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Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] PSH/ACK in all packets

From: Troy Tate <Troy.Tate@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:38:51 -0400

That is kinda what I figured. Thanks for the assistance and reference.

 

On Jul 25, 2008, at 12:10 PM, Troy Tate wrote:

 

> I have an application where all packets seem to have the PSH/ACK flags

> set (from both sides of the conversation). This is a barcode

> application. Is this a typical behavior for these types of

> applications? The user is reporting slow performance, but I am not

> seeing any network issues other than these flags set in every packet.

 

Guy Harris guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

 

> It is typical behavior for the type of application called "TCP-based application" to have ACK set on all but

> some of the initial packets; to quote RFC 793:

 

>         Acknowledgment Number: 32 bits

>         If the ACK control bit is set this field contains the value of the next sequence number the sender of

> the segment is expecting to receive. Once a connection is established this is always sent.

> Whether PSH is set depends on whether the TCP implementation sets it; that's probably not application-

> specific.  In Mac OS X, for example, there's nothing the application can do to explicitly request PSH; looking

> at the versions of the {Free,Net,Open}BSD TCP code I had handy, the same is true there.  I don't have the

> Linux or Solaris code handy so I don't know whether they can explicitly force a push, and I don't know what

> other UN*Xes or Windows do.