Comparison
This is just a quick table-comparison between the protocols TLS, SCTP, QUIC
For a detailed comparison with Googles QUIC, see this page.
| Feature | TLS (TCP) | SCTP | QUIC | Fenrir | MinimaLT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| encryption | YES | NO | YES | YES | YES |
| authentication | YES | NO | YES | YES | YES |
| authorization | NO | NO | NO | YES | NO |
| delayed authentication | NO | NO | NO | YES | ? |
| perfect forward secrecy | optional* | NO | YES* | YES | YES*** |
| federated authentication | NO | NO | NO | YES | NO |
| multiple authorization levels | NO | NO | NO | YES | NO |
| multistream | NO | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| Multicast support | NO | NO | NO | YES | NO |
| reliable transmission | YES | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| unreliable transmission | NO | YES | NO* * | YES | NO (?) |
| byte-stream communication | YES | YES | YES | YES | NO |
| datagram communication | NO | YES | NO | YES | YES (RPC) |
| Forward Error Correction | NO | NO | NO | YES | NO |
| header length (for data) | 38 (+options) | 32 | 9-45+?(including UDP)* * * * | ~29 (including UDP) | 52(with UDP) |
| stun support for clients | NO | NO | NO | Planned | NO |
| protocol-level proxy | NO | NO | NO | Planned | NO |
| Feature | TLS (TCP) | SCTP | QUIC | Fenrir | MinimaLT |
* Perfect forward secrecy (PFS) must be explicitly enabled with proper algorithm support in TLS. QUIC provides PFS, but only after the connection setup, and the key for the initial authentication and key exchange is not connection-specific, but is regenerated every couple of minutes. This setup is not perfect but permits QUIC to avoid one RTT and as long as the interval between key regeneration is not long it can be considered secure.
** QUIC currently does not support unreliable transmission, but there is an ietf draft for the support
***minimaLT perfect forward secrecy is not per-connection, and requires server and dns collaboration. See the MinimaLT page for details.
**** QUIC header is extremely flexible, and can range from 9 bytes up to almost 60 depending on the status of the connection on both the server and client side.