Packetization

Linux TCP Autocorking Coalesces Consecutive Small Writes

A small TCP write does not always trigger an immediate packet transmission on Linux. With TCP autocorking enabled, the stack can defer a new small send when an earlier packet from the same flow is still waiting in a qdisc or device transmit queue, giving a following write a chance to join the pending data. The mechanism targets packet count rather than application-visible buffering semantics. A successful write() or sendmsg() still reports bytes accepted by the socket; autocorking influences when queued bytes advance into transmission.