TCP vs UDP: What’s the Difference?

What are TCP and UDP?

TCP vs UDP, what are they? TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), a network protocol, is used to transmit data over the internet from your device to a web server. When we send emails, transfer files, or simply surf the web, we need to use the TCP protocol. When using TCP to do with the things mentioned above, the data will be guaranteed to be delivered. Moreover, the RDP also works over TCP for data transmission.

UDP(User Datagram Protocol) is another extensively used network protocol. It's utilized for network transmissions like broadcast and multicast. The UDP protocol is nearly identical to TCP, which is frequently used to play a game. And for the RDP 8.0 or newer client and an RD 2012 or newer Gateway, the RDP client can transmit data using both UDP and TCP.

How TCP works?

TCP organizes data and facilitates transmission between servers and clients. It ensures that the data transmitted over the network is secure. Before transferring data, TCP establishes a connection between the server and the client, ensuring that it remains active until communication begins.

Advantages of TCP:

• It supports you to have a connection with different types of PCs.
• It’s workable for many routing protocols.
• It can be operated independently.

Disadvantages of TCP:

• It can’t use broadcast and multicast transmission.
• It doesn’t guarantee the delivery of packets.

How UDP works?

UDP collects data from UDP packets and adds its own header information to the packet. This data includes the source and destination ports of the communication, as well as the packet length and checksum. After being encapsulated in an IP packet, UDP packets are sent to their destination.

Advantages of TCP:

• The latency is low.
• Broadcast and multicast transmission are available
• It possesses lock boundaries

Disadvantages of TCP:

• The packet might be delivered without order.
• It’s possible to lose the data

After the explanation of TCP and UDP as well as a demonstration of how they work, we can find there are many similarities between them. Are there any differences between them?

The differences between TCP and UDP

Here we make a table to compare TCP vs UDP in terms of speed, ports, data sequencing...

	TCP	UDP
Speed	Slower	Faster and more efficient
Data sequencing	Yes	No
Transfer method	Packets are delivered in a sequence	Packets are delivered in a stream
Error checking	Yes( possess extensive error checking mechanisms)	No (provides basic error checking)
Congestion control	Yes	No
Broadcasting	No	Yes
Security	More secure	Less secure
Reliability	More reliable (the delivery of data is guaranteed)	Less reliable (doesn’t guarantee the delivery of packet)
Acknowledgment	Yes	Only the checksum
Ports	3389	3391

From the table shown, you must have a thorough understanding of the differences between TCP and UDP. Compared to TCP, UDP is less dependable, but it is faster and easier than TCP. And it's frequently utilized in circumstances where speed is more important, such as streaming or gaming. Moreover, TCP can rearrange the data packets in a specific order, which lacks in UDP. More importantly, it seems that the data won’t be lost with TCP...

Conclusion

TCP vs UDP, what’s the difference? From the perspective of speed, data sequencing, transfer method, ports, reliability... The answer is out of the surface. So, which one is better and enables which one for RDP protocol? If you are in urgent need to send messages, UDP is better for you. But if you care more about the reliability and the sequence, TCP can be a nice try. Of course, if you are looking for other ways to remote access, AnyViewer can be also a good choice for you.