> ... feed "tcp throughput equation" into your
favorite search
> engine for a lot more references. 

There has been a lot of work in some OS stacks
(Vista and recent linux kernels) to enable TCP
auto-tuning (of one form or another), which is
attempting to hide some of the worst of the TCP
uglynesses from the application/end-users.  I
am not convinced this is always a good thing,
since having the cruft exposed to the developers
(in particular) means one needs to plan for
errors and less than ideal cases.

Gary