Transmission delays are minimized when packets are transmitted from a source computer over a network to a destination computer. The source computer measures the network's available bandwidth, forms a sequence of output packets from a sequence of data packets, and transmits the output packets over the network to the destination computer, where the transmission rate is ramped up to the measured bandwidth. In conjunction with the transmission, the source computer monitors a transmission delay indicator which it computes using acknowledgement packets it receives from the destination computer. Whenever the indicator specifies that the transmission delay is increasing, the source computer reduces the transmission rate until the indicator specifies that the delay is unchanged. The source computer dynamically decides whether each output packet will be a forward error correction packet or a single data packet, where the decision is based on minimizing the expected transmission delays.