BThe byte stream is delivered completely and in order
CLatency is minimized end-to-end
DBandwidth is maximized for the sender
TCP guarantees the application receives a complete, ordered byte stream — not that every packet survives. Packets may be dropped and retransmitted transparently. UDP makes no delivery guarantees at all.
Question 2 True / False
TCP guarantees that nearly every individual IP packet it sends will arrive at the destination.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
TCP guarantees the byte stream is delivered in order and without gaps, not that every underlying packet survives. Lost packets are detected via missing acknowledgments and silently retransmitted — the application never sees the individual packets.
Question 3 Short Answer
What is the purpose of sequence numbers in TCP?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Sequence numbers label each byte in the stream so the receiver can reassemble out-of-order segments into the correct order and identify which data is missing, allowing the sender to retransmit only what was lost.
Without sequence numbers, out-of-order delivery would corrupt the data stream and there would be no way to detect gaps. Sequence numbers are also used by the receiver's acknowledgment to tell the sender exactly how far delivery has progressed.