User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is an alternative communications protocol to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) used primarily to establish loss-tolerant connections between two applications on the Internet. UDP and TCP run on top of Internet Protocol (IP) in the transport layer and are sometimes called UDP/IP or TCP/IP. Both protocols send short data packets in the form of datagrams. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay In recent times, Transmission Control Protocol has become the dominant protocol used for the majority of Internet connectivity due to services such as breaking large data sets. into individual datagrams, checking acknowledgments, resending lost packets, and reassembling packets in the correct order. But these services come at a cost in terms of data overhead and additional delays. In contrast, the User Data Protocol simply transmits packets without acknowledgment or resending of services, effectively reducing bandwidth overhead and latency issues. But packets may be lost or received out of order as a result, due to the different paths individual packets take between the sender and receiver. It provides two additional services on the Internet Protocol layer. It provides port numbers to help distinguish between different user requests and checksum calculation capability to verify that data arrived intact. In a UDP connection, the client sets unique source port numbers based on the program with which it started the connection. UDP is not limited to 1-to-1 interaction. One-to-many interaction can be provided using broadcast or multicast addressing. Many-to-1 interaction can be provided by multiple clients communicating with a single server. Many-to-many interaction is just an extension of these techniques. UDP is an attractive option for applications whose critical requirement is low latency. These applications can range from voice and video communication to real-time gaming and video streaming. These applications would compromise some lost data as long as the quality received meets the required standards. In some cases, error correction techniques may be necessary to improve transmission quality. Some important features of UDP transmission are given below: Keep in mind: This is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Personalized Trial This is an end-to-end connectionless delivery protocol. This is unreliable because the established communication consists only of data packets without any acknowledgment. Much like the Internet Protocol, it is a network at best. It can be used for real-time applications because it is a real-time transport protocol. UDP transmits segments consisting of an 8-byte header. It contains source port, destination port, UDP length and checksum. UDP checksum used to detect errors in the transmitted segment.