Andrew Newton (Verisign): When your house is on fire, you frankly don’t care who knows it, as long as you can get help fast. The 911/912 system is built for the speed you need on a bricks-and-mortar, flip-that-switch based Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

Internet calls are different. VOIPs use overlay networks and tunnels to achieve secure and private communications. Unfortunately, protocols like TCP and TLS are relatively overweight, especially when compared to a speedster like UDP.

UDP data can be transferred 13 times faster than TCP, and 46 times faster than TLS.

That’s a pretty good reason to consider using UDP for an emergency system that can be hammered in during a natural disaster.

After all, there are no fat packet rules written in stone… Or are there?

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