Experimental performance comparison between TCP vs UDP tunnel using OpenVPN

Abstract

The comparison between TCP and UDP tunnels have not been sufficiently reported in the scientific literature. In this work, we use OpenVPN as a platform to demonstrate the performance between TCP/UDP. The de facto belief has been that TCP tunnel provides a permanent tunnel and therefore ensures a reliable transfer of data between two end points. However the effects of transmitting TCP within a UDP tunnel has been explored and could provide a valuable attempt. The results provided in this paper demonstrates that indeed TCP in UDP tunnel provides better latency. Throughout this paper, a series of tests have been performed, UDP traffic was sent inside UDP tunnel and TCP tunnel successively. The same tests was performed using TCP traffic.