Difference Between TCP and UDP Protocols

TCP and UDP are protocols used in a different set of works in networking. There are advantages and disadvantages of Networking but still, these both are very crucial in networking. They both have a different working mechanism to transfer the data from source to destination. So here in this article, you will find the difference between TCP and UDP protocols.

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)

Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (IP) are two different network protocols. TCP and IP protocols can be used together, however, TCP/IP has become standard.

IP can be found on the Network layer in the OSI model, where TCP/IP refers to the network communication where TCP transport used to deliver data across IP networks.

• Full-featured protocols that allow applications to send data reliably without worrying about network layer issues.
• The protocol connection setup is connection-oriented, the connection must be established prior to transmission.
• Data interface to the application has btream-based, data is sent by the application with no particular structure.
• TCP provides reliable delivery of messages all data is acknowledged.
• Delivery of all data is managed and lost data is retransmitted automatically.
• Flow control using sliding windows; window size adjustment heuristics; congestion avoidance algorithms.
• Overhead of TCP can be Low, but higher than UDP
• The transmission speed can be high, but not as high as UDP.

UDP (User Datagram Protocol)

A user datagram protocol is an unreliable connectionless protocol. It is useful for applications that do not require or want TCPs sequencing data for or flow control. It is used to one shot and request-reply-based application where it will reply to the output or the delivery very promptly.

Examples of these types of applications would be DNS (Domain Name System) and transmission of speech or video which may be the broadcasting of live sports or something like that.

UDP minimizes the overhead associated with message transfers because no network connection is established before the transmission.

• Simple, high speed, low functionality ‘wrapper’ that interfaces applications to the network layer and does little else.
• Connectionless data is sent without setup.
• Message-based data is sent in discrete packages by the application.
• Unreliable best effort delivery without acknowledgments.
• Not performed, the application must detect lost data and retransmit if needed.
• There is no flow control of data.
• Overhead will be very low in the UDP.
• The transmission speed is very high in UDP as compared to TCP.