What is the UDP protocol?

UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is a transport protocol operating at the transport layer of the OSI model. Its key features:

• Connectionless: UDP does not establish a connection before transmitting data, unlike TCP.
• Datagram transmission: data is sent in the form of individual messages (datagrams), each processed independently.
• No delivery guarantee: UDP does not guarantee delivery, order, or integrity of packets.
• Low latency and overhead: due to the lack of connection control and acknowledgments, UDP is faster and simpler.

An example of UDP usage is streaming video transmission, online games where speed is crucial and losing individual packets is not critical.