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network-programmingtcpudp

UDP vs TCP, how much faster is it?

For general protocol message exchange, which can tolerate some packet loss. How much more efficient is UDP over TCP?

Solution

  • UDP is faster than TCP, and the simple reason is because its non-existent acknowledge packet (ACK) that permits a continuous packet stream, instead of TCP that acknowledges a set of packets, calculated by using the TCP window size and round-trip time (RTT).

    For more information, I recommend the simple, but very comprehensible Skullbox explanation (TCP vs. UDP)