TCP Performance - The Internet Protocol Journal - Volume 3, No. 2. TCP Performance by Geoff Huston, Telstra The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) are both IP transport-layer protocols.
UDP is a lightweight protocol that allows applications to make direct use of the unreliable datagram service provided by the underlying IP service. UDP is commonly used to support applications that use simple query/response transactions, or applications that support real-time communications. It's the Latency, Stupid. Stuart Cheshire, May 1996. (Revised periodically) Copyright © Stuart Cheshire 1996-2001 Years ago David Cheriton at Stanford taught me something that seemed very obvious at the time -- that if you have a network link with low bandwidth then it's an easy matter of putting several in parallel to make a combined link with higher bandwidth, but if you have a network link with bad latency then no amount of money can turn any number of them into a link with good latency. It's now many years later, and this obvious fact seems lost on the most companies making networking hardware and software for the home. I think it's time it was explained again in writing.