High Frequency Trading - TCP > UDP?

Question

I was told that for a High Frequency Trading (HFT) system that requires low-latency, TCP is used over UDP. I was told that with TCP you can make point to point connections, whereas you cannot with UDP, however from my understanding you can send UDP packets to specific IP/port.

There are several arguments used in this article as to why UDP > TCP for gaming but I can see relevance for HFT.

Why would TCP be a better protocol to use for HFT?

(Admins: My previous post of this question was silently removed with no explanation. If I am violating terms of use please alert me of this instead of silently removing the question)

Answer 1

UDP is superior to TCP if you don't need some of the features TCP provides. Every feature has a cost, and so if you don't need features, you are paying that cost for no reason.

In an HFT application, you need pretty much every feature TCP requires. So if you picked UDP, you'd have to implement those features yourself. That means you'd have to implement connection establishment, connection teardown, retransmissions, transmit pacing, windows, and so on.

If there was a way to do all those things that was better than the way TCP was doing it, TCP would be doing it that way. You'd have one hand tied behind your back because TCP is heavily optimized by some of the best minds on the planet and implemented in/with the kernel.