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Almost the entire Internet has been running over standard TCP since 1974, many application-level protocols such as HTTP, FTP, IMAP, etc. are built on TCP. The Transmission Control Protocol or TCP has been the foundation of the Internet for decades. It’s only fair that he gets a major upgrade soon. The protocol is starting to show its age, so researchers have been working for a few years on its potential upgrade.
The protocol is called Quic which will be used for data transmission between computers. Some of its features include improved speed, security, and reliability. Last week, the Internet Engineering Task Force just released Quic as a standard, calling it a UDP-based, multiplexed and secure transport protocol. The IETF defines many standards for the Internet. They have been testing Quic on browsers and online services for a few years.
Upgrading the foundations of the internet is a grueling task, especially since each device uses the old infrastructure. Quic has been in public development for almost 8 years since Google’s announcement in 2013. Upgrading is essential for the Internet to evolve with the times. Engineers have devoted similar efforts to many other standard technologies such as HTTPS for secure website communication, post-quantum cryptography, and IPV6 to increase the IP pool.
Quic is based on UDP, which is faster than TCP but lacks the latter’s ability to recover lost packets. Quic uses the fastest UDP while having its own lost packet recovery mechanism which is even faster than TCP. Quic is even faster in setting up encrypted connections, which is crucial if the protocol is to be adapted to HTTP and other application-level protocols.
According to Jana Iyengar, an engineer who helped lead the standardization of Quic, “The Internet transport ecosystem has been frozen for decades now. Quic is ready to lead the charge on the next generation of Internet innovations â€. Quic should handle network changes more gracefully, like when you leave your Wi-Fi and start using your phone’s cellular network.
It will take a long time before each device starts supporting Quic, and it will take even longer to eliminate TCP completely. Such transitions are usually slow and take their time to ensure that no issues arise.
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