Chapter 7, Developing applications over TCP/IP using Internet sockets
Datagram sockets

Datagram sockets

A datagram socket (type SOCK_DGRAM) supports bidirectional flow of data in the datagram model of the network level protocol. Record boundaries are preserved. The receiving process must perform resequencing, elimination of duplicates, and reliability assurance. The datagram socket can be used in applications where reliability of an individual packet is not essential, for example, in broadcasting messages for the purpose of updating a status table.