When reading data or articles about computer networks, the most common terms we encounter are TCP, UDP, and HTTP. Additionally, we might have heard of QUIC, often mentioned alongside HTTP/3, which is the 3.0 version of the HTTP protocol and the future upgrade path for the 2.x versions.
QUIC was designed and developed primarily by Google. We all know that the HTTP protocol is an application layer protocol that uses TCP as its transport layer protocol, but this is only true for HTTP/1 and HTTP/2. QUIC is designed to be a replacement for TCP, meaning that wherever TCP is used, QUIC can be used instead.
Google’s initial goal was to replace the TCP protocol used by the HTTP protocol, so the initial name was HTTP over QUIC. After being taken over by the IETF, it was renamed to HTTP/3. Therefore, when we talk about HTTP/3 today, we are actually referring to the version of the HTTP protocol that uses the QUIC protocol.
Why QUIC?
The TCP protocol, renowned as the most prestigious transport layer protocol, is time-tested. Whenever TCP is mentioned, we know it as a connection-oriented, reliable, byte-stream-based transport layer communication protocol.
TCP establishes connections through a three-way handshake and ensures its reliability through various meticulous mechanisms such as sequencing, ACK…
