Nagle's algorithm, is a means of improving the efficiency of TCP/IP
networks by reducing the number of packets that need to be sent over the network.
Nagle's document, describes what he called the "small packet problem", where an application repeatedly emits data in small chunks, frequently only 1 byte in size. Since TCP packets have a 40 byte header (20 bytes for TCP, 20 bytes for IPv4, this results in a 41 byte packet for 1 byte of useful information, a huge overhead. This situation often occurs in Telnet sessions, where most keypresses generate a single byte of data that is transmitted immediately. Worse, over slow links, many such packets can be in transit at the same time, potentially leading to congestion collapse. Nagle's algorithm works by combining a number of small outgoing messages, and sending them all at once. Specifically, as long as there is a sent packet for which the sender has received no acknowledgment, the sender should keep buffering its output until it has a full packet's worth of output, so that output can be sent all at once.
algorithm
if there is new data to send
if the window size >= MSS and available data is >= MSS
send complete MSS segment now
else
if there is unconfirmed data still in the pipe
enqueue data in the buffer until an acknowledge is received
else
send data immediately
end if
end if
end if
Nagle’s Algorithm 是为了提高带宽利用率设计的算法，其做法是合并小的TCP 包为一个，避免了过多的小报文的 TCP 头所浪费的带宽。如果开启了这个算法 （默认），则协议栈会累积数据直到以下两个条件之一满足的时候才真正发送出 去：
- 积累的数据量到达最大的 TCP Segment Size
- 收到了一个 Ack
TCP Delayed Acknoledgement 也是为了类似的目的被设计出来的，它的作用就 是延迟 Ack 包的发送，使得协议栈有机会合并多个 Ack，提高网络性能。
如果一个 TCP 连接的一端启用了 Nagle‘s Algorithm，而另一端启用了 TCP Delayed Ack，而发送的数据包又比较小，则可能会出现这样的情况：发送端在等 待接收端对上一个packet 的 Ack 才发送当前的 packet，而接收端则正好延迟了 此 Ack 的发送，那么这个正要被发送的 packet 就会同样被延迟。当然 Delayed Ack 是有个超时机制的，而默认的超时正好就是 40ms。
