Optimizing a VPN isn't just about picking a protocol - choosing UDP or TCP can make a big difference, too.

While TCP will continue to be the network standard until the QUIC protocol catches on, it's here to stay. It combines the best of TCP and UDP while offering unique features.

In the last newsletter we started discussing the protocol stack used for transporting voice over IP. Today we’ll move to the control for those conversations.

If it uses the UDP protocol to send and receive data, it will use a UDP port. Figure 1, below, is a represenation of an IP address split into its many TCP and UDP ports.

New so-called reliable UDP solutions offer an alternative to TCP. But are they worth the time or money to implement?

Google's QUIC, which stands for Quick UDP Internet Connection, obviously espouses the latter, but not for those usual cases but for things that use TCP/IP normally.

Will the end-user be able to tell a difference between TCP-based HDX and UDP-based PCoIP? Probably not. Both handle their duties well and provide the end-user with the remote experience they expect.

In this first installment of a two-part lesson, we will discuss the difference between IP video that is carried by TCP and IP video that is carried by UDP. They behave very differently on the network.

The similarities and differences between TCP and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) over the Internet are also presented in this paper.

A 2017 statistic showed that only 3% of all DNS queries were sent via TCP, and the rest being handled via the more insecure UDP protocol.