Multimedia applications impose different QoS requirements (e.g., bounded end-to-end delay and jitter) and need an enhanced transport layer protocol that should handle packet loss, minimize errors, manage network congestion, and transmit efficiently. Across an IP network, the transport layer protocol provides data transmission and affects the QoS provided to the application on hand. The most common transport layer protocols used by Internet applications are TCP and UDP. There are also advanced transport layer protocols such as DCCP and TFRC. The authors evaluated the performance of UDP, DCCP, SCTP, and TFRC over wired networks for three traffic flows: data transmission, video streaming, and voice over IP. The evaluation criteria were throughput, end-to-end delay, and packet loss ratio. They compared their performance to learn in which traffic flow/service each of these protocols functions better than the others. The throughput of SCTP and TFRC is better than UDP. DCCP is superior to SCTP and TFRC in terms of end-to-end delay. SCTP is suitable for Internet applications that require high bandwidth.
