I have an application that communicates in real time with other clients over LAN. The application requires packets to be in order and all to arrive. It also requires as fast transfer as possible and I seem to have some problems with TCP in this matter.
So I was thinking about this, as a non-experienced network programmer, what if I first send a UDP protocoled message and then the same data with TCP. If the UDP-message arrive I will have it as fast as possible if not I still have the TCP message that will make sure I’ll atleast get the packet. Obviously I’ll make sure that I don’t read the same data twice by giving each message an ID or similar.
Is this any good approach? I was thinking that maybe sending the tcpmessage simultaneously will just slow the udp message down so It wont make a difference anyways.
UDP has very specific use cases. i.e. say an online game which sends a players co-ordinates. You state the order and acknowledgment is needed, therefore TCP seems like the most sensible approach.
Although just to put a twist in the mix, TCP can sometimes surprise you and be better performance wise under specific circumstances.
TCP will try and buffer the data before it sends it across the network (more efficient use of bandwidth). UDP on the other hand puts a packet across the network immediately.
Now imagine writing lots of small packets across a network, UDP may cause congestion whereas TCP is better controlled.