Chapter 13. UDP Datagrams and Sockets

     

Previous chapters discussed network applications that use the TCP protocol. TCP is designed for reliable transmission of data. If data is lost or damaged in transmission, TCP ensures that the data is resent ; if packets of data arrive out of order, TCP puts them back in the correct order; if the data is coming too fast for the connection, TCP throttles the speed back so that packets won't be lost. A program never needs to worry about receiving data that is out of order or incorrect. However, this reliability comes at a price. That price is speed. Establishing and tearing down TCP connections can take a fair amount of time, particularly for protocols such as HTTP, which tend to require many short transmissions.

The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is an alternative protocol for sending data over IP that is very quick, but not reliable. That is, when you send UDP data, you have no way of knowing whether it arrived, much less whether different pieces of data arrived in the order in which you sent them. However, the pieces that do arrive generally arrive quickly.