[Nel] TCP vs. UDP

[Dave Turner]

Vianney Lecroart wrote:
> 
> Hi everybody!
> 
> Let's talk a little bit about this great subject: TCP vs. UDP
> 
> Thanks to Valerio Santinelli and Olivier Lejade, there's some cool
> discussion about this subject on the web and I would like to have your
> thought and discuss about this.
> 
> On Anarchy Online game, they only use TCP protocol between client and server
> (other commercial online game use UDP) and it seems that it causes lot of
> problem like horrible ping or connection lost:
> http://aoforums.funcom.com/showthread.php?threadid=26297
> 
> There's also a mail on the MUD-Dev mailing list talking about these problems
> here:
> https://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q3/msg00009.php
> 
> As you perhaps know, we only use TCP/IP (for server-server communication,
> but also for the client-server connection) and we currently think more and
> more about replacing the TCP client-server connection with a UDP one.
> 
> In a first step, we would like to know your opinion about this choice. And
> in a next step, we'll do some test about ping/packet lost and so on to
> compare TCP and UDP, and we'll need your help to do that.
> 
> Vianney Lecroart

There's often a lot of lag at the beginning of a UDP "connection" (yes,
I know UDP doesn't have those).  Then gateways, which consider UDP to
have higher priority, remember that there's a connection, and things
start going faster.  Your tests should be written with this in mind.  

You might also want to look into XUDP, 
http://www.gweep.net/~rocko/XUDP_Paper/paper.html


-- 
-[Dave Turner                              Stalk me:  (215)-545-2859]
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