What's the Difference Between TCP and UDP?

Both TCP and UDP are protocols used for sending bits of data — known as packets — over the Internet. They both build on top of the Internet protocol. In other words, whether you’re sending a packet via TCP or UDP, that packet is sent to an IP address. These packets are treated similarly, as they’re forwarded from your computer to intermediary routers and on to the destination.

TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol. It’s the most commonly used protocol on the Internet.

TCP guarantees the recipient will receive the packets in order by numbering them. The recipient sends messages back to the sender saying it received the messages. If the sender doesn’t get a correct response, it will resend the packets to ensure the recipient received them. Packets are also checked for errors. TCP is all about this reliability — packets sent with TCP are tracked so no data is lost or corrupted in transit. This is why file downloads don’t become corrupted even if there are network hiccups. Of course, if the recipient is completely offline, your computer will give up and you’ll see an error message saying it can’t communicate with the remote host.

UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol — a datagram is the same thing as a packet of information. The UDP protocol works similarly to TCP, but it throws all the error-checking stuff out. All the back-and-forth communication and deliverability guarantees slow things down.

When using UDP, packets are just sent to the recipient. The sender won’t wait to make sure the recipient received the packet — it will just continue sending the next packets. If you’re the recipient and you miss some UDP packets, too bad — you can’t ask for those packets again. There’s no guarantee you’re getting all the packets and there’s no way to ask for a packet again if you miss it, but losing all this overhead means the computers can communicate more quickly.

For more information, please refer to the original article on How-to Geek: 

http://www.howtogeek.com/190014/htg-explains-what-is-the-difference-between-tcp-and-udp/