Data Protocols

Data protocols are at the top of the so called network layers. They make use of underlying protocols that help to ‘Transport’ the data, make sure the data finds its way from the sender to the receiver (Internet), and tells the hardware on how to do its job (Link).

When using Data Protocols the only layer one has to be concerned about is the Transport layer:

The Transport layer protocol defines how the data needs to be transported. For our purpose only two protocols are of interest:

• TCP (Transmission_Control_Protocol)
• UDP (User Datagram Protocol)

The main difference is that TCP makes sure the data arrives, while UDP doesn’t.

While the hardware our internet is based on is very reliable and fast, it can happen that a packets of data sent via the Internet Protocol (also know as IP – hence the name IP-address) are lost in the process. While TCP will realize this and request another packet from the sender, UDP doesn’t.

This means if you want to send a File to work further on it, TCP is used, because this is only usable if the complete file has arrived.

If you want to stream video or Audio, UDP is the preferred method, because it doesn’t have the overhead to check if all the packages have arrived in the correct sequence and is therefore faster. When during streaming realtime data a package is lost, it doesn’t matter, since the next one comes for sure. Thats why Ultragrid or Motive are sending their data via UDP.

An nice introduction to the internet protocols, starting with the structure of the electrical signal inside a Ethernet cable up to the IP protocol, can be found here.