Systems, Methods, and Media for Detecting Outbound Nagling on a TCP Network Connection

A machine-accessible medium containing instructions effective, when executing in a data processing system, to cause said data processing system to perform operations comprising:

• creating by a sender computer one or more segments to be transmitted to a receiver computer;
• determining by the sender computer whether any of the one or more segments to be transmitted are small segments and whether a previously transmitted small segment is unacknowledged by the receiver computer;
• and
• if the previously transmitted small segment is unacknowledged by the receiver computer and at least one of the segments to be transmitted is a small segment, detecting by the sender computer a Nagling condition on the network connection.

A data processing system for detecting a Nagling condition on a network connection between a sender computer and a receiver computer, the system comprising:

• a network module, the network module being adapted to facilitate transmitting and receiving data over the network connection to the receiver computer;
• a transport module in communication with the network module, the transport module being adapted to receive a request to transmit data from an application, the transport module being further adapted to create one or more segments of data based on the request to transmit data and to pass the one or more segments of data to the network module for transmission;
• and
• a Nagle detector in communication with the transport module, the Nagle detector being adapted to generate a warning that a Nagling condition exists if the transport module attempts to transmit a small segment over the network connection while an unacknowledged small segment is outstanding on the network connection.