User Datagram Protocol
A connectionless protocol that runs on top of IP networks. Unlike TCP/IP, UDP/IP provides little in the way of error recovery services. It does however, offer a direct way to send and receive datagrams over an IP network. UDP/IP is the protocol that VOIP utilizes on an IP network. UDP is a "best effort" protocol with no guarantees of delivery. This results in lower bandwidth overhead when compared to TCP/IP and other protocols. Its primary use originally was to broadcast messages over a network.
