GATE CSE – COMPUTER NETWORKS

MODULE IV: TRANSPORT LAYER

1. TCP/UDP Basics

Q1. (GATE CSE 2025)

Which transport protocol is connectionless and unreliable?
A. TCP
B. UDP
C. SCTP
D. MPTCP
Answer: B — UDP is connectionless and does not guarantee delivery.

Q2. (GATE CSE 2024)

Which transport protocol guarantees in-order delivery of data?
A. TCP
B. UDP
C. RTP
D. SCTP
Answer: A — TCP ensures ordered delivery.

Q3. (GATE CSE 2024)

Which of the following protocols provides multi-streaming and multi-homing?
A. TCP
B. UDP
C. SCTP
D. DCCP
Answer: C — SCTP supports multi-streaming and multi-homing.

Q4. (GATE CSE 2023)

MPTCP (Multipath TCP) is used for:
A. High reliability over single path
B. Using multiple network paths simultaneously
C. Encrypting transport payload
D. Flow control in UDP
Answer: B — MPTCP enables multipath data transfer.

2. Flow & Congestion Control

Q5. (GATE CSE 2022)
Which TCP mechanism prevents sender from overwhelming the receiver?
A. Slow start
B. Congestion window
C. Flow control (advertised window)
D. Three-way handshake
Answer: C — Flow control uses the receiver’s advertised window.

Q6. (GATE CSE 2021)

Which TCP algorithm is used for congestion control?
A. AIMD (Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease)
B. Go-Back-N
C. Selective Repeat
D. UDP throttling
Answer: A — TCP congestion control uses AIMD.

Q7. (GATE CSE 2020)

TCP’s slow-start phase increases the congestion window:
A. Linearly
B. Exponentially
C. Constantly
D. Logarithmically
Answer: B — Exponential increase during slow start.

Q8. (GATE CSE 2019)

What does TCP use to detect packet loss?
A. TTL
B. Checksums
C. Duplicate ACKs & timeout
D. Sequence number only
Answer: C — Loss detection uses duplicate ACKs or timeout.

Q9. (GATE CSE 2018)

UDP does not provide:
A. Error detection
B. Multiplexing
C. Reliable delivery
D. Port addressing
Answer: C — UDP is unreliable; no retransmissions.
3. Transport Layer Performance

Q10. (GATE CSE 2023)

High-performance transport in data centers often uses:
A. TCP Reno
B. DCTCP
C. UDP only
D. SCTP
Answer: B — DCTCP is designed for low-latency data center networks.

Q11. (GATE CSE 2022)

Which feature reduces head-of-line blocking in transport layer?
A. Single stream TCP
B. SCTP multi-streaming
C. UDP
D. IP fragmentation
Answer: B — Multi-streaming in SCTP avoids HOL blocking.

Q12. (GATE CSE 2021)

Transport Layer Virtualization (NFV) helps:
A. Encrypt data at transport layer
B. Improve network function deployment
C. Provide flow control
D. Increase UDP reliability
Answer: B — NFV allows flexible network function deployment.

Q13. (GATE CSE 2020)

Multipath transport improves:
A. Reliability & throughput
B. Port addressing
C. Encryption
D. Header compression
Answer: A — MPTCP improves reliability & throughput by using multiple paths.

Q14. (GATE CSE 2019)

Which TCP variant is designed for high-BDP networks?
A. TCP Reno
B. TCP Cubic
C. UDP
D. SCTP
Answer: B — TCP Cubic optimizes performance for high-bandwidth, high-latency links.

Q15. (GATE CSE 2018)

Which TCP field specifies the amount of data receiver can accept?
A. Sequence number
B. Acknowledgment number
C. Window size
D. Flags
Answer: C — Window size controls flow.

4. Transport Layer Security

Q16. (GATE CSE 2023)

TLS (Transport Layer Security) primarily provides:
A. Error correction
B. Encryption and authentication
C. Flow control
D. Fragmentation
Answer: B — TLS encrypts and authenticates data.

Q17. (GATE CSE 2022)

Which layer does TLS sit on?
A. Network
B. Transport
C. Application
D. Link
Answer: B — TLS is above transport, often called a transport-layer security protocol.

