A problem in computer networking called Silly Window Syndrome (SWS) is brought on by shoddy TCP flow control implementation. When the sending application program generates data slowly, the receiving application program consumes data slowly, or both, a significant issue might occur in the sliding window operation. If a server experiencing this issue cannot process all incoming information, it asks that its clients provide fewer data at once (the window setting on a TCP packet). The window gets smaller and smaller if the server keeps being unable to analyze all incoming data, sometimes to the point where the data communicated is less than the packet header, which makes data transmission incredibly wasteful. The fact that the window size shrank to a "silly" value gave rise to the problem's name.
Since processing each packet incurs some overhead, processing a decreasing amount of data requires processing an increasing number of packets. Thrashing is the outcome.
