udp

What is UDP#

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is a lightweight data transport protocol which operates at Transport layer (OSI level 4) of network model.

UDP works on top of IP protocol.

UDP is a connectionless method of communication.

UDP is faster than TCP, but much less reliable.

How UDP works#

Contrary to TCP, there is no connection, sequensing, data packets receipt acknowledgements, resending, or reordering in UDP. UDP is a fire-and-forget method of communication.

UDP is frequently used in audio video streaming applications.

UDP detects if packets are corrupted when they are received by client by checking the checksum.

UDP header has length of 8 bytes.