OpenVPN with TCP/UDP - What’s the Difference? | ExpressVPN (2024)

FAQs

OpenVPN with TCP/UDP - What’s the Difference? | ExpressVPN? ›

Your ExpressVPN app is likely to choose UDP when using OpenVPN. By default, you will experience faster speeds over UDP. On unreliable networks, however, you may have a better experience switching to TCP.

OpenVPN's default is to use UDP simply because it is faster. Our smart protocol selection feature will always attempt to establish a connection using UDP first. But you can also switch between UDP and TCP manually in our app or command line tool.

UDP is mainly used for online streaming and downloading. TCP is more reliable but also slightly slower than UDP and is mainly used for web browsing.

TCP is best used for direct communication in which a reliable connection is needed, such as web browsing, email, text messaging, and file transfers. UDP is best used for live and real-time data transmission when speed is more important than reliability.

For torrents, TCP is generally the preferred protocol, but UDP may be a better option if you are experiencing problems with TCP. Overall, using a special torrent server from your VPN is a good way to improve the performance, security, and reliability of your torrent downloads.

OpenVPN is the most secure VPN protocol and the safest choice thanks to its near-unbreakable encryption, which keeps users' data private even when using public Wi-Fi.

OpenVPN daemons interface and ports

By default, they listen on all available network interfaces, using UDP port 1194 and TCP port 443.

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is the superior choice for online streaming videos. UDP emphasizes speed and efficiency, making it exceptionally well-suited for real-time data transmission, including video streaming. It delivers data with minimal latency and without burdening your network's resources.

An advantage of UDP over TCP is that UDP is faster.

This means that there is less overhead in the form of packet headers and acknowledgements, which allows for faster data transmission.

UDP is a great option for live streaming because you can broadcast without experiencing lag issues. It's typically used for live streaming in conjunction with other protocols like RTP or RTCP, where you can easily configure multicasting for secure, uninterrupted viewing.

Does WiFi use TCP or UDP? ›

Yes, WiFi is a transport protocol - IP (and, thus, TCP) can be carried over it. For internetworking purposes, Wi-Fi is usually layered as a link layer (equivalent to the physical and data link layers of the OSI model) below the internet layer of the Internet Protocol.

What decides? The intended use and the requirements for the transport. If you need guaranteed delivery and latency is not an issue, you choose TCP. If you can tolerate packet loss or prefer no state on the server, you might use UDP (which means you might need to handle packet reordering).

Yes, TCP and UDP can be integrated in the same application. This can be done through the use of sockets, which allow for communication between two computers. Socket programming allows for the exchange of data between a server and a client, regardless of the protocol being used.

Though it can be configured to run on any port, OpenVPN runs best on a UDP port. UDP does not allow the recipient to acknowledge receipt of the data or request information to be resent. This allows UDP to establish connections and transfer data faster. Your ExpressVPN app is likely to choose UDP when using OpenVPN.

In fact, you can choose which mode to use with Surfshark! Why? Because TCP sends and receives data packages all while keeping the computer equivalent of direct eye contact with the recipient. On the other hand, UDP is faster as it sort of just labels the packages and chucks them at the recipient.

UDP is commonly used in time-sensitive communications where occasionally dropping packets is better than waiting. Voice and video traffic are often sent using this protocol because they are both time-sensitive and designed to handle some level of loss.

TCP is more reliable, but less speed. UDP is faster but less reliable. If you need a fast and constant data transmission for an application to work properly, UDP is a better choice. Otherwise, TCP is a stable and reliable protocol for transferring data and not losing any of it along the way.

The OpenVPN tunneling protocol uses the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption protocol to ensure data shared via the Internet remains private using AES-256 encryption.

TCP will automatically check for errors and guarantee delivery of packets sent. UDP is a simpler connectionless protocol where error-checking and recovery services are not required which makes it faster since the transmission of data will be continued even if the recipient is unavailable.