Question: TCP slower than UDP? (is it normal?).

[MajorMelchett 0]

As per the title, i honestly don't know.

After having issues with torrents download speeds going all over the place (they would go up to 3.5 to 4mb/s and strait down to 100kb/s all the time) i was suggested to try and use TCP port 80 instead (as the UDP ports may be getting throttled), i did this and my torrent speed is now an unwavering 2.2mb/s (much better).

However, after doing a few speedtests to test the normal difference when not using torrents (on the UK/Germany/Netherland servers) i noticed something, under UDP my download speeds are always 33.60mb/s DL and 5.67mb/s UL on average, but when using TCP i always get around 18.49mb/s DL and 2.58mb/s UL on average.

Is it normal to have such a speed difference between the 2 types?, and is there a way to improve TCP?.

[FPyro 2]

Hey there!

Yes, in general TCP will always be somewhat slower than UDP because of the way the packets are handled. You will also get much higher ping with TCP. When connecting with TCP every packet needs to get confirmed, that it has reached it's destination, that will cause some bandwidth being "wasted" in protocol alone.

I also understand that openVPN was originally designed to use only UDP with TCP support being added later on.

UDP is more efficient and better if you don't get much packet loss anyway. It's also better for congested networks.