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The Transport Layer Revisited: UDP

The User Datagram Protocol provides a connectionless alternative transport service to TCP for applications where reliable stream service is not needed. UDP datagrams can be droppped, duplicated or delivered out of order, exactly as for IP.
 
The UDP transport service add to IP the ability to deliver a datagram to a specified destination process using a port abstraction, in an analogous way to that used by TCP.
 
Examples of applications where UDP is used include:
 

 


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