What Is a UDP Protocol?

The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core protocols used to transmit data over the Internet, with the other being Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

Speed

• UDP, on average, can be a much faster protocol for transmitting information than TCP, because it uses a total of 8 bytes per packet of data to transmit information compared to TCP's 20.

Connectionless

• This leaner header comes because UDP is, unlike TCP, connectionless. With TCP, data is ensured to arrive in the correct order and is checked for errors upon arrival, whereas UDP does not provide this protection: packets can be lost or corrupted.

Uses

• While TCP is used for web browsing, UDP is more often used for Voice over IP and games, where speed is absolutely paramount and the small errors that can appear in UDP are not as important.