Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ), also known as Automatic Repeat Query, is an errorcontrol method for data transmission that

uses acknowledgements (messages sent by the receiver indicating that it has correctly received a data frame or packet) and timeouts (specified periods of time allowed to elapse before an acknowledgment is to be received) to achieve reliable data transmission over an unreliable service. If the sender does not receive an acknowledgment before the timeout, it usually re-transmits the frame/packet until the sender receives an acknowledgment or exceeds a predefined number of re-transmissions. The types of ARQ protocols include

Stop-and-wait ARQ Go-Back-N ARQ Selective Repeat ARQ

These protocols reside in the Data Link or Transport Layers of the OSI model. Stop-and-wait ARQ is a method used in telecommunications to send information between two connected devices. It ensures that information is not lost due to dropped packets and that packets are received in the correct order. It is the simplest kind of automatic repeat-request (ARQ) method. A stop-and-wait ARQ sender sends one frame at a time; it is a special case of the general sliding window protocol with both transmit and receive window sizes equal to 1. After sending each frame, the sender doesn't send any further frames until it receives an acknowledgement (ACK) signal. After receiving a good frame, the receiver sends an ACK. If the ACK does not reach the sender before a certain time, known as the timeout, the sender sends the same frame again. The above behavior is the simplest Stop-and-Wait implementation. However, in a real life implementation there are problems to be addressed. Typically the transmitter adds a redundancy check number to the end of each frame. The receiver uses the redundancy check number to check for possible damage. If the receiver sees that the frame is good, it sends an ACK. If the receiver sees that the frame is damaged, the receiver discards it and does not send an ACK -- pretending that the frame was completely lost, not merely damaged. One problem is where the ACK sent by the receiver is damaged or lost. In this case, the sender doesn't receive the ACK, times out, and sends the frame again. Now the receiver has two copies of the same frame, and doesn't know if the second one is a duplicate frame or the next frame of the sequence carrying identical data. Another problem is when the transmission medium has such a long latency that the sender's timeout runs out before the frame reaches the receiver. In this case the sender resends the same packet. Eventually the receiver gets two copies of the same frame, and sends an ACK for each one. The sender, waiting for a single ACK, receives two ACKs, which may cause problems if it assumes that the second ACK is for the next frame in the sequence. To avoid these problems, the most common solution is to define a 1 bit sequence number in the header of the frame. This sequence number alternates (from 0 to 1) in subsequent frames. When the receiver sends an ACK, it includes the sequence number of the next packet it expects. This way, the receiver can detect duplicated frames by checking if the frame sequence numbers alternate. If two subsequent frames have the same sequence number, they are duplicates, and the second frame is discarded. Similarly, if two subsequent ACKs reference the same sequence number, they are acknowledging the same frame. Stop-and-wait ARQ is inefficient compared to other ARQs, because the time between packets, if the ACK and the data are received successfully, is twice the transit time (assuming the turnaround time can be zero). The throughput on the channel is a fraction of what it could be. To solve this problem, one can send more than one packet at a time with a larger sequence number and use one ACK for a set. This is what is done in Go-Back-N ARQ and the Selective Repeat ARQ. where:

tI is the time needed to transfer bits of information only; tO is the timeout; tF is the time to transmit a packet (successfully or not).

Go-Back-N ARQ is a specific instance of the Automatic Repeat-reQuest (ARQ) Protocol, in which the sending process continues to send a number of frames specified by a window size even without receiving an acknowledgement (ACK) packet from the receiver. It is a special case of the general sliding window protocol with the transmit window size of N and receive window size of 1. The receiver process keeps track of the sequence number of the next frame it expects to receive, and sends that number with every ACK it sends. The receiver will ignore any frame that does not have the exact sequence number it expects whether that frame is a "past" duplicate of a frame it has already ACK'ed [1] or whether that frame is a "future" frame past the last packet it is waiting for. Once the sender has sent all of the frames in its window, it will detect that all of the frames since the first lost frame are outstanding, and will go back to sequence number of the last ACK it received from the receiver process and fill its window starting with that frame and continue the process over again. Go-Back-N ARQ is a more efficient use of a connection than Stop-and-wait ARQ, since unlike waiting for an acknowledgement for each packet, the connection is still being utilized as packets are being sent. In other words, during the time that would otherwise be spent waiting, more packets are being sent. However, this method also results in sending frames multiple times if any frame was lost or damaged, or the ACK acknowledging them was lost or damaged, then that frame and all following frames in the window (even if they were received without error) will be re-sent. To avoid this, Selective Repeat ARQ can be used. [2] Selective Repeat ARQ / Selective Reject ARQ is a specific instance of the Automatic Repeat-reQuest (ARQ) Protocol. It may be used as a protocol for the delivery and acknowledgement of message units, or it may be used as a protocol for the delivery of subdivided message sub-units. When used as the protocol for the delivery of messages, the sending process continues to send a number of frames specified by a window size even after a frame loss. Unlike GoBack-N ARQ, the receiving process will continue to accept and acknowledge frames sent after an initial error; this is the general case of the sliding window protocol with both transmit and receive window sizes greater than 1. The receiver process keeps track of the sequence number of the earliest frame it has not received, and sends that number with every acknowledgement (ACK) it sends. If a frame from the sender does not reach the receiver, the sender continues to send subsequent frames until it has emptied its window. The receiver continues to fill its receiving window with the subsequent frames, replying each time with an ACK containing the sequence number of the earliest missing frame. Once the sender has sent all the frames in its window, it re-sends the frame number given by the ACKs, and then continues where it left off. The size of the sending and receiving windows must be equal, and half the maximum sequence number (assuming that sequence numbers are numbered from 0 to n1) to avoid miscommunication in all cases of packets being dropped. To understand this, consider the case when all ACKs are destroyed. If the receiving window is larger than half the maximum sequence number, some, possibly even all, of the packages that are resent after timeouts are duplicates that are not recognized as such. The sender moves its window for every packet that is acknowledged.[1] When used as the protocol for the delivery of subdivided messages it works somewhat differently. In non-continuous channels where messages may be variable in length, standard ARQ or Hybrid ARQ protocols may treat the message as a single unit. Alternately selective retransmission may be employed in conjunction with the basic ARQ mechanism where the message is first subdivided into sub-blocks (typically of fixed length) in a process called packet segmentation. The original variable length message is thus represented as a concatenation of a variable number of sub-blocks. While in standard ARQ the message as a whole is either acknowledged (ACKed) or negatively acknowledged (NAKed), in ARQ with selective transmission the NAKed response would additionally carry a bit flag indicating the identity of each sub-block successfully received. In ARQ with selective retransmission of sub-divided messages each retransmission diminishes in length, needing to only contain the sub-blocks that were NAKed. In most channel models with variable length messages, the probability of error-free reception diminishes in inverse proportion with increasing message length. In other words it's easier to receive a short message than a longer message. Therefore standard ARQ techniques involving variable length messages have increased difficulty delivering longer messages, as each repeat is the full length. Selective retransmission applied to variable length messages completely eliminates the difficulty in delivering longer messages, as successfully delivered sub-blocks are retained after each transmission, and the number of outstanding sub-blocks in following transmissions diminishes.