"Scott Lowrey" wrote in message
om...
Since all data is transported in TCP packets (in the case of Web
traffic), there is continual send AND receive on BOTH sides since TCP
requires acknowledgement of every packet on the part the of the
receiver (remember, TCP is a *reliable* protocol). Granted, the ACK
packets are much smaller than the data packets and most of the traffic
to a web browswer is downstream, but a high-latency network like
satellite will exhibit performance degradation during *all* phases of
a connection, not just startup.

Wrong. Only if the server requires a protocol-defined acknowledgement
(where protocol is the high-level protocol, like FTP, HTTP, etc., *not* TCP)
would that happen. And that's uncommon with TCP-based protocols (since it
would totally break one of the main advantages of using TCP). Certainly
it's not the case with any of the commonly used protocols.

TCP uses sliding windows to allow constant streaming of data to occur as
long as the latency in the connection is "reasonable". That is, it will
send many packets before needing to receive any acknowledgement even for the
first packet. As long as the acknowledgements start coming in time, the
latency of the connection will NOT affect throughput AT ALL. A latency of
500ms is MORE than reasonable in this context.

Pete