Q18. (GATE CSE 2021)

TLS handshake includes:
A. Session key exchange
B. Packet sequencing
C. Flow control window
D. NAT traversal
Answer: A — Handshake negotiates session keys.
Q19. (GATE CSE 2020)
Transport Layer encryption ensures:
A. Authentication only
B. Confidentiality only
C. Confidentiality & Integrity
D. Port addressing
Answer: C — TLS provides confidentiality and integrity.

Q20. (GATE CSE 2019)

Which is a performance overhead in TLS?
A. Encryption/Decryption
B. Windowing
C. ACK mechanism
D. Routing
Answer: A — TLS introduces CPU overhead for encryption.

5. Multipath Transport / MPTCP

Q21. (GATE CSE 2023)

MPTCP establishes multiple:
A. IP addresses per connection
B. Paths per connection
C. Ports per connection
D. ACK sequences
Answer: B — MPTCP uses multiple network paths.

Q22. (GATE CSE 2022)

Multipath transport avoids single path bottleneck by:
A. Load balancing
B. Encryption
C. TTL extension
D. Fragmentation
Answer: A — Balances traffic across paths.

Q23. (GATE CSE 2021)

Multipath transport protocol can improve:
A. Latency
B. Throughput
C. Reliability
D. All of the above
Answer: D

Q24. (GATE CSE 2020)

MPTCP uses:
A. One TCP sequence number space per path
B. One sequence number space for all subflows
C. Multiple port numbers
D. UDP encapsulation
Answer: B — Single logical sequence space across multiple subflows.

Q25. (GATE CSE 2019)

Multipath TCP is backward compatible with:
A. UDP
B. TCP
C. SCTP
D. DCCP
Answer: B — Can fall back to standard TCP.

6. Transport Layer in HPC / Data Center

Q26. (GATE CSE 2023)

DCTCP differs from TCP Reno in:
A. Congestion feedback
B. Flow control window
C. MTU size
D. Sequence numbers
Answer: A — DCTCP uses Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) for better
performance.

Q27. (GATE CSE 2022)

Data center transport protocols optimize:
A. Throughput
B. Latency
C. Fairness
D. All of the above
Answer: D
Q28. (GATE CSE 2021)
HPC networks use transport protocols with:
A. Selective acknowledgment
B. Low-latency congestion control
C. Multi-path capability
D. All of the above
Answer: D

Q29. (GATE CSE 2020)

Which transport protocol is suitable for bulk transfer with minimal overhead?
A. TCP Reno
B. UDP
C. SCTP
D. DCTCP
Answer: D — Optimized for data centers, high throughput.

Q30. (GATE CSE 2019)

Transport layer performance in NFV can improve via:
A. Virtualization of flow scheduling
B. Reduced packet size
C. TTL adjustment
D. Only encryption
Answer: A

Q31. (GATE CSE 2018)

Which TCP feature reduces retransmissions in high BDP links?
A. Selective Acknowledgment (SACK)
B. Sliding window
C. Flow control
D. Three-way handshake
Answer: A

Q32. (GATE CSE 2017)

UDP is preferred over TCP in:
A. File transfer
B. Video streaming
C. Email
D. Web browsing
Answer: B — UDP is faster, minimal overhead.

Q33. (GATE CSE 2016)

SCTP supports:
A. Ordered delivery per stream
B. Multi-homing
C. Multi-streaming
D. All of the above
Answer: D

Q34. (GATE CSE 2015)

TCP uses three-way handshake to:
A. Establish connection
B. Exchange data
C. Terminate connection
D. Implement congestion control
Answer: A

Q35. (GATE CSE 2014)

TCP header contains:
A. Sequence number
B. Checksum
C. Window size
D. All of the above
Answer: D

Q36. (GATE CSE 2013)

UDP provides:
A. Port multiplexing
B. Checksum
C. Reliability
D. A & B only
Answer: D

Q37. (GATE CSE 2012)

Which mechanism is used by TCP to avoid congestion collapse?
A. Flow control
B. Congestion avoidance
C. Sliding window
D. Sequence numbers
Answer: B

Q38. (GATE CSE 2011)

TCP timeout retransmission is triggered by:
A. Duplicate ACKs
B. Retransmission timer expiry
C. Both A & B
D. Flow control
Answer: C

Q39. (GATE CSE 2010)

Multipath transport improves:
A. Reliability
B. Throughput
C. Resilience
D. All of the above
Answer: D

Q40. (GATE CSE 2009)

Which transport protocol is designed for stream-oriented reliable delivery?
A. UDP
B. TCP
C. SCTP
D. DCCP
Answer: B