UDP is a non connection-oriented data transmission protocol that has the advantages of efficient, high-speed, high-volume data transmission. Since UDP does not use TCP's handshaking procedure, it does not re-assemble and retransmit packets when data is missing. This means that data integrity is sacrificed for higher transmission speed. UDP provides a very powerful transmission method when data needs to be transmitted quickly over the network, and upper-level application software is given the responsibility of verifying the accuracy of the data.

UDP can also use broadcasting or multicasting technologies to handle point to multi-point transmissions. UDP is an ideal transmission method for serial devices that must transmit data to a group of devices or PCs.