What challenge is associated with TCP regarding data delivery?

The challenge associated with TCP regarding data delivery is that it introduces additional overhead. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol that establishes a connection before data can be sent. To ensure reliable transmission, TCP implements several mechanisms, including segmenting data, sequencing, error checking, and acknowledgments. Each of these processes requires extra information to be sent alongside the actual data, which increases the amount of data being transmitted and can affect network performance.

The overhead comes from the need to manage the state of the connection, track packets, and ensure that data is received in the correct order and without errors. This additional management can lead to increased latency and decreased throughput compared to protocols that do not provide these reliability guarantees. By maintaining a reliable connection and ensuring orderly delivery, TCP ensures that the data sent is complete and accurate, but this does come at the cost of added complexity and overhead.