Performance Comparison of TCP, UDP, and TFRC in Wired Networks

Abstract

Internet has to support applications with different requirements. Reliability is the essential requirement for file transfer whereas delay and jitter are the essential requirements of streaming applications. All layers contribute to the successful operation of the Internet. But the layer which has direct impact on the user of the service is the transport layer. TCP is robust protocol tuned to wired networks and is used by many applications. High bandwidth applications like streaming video and on-line game playing are using UDP as the transport protocol. Use of UDP by these applications is considered as threat to the stability of the Internet. TCP friendly rate control (TFRC) is the transport protocol which provides smooth variation of throughput and which is suggested for streaming applications. TFRC is on the standardization process of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). But before TFRC is accepted by the Internet community it has to be tested thoroughly both independently and also it's interoperation with TCP and UDP. This paper does the performance comparison of transport protocols TCP, UDP and TFRC. The results show that TFRC has to be fine-tuned before it is used in the Internet. NS-2.35 is used as Network simulator.