The Applications, Limitations, and Future of the QUIC Network Protocol

Thumbnail Image

Files

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Sähkötekniikan korkeakoulu | Bachelor's thesis
Electronic archive copy is available locally at the Harald Herlin Learning Centre. The staff of Aalto University has access to the electronic bachelor's theses by logging into Aaltodoc with their personal Aalto user ID. Read more about the availability of the bachelor's theses.
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.

Authors

Date

2024-05-07

Department

Major/Subject

Digital Systems and Design

Mcode

ELEC3056

Degree programme

Aalto Bachelor's Programme in Science and Technology

Language

en

Pages

23+4

Series

Abstract

Historically, network protocols used for adding internet connectivity to computer applications have consisted of HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP) versions 1 and 2 being carried by the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or occasionally the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Although this setup has generally proved satisfactory, issues regarding speed have arisen for TCP-based applications. These issues include Head-of-Line (HoL) blocking and additional time being taken to establish and reestablish connections through handshakes. Due to the increased loading and processing times associated with these issues, a need has arisen for a new network protocol that can mitigate said issues to boost performance speeds. QUIC, a protocol built upon UDP, emerged in 2012 as an alternative to TCP and standard UDP. QUIC supports 0-roundtrip handshakes and utilizes stream multiplexing to avoid HoL blocking altogether, while implementing new methods for data encryption and congestion control not present in the aforementioned protocols. With these straightforward improvements in mind, it is surprising that QUIC has not become more widely utilized in the 12 years since its release. Thus, the protocol's standing in the present and future should be analyzed. This thesis conducts a literature review exploring documented use cases of QUIC in several types of applications, and analyzes the findings of the studies accompanying these cases. It explains the architecture and operating principles of QUIC in comparison to other protocols, and then begins assessing the documented use cases and studies. In doing so, this thesis evaluates QUIC's apparent strengths and weaknesses, and which types of applications seem most fitting for the protocol to be used in. These insights are synthesized to determine QUIC's current standing and its future value. When all sources are considered, QUIC appears to excel in carrying HTTP traffic, and demonstrates good interplay with applications such as WebRTC and the Domain Name System. However, it yields strictly worse performance in blockchain and electronic communication network (ECN) scenarios. Results such as these suggest QUIC should be maintained in these use cases, while similar custom UDP-based protocols could prove more viable in applications where QUIC struggles.

Description

Supervisor

Ylirisku, Salu

Thesis advisor

Vikberg, Esa

Keywords

QUIC, protocol, network, HTTP, TCP, UDP

Other note

Citation

Permanent link to this item

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202406114186

Collections

[kand] Sähkötekniikan korkeakoulu / ELEC