A system administrator is managing a local network that hosts a real-time voice intercom system. Users report occasional minor audio dropouts (packet loss) during high network utilization, but notice that the communication has virtually zero lag. To eliminate packet loss, an IT intern suggests reconfiguring the voice application to transmit data using TCP instead of UDP. Which of the following describes the most likely consequence of implementing this proposed protocol change?
- Lost packets will be retransmitted to guarantee delivery, but voice traffic will suffer from increased latency and jitter during drop events.Answer
- BAudio stream latency will decrease because TCP sliding windowing optimizes header overhead and accelerates packet delivery.
- CVoice streams will automatically bypass network switch queue congestion by encapsulating data into connection-oriented Layer 2 frames.
- DThe voice application will fail entirely because TCP cannot establish connections over standard network socket ports.
Answer
Retransmitting lost packets via TCP guarantees data delivery, but the resulting retransmission delays increase latency and jitter, degrading real-time voice communications.
TCP is a connection-oriented protocol that guarantees delivery through sequence numbers, acknowledgments, and retransmissions of lost segments. When applied to real-time voice traffic, any lost packet forces TCP to hold subsequent data in a buffer until the missing segment is successfully retransmitted. This retransmission mechanism eliminates packet loss, but causes noticeable audio delay (latency) and inconsistent arrival times (jitter), which severely harms real-time voice performance.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Connection-Oriented vs Connectionless Transport Protocols (TCP vs UDP)