Which statement best describes UDP relative to TCP?

• A. It provides reliable, ordered delivery.
• B. It guarantees congestion control.
• C. It requires handshakes for every packet.
• D. It is connectionless and does not guarantee delivery.

Answer: (D)

UDP is a connectionless, best-effort transport protocol. It sends datagrams without establishing a connection and does not guarantee delivery, order, or protection against duplicates. There’s no handshake before sending data and no built-in mechanism for congestion control. This makes UDP fast and lightweight, which is ideal for applications where occasional loss is acceptable, such as real-time audio/video, online gaming, or DNS lookups. In contrast, TCP provides reliable, ordered delivery and uses a handshake plus congestion control to manage data transfer. So, the statement that best describes UDP relative to TCP is that it is connectionless and does not guarantee delivery.