[whatwg] <device> element, streams and peer-to-peer connections

[Mark Frohnmayer]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 6:22 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why is relying on TCP for reliable delivery inferior to asking
> applications to re-implement reliable transmission?
>

In real-time networked applications the retransmission delay imposed
by TCP can cause unnecessary and noticeable hitches in the experience;
hence many real-time games use custom network stacks built atop UDP --
for a more in-depth read you can check out (somewhat dated at this
point but largely relevant) :
http://www710.univ-lyon1.fr/~jciehl/Public/educ/GAMA/2008/tribes_networking_model.pdf
.

This is not to suggest TCP is somehow inferior, just that for certain
applications it's not the right tool.  The next gen web has all the
pieces in at least prototype form to support full, high-performance
apps, but without low-level networking support (real-time, p2p) whole
classes of applications will be excluded.