TCP Retransmission

When the sending side sees a duplicate ACK, it knows that the other side must have received a packet out of order, which suggests that an earlier packet might have been lost.

Since it is also possible that the earlier packet has only been delayed rather than lost, the sender waits until it sees some number of duplicate ACKs and then retransmits the missing packet. 

TCP waits until it has seen three duplicate ACKs before retransmitting the packet.