what is udp

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is a communication protocol used across the internet for time-sensitive transmissions such as video playback, gaming, or Domain Name System (DNS) lookups. UDP is a simple message-oriented transport layer protocol that is documented in RFC 768. UDP is a part of the Internet Protocol suite and is used to send messages (transported as datagrams in packets) to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) network. UDP does not require prior communication to set up communication channels or data paths within an IP network. UDP provides two services not provided by the IP layer. It provides port numbers to help distinguish different user requests, and it also provides an optional checksum capability to verify that the data arrived intact. UDP is an alternative to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and both UDP and TCP run on top of IP and are sometimes referred to as UDP/IP or TCP/IP. However, there are important differences between the two. For example, UDP enables process-to-process communication, while TCP supports host-to-host communication. UDP is more efficient in terms of both latency and bandwidth compared to TCP. UDP is used for simple request-response communication when the size of data is less and hence there is lesser concern about flow and error control. It is a suitable protocol for multicasting as UDP supports packet switching.