User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

User Datagram protocol is a protocol that is used at the Transport layer for connectionless , non-
guaranteed communications. Unlike TCP, UDP does not setup a connection and does not use
acknowledgments. UDP is given the Internet Protocol number of 17 and is defined in RFC 768 .
UDP uses 16-bit port numbers similar TCP. When a UDP packet is sent to a port that is not listening, it
will respond with an ICMP port unreachable message to the packet sender.

Common network applications that use UDP include Domain Name System (DNS) , Streaming Media
Applications ,Voice over IP , Trival File Transfer Protocol ( TFTP) and online Games .
UDP Header Format :-

The UDP header consists of four 16-bit fields ( 4 * 16), which makes a total of 8-bytes in total length. The
UDP header comes immediately after the IP header. Th details of individual fields are as follows :-
Source Port :- A 16-bit field whose values can range from 0 to 65,535 specifying the source port.
Destination Port :- A 16-bit field whose values can range from 0 to 65,535 specifying the destination
port.
Length :- A 16-bit field whose values can range from 0 to 65,535. it is the length of the UDP header and
the UDP data in bytes. The minimum value for this field is 8 bytes.
UDP Checksum :- A 16-bit field whose values can range from 0 to 65,535. The UDP checksum covers
the UDP header and the UDP data. With UDP the checksum is optional, while the TCP it is mandatory.