UDP sockets - again

[Mark Wieder]

Alex, Dar-

Monday, February 28, 2005, 8:23:05 AM, you wrote:

AT> The documentation for UDP sockets is pretty sparse (or indeed, totally
AT> missing, and trying to use the existing docs is near impossible, because
AT> the differences between TCP and UDP sockets are quite significant).
AT> Dar Scott provided me with lots of help a while ago - you may find more
AT> useful info in the email archives (around September).

Thanks so much for collecting all this udp information in one place. I
normally tend to shy away from using udp, but there are areas where
you really need it (working with existing protocols for other apps,
etc.). Using udp can also bring up firewall issues.

I think of it this way: udp is packet-oriented while tcp is
stream-oriented. Udp gives you speed and low overhead but packets
aren't guaranteed to arrive. Tcp guarantees that the packets arrive at
the destination and arrive in order, but the message can be broken up
into an arbitrary number of packets (Elvi shasle ftt hebuil ding).

With udp the entire message (if it arrives) is in a single packet.
With tcp you have to parse the incoming stream to determine where the
information ends.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net