I just came home from my exam in network-programming, and one of the question they asked us was \"If you are going to stream video, would you use TCP or UDP? Give an
While reading the TCP UDP debate I noticed a logical flaw. A TCP packet loss causing a one minute delay that's converted into a one minute buffer cant be correlated to UDP dropping a full minute while experiencing the same loss. A more fair comparison is as follows.
TCP experiences a packet loss. The video is stopped while TCP resend's packets in an attempt to stream mathematically perfect packets. Video is delayed for one minute and picks up where it left off after missing packet makes its destination. We all wait but we know we wont miss a single pixel.
UDP experiences a packet loss. For a second during the video stream a corner of the screen gets a little blurry. No one notices and the show goes on without looking for the lost packets.
Anything that streams gains the most benefits from UDP. The packet loss causing a one minute delay to TCP would not cause a one minute delay to UDP. Considering that most systems use multiple resolution streams making things go blocky when starving for packets, makes even more sense to use UDP.
UDP FTW when streaming.