
From DALL-E with some prompting
This image explains how TCP provides reliable data transmission compared to UDP and underscores the reasons for this reliability. While UDP has a simple header structure utilizing basic port numbers and checksums, TCP includes additional fields in its header to ensure reliability. These supplementary fields encompass sequence and acknowledgment numbers for confirming data transmission and ordering, flags for connection state management, window size for flow control, and mechanisms for congestion control. The reliability of TCP is enabled through this complex header structure, with each field playing an essential role in ensuring accurate and dependable data transfer. Therefore, the reliability of all TCP communications is established through these specific fields in the header, emphasizing that TCP not just ‘enables’ reliability but ‘implements’ it in practice.