Re:Why TCP? (Score 1)

There is work going on both to improve TCP so it works better on Fast Long Distance networks (see for example http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac- pub-10402.pdf for a comparison of the performances of some of these new versions of TCP, and to come up with replacements such as SCTP and UDT (see http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-gg-udt-0 1.txt) which is a reliable transport protocol built on top of UDP. We did make tests with UDT on the SC2004 testbed and it perfomed very well (~4.5Gbits/s) which was not as good as we saw with TCP but it is early days for the UDT so it is looking hopeful.