Which of the following is a common use case for TCP?

Which of the following is a common use case for TCP?

• A. Web browsing, where data integrity is crucial.
• B. Email delivery, where reliability is less critical.
• C. Live video streaming, where speed is critical.
• D. Remote terminal access to devices.

Answer: (A)

TCP is designed for applications that need reliable, in-order delivery with error checking. Web browsing fits this perfectly because a page is made up of multiple resources (HTML, CSS, images, scripts) that must arrive intact and in the correct sequence for the browser to render properly. TCP provides a three-way handshake to establish a connection, sequence numbers and acknowledgments to track data, retransmission of any lost segments, and checksums to detect corruption. It also uses flow control to prevent overwhelming the client and congestion control to adjust the sending rate based on network conditions. All of these features ensure pages load correctly and completely, making web browsing a classic TCP use case. Live video streaming prioritizes low latency and can tolerate some data loss, so it often favors faster, best-effort delivery (like UDP) rather than TCP’s strict reliability. Email delivery does rely on reliability, contrary to the idea that reliability is less critical, and remote terminal access also benefits from TCP’s reliability, but the ubiquitous and everyday nature of web page loading makes it the most representative example of TCP’s common use.

TCP is designed for applications that need reliable, in-order delivery with error checking. Web browsing fits this perfectly because a page is made up of multiple resources (HTML, CSS, images, scripts) that must arrive intact and in the correct sequence for the browser to render properly. TCP provides a three-way handshake to establish a connection, sequence numbers and acknowledgments to track data, retransmission of any lost segments, and checksums to detect corruption. It also uses flow control to prevent overwhelming the client and congestion control to adjust the sending rate based on network conditions. All of these features ensure pages load correctly and completely, making web browsing a classic TCP use case.

Live video streaming prioritizes low latency and can tolerate some data loss, so it often favors faster, best-effort delivery (like UDP) rather than TCP’s strict reliability. Email delivery does rely on reliability, contrary to the idea that reliability is less critical, and remote terminal access also benefits from TCP’s reliability, but the ubiquitous and everyday nature of web page loading makes it the most representative example of TCP’s common use.