Which transport protocol is typically used for streaming media due to its lower overhead?

Which transport protocol is typically used for streaming media due to its lower overhead?

• A. TCP
• B. ICMP
• C. UDP
• D. ARP

Answer: (C)

For streaming media, the goal is to deliver data with minimal delay and smooth timing. A transport protocol with low overhead and no built-in reliability guarantees helps achieve that, even if a few packets are lost. UDP fits this need because it’s connectionless and does not incur the extra work of handshakes, acknowledgments, or retransmissions. This keeps the data flowing quickly, which reduces buffering and latency, essential for real-time playback. The trade-off is that UDP doesn’t guarantee delivery or order, but streaming systems often accept some loss and rely on buffering, forward error correction, or application-layer techniques to handle it. TCP, by contrast, provides reliable, in-order delivery with retransmissions, which adds latency and can cause jitter—less suitable for real-time streaming. ICMP is a diagnostic protocol at the network layer, not used for transporting media. ARP operates at the link layer to map IP addresses to hardware addresses, also not a transport mechanism.

For streaming media, the goal is to deliver data with minimal delay and smooth timing. A transport protocol with low overhead and no built-in reliability guarantees helps achieve that, even if a few packets are lost. UDP fits this need because it’s connectionless and does not incur the extra work of handshakes, acknowledgments, or retransmissions. This keeps the data flowing quickly, which reduces buffering and latency, essential for real-time playback. The trade-off is that UDP doesn’t guarantee delivery or order, but streaming systems often accept some loss and rely on buffering, forward error correction, or application-layer techniques to handle it.

TCP, by contrast, provides reliable, in-order delivery with retransmissions, which adds latency and can cause jitter—less suitable for real-time streaming. ICMP is a diagnostic protocol at the network layer, not used for transporting media. ARP operates at the link layer to map IP addresses to hardware addresses, also not a transport mechanism.