Of course, you only discover the alligators when you're trying to drain the swamp.
Function means purpose.
If the goal of JSP is to behave like ASP, then it does that just fine. If you didn't like ASP, you might not like JSP much better. But that's not the main point. The point is TCP is a very well defined interface that incorporates a client metaphor and a server metaphor. It's ability to communicate with something on the other side is undiminished.