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TCP Reliability Mechanism is a cooked quant interview question on networking.
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This question tests your grasp of the fundamental mechanisms that make TCP a reliable transport protocol, as opposed to the connectionless, best-effort delivery of UDP. It is a conceptual question that interviewers use to confirm you understand the architectural choices behind TCP/IP.
A strong answer identifies and explains the specific techniques TCP employs to guarantee ordered, error-checked delivery—techniques that form the backbone of how the internet handles critical data. The question rewards clear reasoning about why these mechanisms exist and how they interact to provide end-to-end reliability.