QUIC vs TCP: The Full Story

Inapp27 Sep, 2022Technology

Back in 1974, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) defined how to establish and maintain a network conversation by which applications can exchange data. TCP controls the transfer of data via connection management, reliability, flow control, and congestion control features. TCP and the Internet Protocol (IP) have stood the test of time and defined the internet as we know it today. Almost 40 years later, Google created the Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC) protocol to improve latency issues with TCP. Google designed QUIC to compensate for HTTP/2 deficiencies, provide robust and strong encryption, and reduce server/client handshake and packet loss. Today, the company uses QUIC as the default protocol for all its products. For example, when a user accesses Google’s services such as Gmail with the company’s Chrome web browser, the data transfer will use QUIC. But QUIC hasn’t replaced the much older TCP yet. Let’s learn more about these two transport protocols.