TABLE OF CONTENTS UDP is the closest thing to standard serial communication techniques you'll get in an internet protocol. Like RS-232, UDP can be considered as a "I don't care" protocol. Each protocol will send and receive data but neither of them care if it really gets where it's going or not. UDP and RS-232 leave the data integrity tasks up to the application. You can send just about anything with UDP at any time you wish with very little effort. A very useful file transfer protocol, TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) is built on top of UDP. Of all of the Internet protocols in my opinion UDP is the easiest to understand and implement. Just like all of the other internet protocols, UDP datagrams are handled the same whether they emanate from an RF source like the AirDrop-P 802.11b CompactFlash NIC or are transported over ether in a wire. In this chapter we'll put UDP thorough its paces via our AirDrop-P.
UDP is short for User Datagram Protocol. UDP is also unofficially known in some circles as the Unreliable Delivery Protocol. Like IP, UDP has absolutely no means of insuring that a data packet will arrive in one piece or even arrive at all. However, you'll find that it is reliable enough for most tasks it's used for.
As I mentioned earlier, UDP is a very simple and easy to understand protocol. UDP modifies an application-generated message by tagging on a checksum, a source port...
