What's UDP? UDP is a connectionless protocol used by everyone every day, but it seems that not too many people know it. However, it can really be useful to solve particular network problems. Like TCP, UDP works at transport layer in the TCP/IP model, but they have very different uses.
Compared to TCP, UDP is a simpler message-based, connectionless protocol. Connectionless protocols do not set up a dedicated end-to-end connection; instead, communication is achieved by transmitting information in one direction from source to destination without verifying the readiness or state of the receiver. However, one primary benefit of UDP over TCP is the application to the voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) where latency and jitter are the primary concerns. It is assumed in VoIP UDP that the end users provide any necessary real-time confirmation that the message has been received.
Here are some features of UDP as exposed by Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia...