HTTP should have made SCTP a lot more popular. SCTP is a natural fit for reliably transporting static files, which is what HTTP was originally designed for. So

HTTP should have made SCTP a lot more popular. SCTP is a natural fit for reliably transporting static files, which is what HTTP was originally designed for. So many of the HTTP2/SPDY/etc. features are there to make up for the fact that TCP doesn't have a length "field" since it's stream-oriented. Obviously, there are exceptions and you can have both streams and known-length content served over HTTP, but I still think streams over SCTP would have been a better choice than datagrams over TCP. Edit: Also firewalls that filter out anything but TCP (or TCP + UDP, or TCP + UDP + ICMP) can die a fiery death. The fact that basically any new protocol has to tunnel over UDP instead of properly over IP is heresy and bullshit.