Chapter 2. UDP
The previous chapter asserted that all network communications these days are built atop the transmission of short messages called packets that are usually no longer than a few thousand bytes. Packets each wing their way across the network independently, free to take different paths toward the same destination if redundant or load-balanced routers are part of the network. This means that packets can arrive out of order. If network conditions are poor, or a packet is simply unlucky, then it might easily not arrive at all.
When a network application is built on top of IP, its designers face a fundamental question: will the network conversations in which the application will engage best be constructed from individual, unordered, and ...
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