[e2e] Windows XP TCP Behaviour

[Sam Jansen]

I have recently been doing some testing of TCP implementations on an 
isolated network we have available in our research group. I've noticed 
some odd behaviour from Windows XP Service Pack 2 and was wondering if 
anybody else had encountered such weirdness and whether it affects other 
versions of Windows.

I've described the most notable problem at:

    http://www.wand.net.nz/~stj2/nsc/emu_winxp.html

What we see here is that Windows is sending data outside of the 
receivers advertised window!

I've also noticed Windows sending weird sized packets in what is 
supposed to be a simple bulk data transfer (often sending packets with a 
lot less than an MSS worth of data).

Note that the situation described in that link is very simple; just two 
machines connected over an otherwise unused bottleneck link.

-- 
Sam Jansen                                           sam at wand.net.nz 
Wand Network Research Group             http://www.wand.net.nz/~stj2