WSOPT is the "TCP Window Scaling Option". It allows more data to be pumped into a connection before an acknowledgement is required. It was implemented to cope with "long fat pipes". These can be satellite links where acknowledgements can take seconds to reach the other end. It can also be gigabit links across the country, where acknowledgements take a relatively long time (milliseconds). The WSOPT can scale the window by up to 2256 times. However, it will consume a huge amount of memory.
As of the year 2000, many major OSes did not support this option. WinNT and MacOS do not support it. Win98, Win2k do.
