How TCP Buffering Works

A brief overview on what TCP buffering is and how it works on the system.

Summary

TCP buffering buffers only the server's response to the clients. It works with all application protocols running on TCP. TCP buffering also works with all network topologies, including origin server deployment and one-arm mode.

The system configured with TCP buffering receives the response from the server at the speed of the server network, buffers the server response, and forwards the response to the client at the client network's speed.

The following diagram illustrates the entities configured in a TCP buffering setup
 TCP buffering entity modelAs shown in this figure, to configure TCP buffering, you need to define services and enable TCP buffering for those services. Services are entities that are logical representations of applications on the physical servers. The traffic from the client is intercepted by the configured service and the client request is directed to the origin server. On receiving the response from the origin server, the service buffers the response and forwards it to the client at the client network's speed.

TCP buffering is bypassed for features such as SSL, compression, and caching. When one or more of these features are enabled on a given transaction, TCP buffering is not performed.

TCP buffering is also skipped for small responses that can fit in a single packet. The following table lists the conditions when TCP buffering is performed.

TCP buffering is performed for non-compressible and non-cacheable responses from the server, even when compression and caching are enabled. TCP buffering is internally disabled for the features mentioned in the table above because those features indirectly provide TCP buffering benefit.

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