Rapid transmission of medical image data across wide area networks remains a technical challenge, due to the high data volume of the images and the transmission rates typically achievable. This paper discusses transmission rate limitations in current TCP and presents results to date in using these alternative methods to send large image files across the Internet and across dedicated high-speed links with long signal path delays.
Network protocols have a direct impact on the transmission rate achievable.
While much attention has been given to the emplacement of links with high physical capacity in building the National Information Infrastructure, the role of the transport protocol is also critical, since this protocol incorporates data flow control. 2.0 TCP characteristics affecting transmission rate performance TCP windows and data flow . To control data flow, TCP uses windows on the sequence number spaces corresponding to the byte streams being sent and received. The TCP send window is illustrated in Figure 1 . Note that TCP sends data in units of packets , but acknowledges data by using the sequence numbers of bytes in the data stream being sent.