POSIX Socket API: Connectionless Communication

Abstract

In the previous chapter, you started exploring the POSIX Socket APIs by going through an example of a connection-oriented communication application using the TCP protocol. In this chapter, you will learn how to establish a connectionless communication between the Android application and a remote end-point. Connectionless communication through UDP sockets provides a lightweight communication medium tailed for real-time applications that can work with unordered and lost data packets. This type of connection does not maintain an open connection. Packets get sent to the target protocol address as needed. Since there is no connection in place, packets may get lost or get out of order during transition. The protocol does not provide any service to handle such situations. Throughout this chapter you will continue to modify the example Echo application to include both UDP server and client native implementations.