udp flow mechanism

[lohit prasad]

Hi Experts,

I have a question regarding UDP. I know UDP is a stateless protocol. But what are scenarios where we send data traffic using UDP beacuse using UDP we send keepalives messages/communication protocols use UDP like SNMP/RIP/OSPF but in all cases hello messages are sent continuosly irrespective of expecting retransmission funda like TCP. so what will happen if data is sent by UDP and data is lost in between then as user , I need to send data again or what are scenarios where UDP is used for data transfer ? Also I want to know waht are scenarios where we prefer UDP than TCP and why ? 

[lohit prasad]

no single reply for my thread ? ok thanks.

[DJX995 · Accepted solution]

If data is lost using UDP, upper layer protocols need to be able to handle this.

So, the application using UDP to transfer data must handle the errors and recover.

In TCP, this is built in.

The application does not have to specifically handle transmission errors because they will be resolved at the transport layer.

When low latency is required, UDP is preferred.

UDP is smaller, faster, and has less overhead.

Otherwise TCP should be used.

[acampbell · Accepted solution]

Hi,

In addition to what FratianiD (+5) has posted
Have a read at this link.
It explains about error checking and udp usage for time critical apps like voip etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol

Hope this helps
Regards
Alex