Retransmission systems and methods in reliable streaming protocols using connection characteristics

Systems, methods and articles of manufacture for retransmission of data in streaming protocols are described herein. Embodiments enable efficient retransmission of dropped packet data in guaranteed delivery or request-response data transfer protocols such as TCP. In particular, embodiments provide efficient retransmission of dropped packet data based on the short and/or long term historical reliability of the underlying client connection. An embodiment includes maintaining, for one or more clients in a client-server architecture, data representing connection characteristics for one or more client-server connections. Based on collected short-term and long-term client connection characteristics, an efficient data packet retransmission scheme is determined to optimize use of the connection for retransmitting dropped packet data.