UDP Support Library Overview

This section describes the functions in the LabWindows/CVI User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Support Library. UDP Support Library functions provide a platform-independent interface to the unicast, broadcast, and multicast capabilities of the UDP communication protocol.

UDP is a connectionless protocol that runs on IP networks, like TCP. However, unlike TCP, it provides few error recovery services. Without connections and error recovery, the startup latency in distributed applications is much lower for UDP, as is operating system overhead. In UDP, recipients manage control flow, transaction logging, and UDP packet sorting and sequencing. UDP also offers broadcasting or multicasting messages over a network, which TCP does not support. Thus, UDP can very quickly send out data because it does not have the overhead of TCP and offers many other ways to send it. Network applications that require faster transmission time and exchange small data size are good candidates for UDP, if guaranteed delivery is not important.

To access information about each supported UDP function, you can use the function tree list of UDP Support Library functions or click the function name in the Library Reference»UDP Support Library»Alphabetical List of Functions section of this help file.

RT The LabWindows/CVI Real-Time Module supports the UDP Library, except for the multicasting functions, UDPMulticastSubscribe and UDPMulticastUnsubscribe.

Multithreading

It is safe to use the UDP Support Library in a multithreaded application. No restrictions exist.

Related Topics

UDP Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
UDP Callback Mechanism
Using LabWindows/CVI with TCP, UDP, and Other Low-Level Communications Applications
UDP Support Library Function Tree
UDP Support Library Error Conditions