Anyone who’s involved with web application performance – either measuring or addressing – knows there are literally hundreds of RFCs designed to improve the performance of TCP (which in turn, one hopes, improves the performance of HTTP-delivered applications that ultimately rely on TCP).
But what may not be known is that there are a number of variations on the TCP theme; slightly modified versions of the protocol that are designed to improve upon TCP under specific network conditions.
A Burton IT research note (G00218070), “Wireless Performance Issues and Solutions for Mobile Users” published in January 2012 goes into much more detail on these variations. As this is a WILS post, I will keep it short and sweet, and encourage you to read through the aforementioned research note for more details or visit the homepages / RFC details for each variation.

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