Evaluating TCP Connection Healthiness

Abstract

TCP/IP has been around for decades and even though it is a connection-oriented protocol, an important number of connections get interrupted or lost compromising the information been transferred. We propose an approach to measure the quality of the connection by using finite-state machines (FSMs) based on the protocol definition. Our method can parse any traffic-dump file and report a success ratio for both client and server by comparing the packets sent and received with transitions defined on the protocol FSM. This implementation can have multiple applications across different domains from quality assurance to Moving Target Defense. By understanding how good the performance of TCP/IP is for a given approach, we can create defense mechanisms that better protect the network without compromising its performance.