UDP sockets

UDP sockets provide low-latency, connectionless data transfer by stripping away the overhead of handshakes and retransmissions.

UDP sockets operate at Layer 4 of the OSI model, offering a fire-and-forget transport mechanism ideal for real-time applications like DNS (Port 53), DHCP, and competitive gaming. By bypassing the three-way handshake and congestion control found in TCP, these sockets minimize jitter and maximize throughput for voice-over-IP (VoIP) and live video streams. Developers use them when speed is the priority and the occasional dropped packet (packet loss) is an acceptable trade-off for immediate delivery. It is the raw, high-performance choice for building custom protocols or broadcasting data to multiple clients simultaneously.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc768