UDP provides connectionless service and are not as reliable as TCP which is connection oriented service.

Advantages:

• UDP is less overhead because of lesser header size and does not need to worry about setting and terminating the connection.
• Since it does not need to worry about packet loss, retransmission, connection establishment or termination, hence it is faster with less delays, making it suitable for delay sensitive application like audio, video.
• In case of multicast where there is one to many connection, if TCP would have used, there need to establish connection with each one of them and tackle packet loss and retransmission.

Still UDP holds significance in many application such as:

• Application that uses UDP has less overhead than that of TCP as UDP header size is just 8 bytes.
• UDP is suitable for process that requires simple request-response communication with little concern over of flow and error control. Such application does not worry much if some data are lost or reach out of order.
• Suitable for application or process which has its own error control and flow control mechanism Like TFTP.
• Suitable for interactive or real time application which cannot tolerate delay between request and response.
• It is used for SNMP, multicasting ad route updates using RIP

Categories: Networking