RFC Library
TCP's defining documents as packet-level lessons — each labelled with its verified, current standards status. Historic doesn't mean wrong, and old doesn't mean current: every page states exactly which rules still apply and where today's version lives.
Window and Acknowledgement Strategy in TCP
David D. Clark (MIT LCS) · July 1982 · lessons available
The TCP Maximum Segment Size and Related Topics
Jon Postel (ISI) · November 1983 · lessons available
Congestion Control in IP/TCP Internetworks
John Nagle (Ford Aerospace) · January 1984 · lessons available
Requirements for Internet Hosts — Communication Layers
R. Braden (ed.), IETF Host Requirements WG · October 1989 · lessons available
TCP Alternate Checksum Options
J. Zweig, C. Partridge · March 1990 · lessons available
TCP Extensions for High Performance
V. Jacobson, R. Braden, D. Borman · May 1992 · lessons available
TCP Selective Acknowledgment Options
M. Mathis, J. Mahdavi, S. Floyd, A. Romanow · October 1996 · lessons available
TCP Congestion Control
M. Allman, V. Paxson, W. Stevens · April 1999 · lessons available
Computing TCP's Retransmission Timer
V. Paxson, M. Allman · November 2000 · lessons available
How TCP grew up
A thematic lineage — publication order is not a strict dependency chain; ideas overlapped and cross-pollinated.
- •Early implementation guidance RFC 813 · RFC 879 · RFC 896
Memos from the field: SWS, MSS arithmetic, the small-packet problem and a congestion warning.
- ↓Host requirements RFC 1122
The MUST/SHOULD law book that turned the memos' fixes into obligations (still STD 3).
- ↓High-performance extensions RFC 1323
Window scaling, timestamps, PAWS — today specified by RFC 7323.
- ↓Selective acknowledgement RFC 2018
Repairing multi-loss windows precisely (still current).
- ↓Congestion-control standards RFC 2581
Slow start & friends standardised — today RFC 5681.
- ↓Modern retransmission timer RFC 2988
SRTT/RTTVAR/RTO formalised — today RFC 6298.