title: How many times will TCP retransmit
body: <p>In the case of a half open connection where the server crashes (no FIN or RESET sent to client), and the client attempts to send some data on this broken connection, each TCP segment will go un-ACKED. TCP will attempt to retransmit packets after some timeout. How many times will TCP attempt to retransmit before giving up and what happens in this case? How does it inform the operating system that the host is unreachable? Where is this specified in the TCP RFC?</p>