You are essentially trading reliability for performance. In terms of reliability, UDP has its drawbacks when compared to TCP. Small but not as small as UDP (header is 20 bytes) Provides flow control options including: sliding windows, congestion avoidance algorithms, etc This is required before another transfer can take place Not required, this allows for faster speedsĪll data is acknowledged. Very reliable, all data is acknowledged and tracks data transfer in order to ensure that all packets have been receivedĬonnectionless, in that there is no dedicated connection requiredĬonnection-oriented, in that it requires a dedicated connection before any data can be transferred Unreliable, there is no guarantee that all packets will be received A few distinctions between UDP vs TCP include:

These differences are important components in determining what each protocol is suitable for your use-case in terms of data transfer. There are a few differences that exist between the way UDP and TCP work. In this post, we'll go over some of the granular differences between UDP and TCP as well as a few UDP tools you can use. Once all of the packets have arrived, the data set is reconstructed and the file is back to its original state. These packets are then sent across the Internet, hopping from one node to the next until they eventually end up at their destination. The way TCP and UDP protocols both work are that they break down a large data set (i.e. A few scenarios where UDP is commonly preferred over TCP include:

TCP, or Transmission Control Protocol, is the more widely known and used protocol for file transmission, however, falls short in comparison when it comes to transferring large files at fast speeds. UDP, which stands for User Datagram Protocol, is a method used to transfer large files across the Internet.

Which file transfer protocol uses udp