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posted by martyb on Sunday March 27 2016, @12:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the could-this-site-run-without-both-of-them? dept.

Discussion on the advantages of TCP vs UDP (and vice versa) has a history which is almost as long as the eternal Linux-vs-Windows debate. As I have long been a supporter of the point of view that both UDP and TCP have their own niches (see, for example, [NoBugs15]), here are my two cents on this subject.

Note for those who already know the basics of IP and TCP: please skip to the 'Closing the Gap: Improving TCP Interactivity' section, as you still may be able to find a thing or two of interest.

It's a primer, or a refresher, or a skip. We have all kinds here. Enjoy, or don't.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 27 2016, @03:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 27 2016, @03:15PM (#323555)

    While I agree overall, the problem comes when it's time to send lots of small amounts of data very fast. Market data applications generally want updates as fast as they can, not as efficiently as they can. When dealing with differential updates, you only maybe have a couple bytes per symbol that change per update, and might not have many of those at a time, but the expectation is that you better be able to receive them before they get sent sometimes.

    Admittedly a niche situation, but kind of a deal breaker when comparing two software products that do the same thing and one consistently outperforms the other by ~1-5 ms. I've seen that one happen first hand both in a clean environment and at client sites. ITG comes to mind WRT some of their Reuters systems that fed (what I suspect was) their algo trading systems. They wouldn't ever let me get even a hint of what they were consuming data with, but it was home-grown and very protected. Kind of a bitch when trying to diagnose issues.

    Posting AC because, well, the name drop, and I don't really like being associated with that kind of work. I guess it's not killing people for a living, but it's really not a whole lot better. I don't do that anymore.