[e2e] What's the benefit of out-of-order processing?

[Sam Liang]

  RFC2960 for SCTP lists the lack of out-of-order processing as the first
major drawback of TCP:

   "TCP provides both reliable data transfer and strict order-of-
    transmission delivery of data.  Some applications need reliable
    transfer without sequence maintenance, while others would be
    satisfied with partial ordering of the data.  In both of these
    cases the head-of-line blocking offered by TCP causes unnecessary
    delay."

  Is there any study done on evaluating the effect of this TCP
"deficiency"?  What applications really need to and are capable to do
out-of-order processing? Can video over IP or voice over IP applications
process frames out-of-order? With SCTP's order-of-arrival delivery, how
much performance boost can be achieved over TCP, in terms of increased
throughput and reduced delay?

  Thanks,

Sam