Beam Network - UDP (User Datagram Protocol)
Beam utilizes UDP (User Datagram Protocol) for all of its media traffic, which includes audio, video, call establishment, and piloting instructions. Compared to TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), UDP is better suited for Beam for the reasons depicted below:
UDP is a stateless protocol that provides fast and efficient transmission of packets across the network. UDP is faster because it does not implement the error detection and correction mechanism that is found in TCP. Packets are sent and received as is; this means that any lost or erroneous packets are discarded. Therefore, poor connectivity due to network issues will be more apparent on Beam.
Applications like YouTube use TCP, a connection-oriented protocol that focuses more on the reliability of transmitted data than speed or efficiency. TCP has more overhead due to its error checking and correction mechanisms, which guarantees that data remains in sync and arrives in the same order in which it was sent. TCP is ideal for applications such as web applications (HTTP) that require guaranteed delivery of data, but for which communication speed and latency are not of the highest importance.
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