A receiving host has failed to receive all of the segments that it should acknowledge. What can the host do to improve the reliability of this communication session?

A. Start a new session using UDP
B. Obtain a new IP address from the DHCP server
C. Use a different source port for the session
D. Decrease the sequence number
E. Decrease the window size

Answer: E

Explanation:

A TCP window the amount of outstanding (unacknowledged by the recipient) data a sender can send on a particular connection before it gets an acknowledgment back from the receiver that it has gotten some of it.

For example if a pair of hosts are talking over a TCP connection that has a TCP window size of 64 KB (kilobytes), the sender can only send 64 KB of data and then it must stop and wait for an acknowledgment from the receiver that some or all of the data has been received. If the receiver acknowledges that all the data has been received then the sender is free to send another 64 KB.

One way to improve the reliability of the TCP connection is to reduce the window size that the receiver needs to receive before sending an acknowledgement. However, this will reduce throughput as more segments and acknowledgements will need to be sent in order to transfer the same amount of data.