There is actually such a protocol - UFTP. It was designed for high-latency connections such as satellite links. It can use multicast to allow multiple recipients over such a link. If memory serves, it was designed by Gannet to help transfer news content nationally for USA Today.
I've tested it on "long fat pipes" when evaluating it for a project a number of years ago. The numbers don't sound that impressive now. I was able to saturate the 100Mbps NIC of the slower server in the transfer. The transfer was from Northern VA to LA over the Internet. This was from data center to data center and the network capacity was such that I knew that the transfer rate would not cause any serious packet loss.
Using simple TCP over the same link, same computers was limited to around 40Mbps. More modern TCP implementations have a larger window and are able to better saturate high-throughput, high-latency links.
I've tested it on "long fat pipes" when evaluating it for a project a number of years ago. The numbers don't sound that impressive now. I was able to saturate the 100Mbps NIC of the slower server in the transfer. The transfer was from Northern VA to LA over the Internet. This was from data center to data center and the network capacity was such that I knew that the transfer rate would not cause any serious packet loss.
Using simple TCP over the same link, same computers was limited to around 40Mbps. More modern TCP implementations have a larger window and are able to better saturate high-throughput, high-latency links.