Which transport protocol is commonly used for low-latency live video streaming?

Which transport protocol is commonly used for low-latency live video streaming?

• A. TCP
• B. UDP
• C. ICMP
• D. ARP

Answer: (B)

Low-latency live video streaming prioritizes delivering data as quickly as possible, so the transport layer should minimize overhead and avoid delays from retransmissions. UDP fits this need because it is connectionless and has minimal header overhead, and it does not perform retransmissions or enforce ordering by itself. This means packets can arrive with very low latency, which is crucial for real-time video. Loss of a few packets is often acceptable for video streams, and higher-layer protocols (such as RTP) can add sequencing and timing as needed without introducing the delay of automatic retransmission. In contrast, TCP provides reliability through acknowledgments and retransmissions, which can stall the stream and increase latency; ICMP and ARP serve different purposes (network diagnostics and address resolution, respectively) and aren’t used to carry media data. So the commonly used transport protocol for low-latency live video is UDP.

Low-latency live video streaming prioritizes delivering data as quickly as possible, so the transport layer should minimize overhead and avoid delays from retransmissions. UDP fits this need because it is connectionless and has minimal header overhead, and it does not perform retransmissions or enforce ordering by itself. This means packets can arrive with very low latency, which is crucial for real-time video. Loss of a few packets is often acceptable for video streams, and higher-layer protocols (such as RTP) can add sequencing and timing as needed without introducing the delay of automatic retransmission. In contrast, TCP provides reliability through acknowledgments and retransmissions, which can stall the stream and increase latency; ICMP and ARP serve different purposes (network diagnostics and address resolution, respectively) and aren’t used to carry media data. So the commonly used transport protocol for low-latency live video is UDP.