry setting called TcpWindowSize that you may need to adjust. There is a Microsoft KB Article 224829: Description of Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 TCP Features that describes just how to do that.

answered 2008-11-03T21:53:45.033

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