What is the typical trade-off of using delayed ACK in TCP?

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Multiple Choice

What is the typical trade-off of using delayed ACK in TCP?

Explanation:
Delayed ACK reduces ACK traffic by letting the receiver wait briefly to see if it can piggyback an ACK on outgoing data or group multiple ACKs into one. The trade-off is that the sender may take longer to learn which packets arrived, so loss detection can be delayed by up to about half a round-trip time. This is the main consequence: less ACK overhead, but slower reaction to losses. It doesn’t guarantee immediate acknowledgment, it doesn’t inherently double throughput, and TCP’s guarantee of in-order delivery remains true regardless of this optimization.

Delayed ACK reduces ACK traffic by letting the receiver wait briefly to see if it can piggyback an ACK on outgoing data or group multiple ACKs into one. The trade-off is that the sender may take longer to learn which packets arrived, so loss detection can be delayed by up to about half a round-trip time. This is the main consequence: less ACK overhead, but slower reaction to losses. It doesn’t guarantee immediate acknowledgment, it doesn’t inherently double throughput, and TCP’s guarantee of in-order delivery remains true regardless of this optimization.

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