Call of Duty Uses UDP. ChatGPT Uses SSE. Stripe Uses Webhooks. What Does Your App Use?

2026-07-09 · Source: Artificial Intelligence in Plain English - Medium · Field: Technology & Digital — Software Development & Engineering, Cloud Computing & IT Infrastructure, Internet of Things (IoT) & Connected Devices · Depth: Intermediate, medium

Summary

This guide details various communication protocols beyond standard HTTP, highlighting their specific applications and performance characteristics. It explains that while HTTP is suitable for basic request-response, alternatives like gRPC offer binary data compression for backend speed, and UDP provides raw network speed for real-time applications like Call of Duty where occasional packet loss is acceptable. Server-Sent Events (SSE) enable one-way server-to-client streaming for updates (e.g., ChatGPT), while WebSockets facilitate full duplex communication for interactive applications. Message queues (RabbitMQ) and event brokers (Kafka) ensure task reliability and decoupled system communication. Specialized protocols like MQTT support low-bandwidth IoT devices, AMQP standardizes enterprise messaging, and Webhooks enable external services to notify applications directly. A fintech example illustrates how a complex system integrates multiple protocols, each chosen for a specific purpose.

Key takeaway

For software engineers designing system architectures, blindly defaulting to HTTP for all communication will compromise performance, reliability, and cost efficiency. You should critically evaluate each interaction's requirements—speed, data integrity, real-time updates, or asynchronous processing—and select the optimal protocol. This ensures your application leverages specialized tools like gRPC for internal microservices, UDP for low-latency data, or Webhooks for external integrations, avoiding unnecessary overhead and improving overall system resilience.

Key insights

Choosing the right communication protocol beyond HTTP is critical for optimizing application performance, reliability, and cost.

Principles

• Match protocol to specific communication needs.
• Prioritize TCP for data integrity, UDP for real-time freshness.
• Decouple services with queues or event brokers.

In practice

• Use gRPC for high-speed, low-latency backend service communication.
• Implement SSE for one-way server-to-client data streams like live feeds.
• Integrate Webhooks for third-party service notifications.

Topics

• Communication Protocols
• Microservices Architecture
• Real-time Data Streaming
• Message Queues
• Webhooks
• Network Performance

Best for: Software Engineer, AI Architect, MLOps Engineer

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Artificial Intelligence in Plain English - Medium.