Evaluating Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) for Real-Time Applications: A Comparative Study with TCP in Multi-Node Networks

The rise in demand for real-time applications, such as live streaming, online gaming, and Internet telephony, has highlighted the necessity for transport protocols that offer low latency and network stability. Traditional protocols, namely Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP), have inherent limitations. TCP ensures reliable data delivery but suffers from latency, making it unsuitable for real-time needs, while UDP provides fast data transmission but lacks congestion control, which can lead to network instability. This gap underscores the need for a protocol that combines high-speed data transfer with effective congestion management. To address this issue, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) introduced the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP), designed to optimize data delivery speed while managing congestion. This study evaluates DCCP's performance against TCP in network scenarios of 8 and 16 nodes using the NS2 simulation environment. By comparing throughput and delay across various bandwidth and latency settings, the study finds that DCCP offers up to 35% higher throughput in 8-node setups and reduces packet loss by 20% in high-bandwidth scenarios. These results suggest that DCCP is well-suited for real-time applications, achieving a crucial balance between fast data transmission and network stability.