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How can tcp nodelay and tcp cork improve network latency?


Asked by Elliott Russell on Dec 13, 2021 FAQ



Using TCP_NODELAY and TCP_CORK to Improve Network Latency Applications that require lower latency on every packet sent must be run on sockets with TCP_NODELAY enabled. It can be enabled through the setsockopt command with the sockets API: For this to be used effectively, applications must avoid doing small, logically related buffer writes.
In addition,
The kernel can then coalesce the buffers efficiently into packet structures before writing them to the network. It also reduces the number of system calls required to send the data, and hence improves performance. This should be combined with TCP_NODELAY option or TCP_CORK options.
Consequently, It is very important to understand the interactions between Nagle's algorithm and Delayed ACKs. The TCP_NODELAY socket option allows your network to bypass Nagle Delays by disabling Nagle's algorithm, and sending the data as soon as it's available. Enabling TCP_NODELAY forces a socket to send the data in its buffer, whatever the packet size.
In fact,
If in a situation where the TCP layer is forced, and low latency is crucial, then the receiving application should recv () into a small buffer to improve latency. The receive buffer (provided by the receiving application) should not be confused with the receive window (provided by the receiving TCP layer).
In respect to this,
TCP_CORK aggressively accumulates data. If TCP_CORK is enabled in a socket, it will not send data until the buffer fills to a fixed limit. Similar to Nagle's algorithm, it also accumulates data from user but until the buffer fills to a fixed limit not until receiving ACK. This will be useful while sending multiple blocks of data.