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You are here: manpages

UDP

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (7)
Updated: 1998-10-02
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

udp - User Datagram Protocol for IPv4

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>

udp_socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0);

DESCRIPTION

This is an implementation of the User Datagram Protocol described in RFC 768. It implements a connectionless, unreliable datagram packet service. Packets may be reordered or duplicated before they arrive. UDP generates and checks checksums to catch transmission errors.

When a UDP socket is created, its local and remote addresses are unspecified. Datagrams can be sent immediately using sendto(2) or sendmsg(2) with a valid destination address as an argument. When connect(2) is called on the socket the default destination address is set and datagrams can now be sent using send(2) or write(2) without specifying a destination address. It is still possible to send to other destinations by passing an address to sendto(2) or sendmsg(2). In order to receive packets the socket can be bound to a local address first by using bind(2). Otherwise the socket layer will automatically assign a free local port out of the range defined by net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range and bind the socket to INADDR_ANY.

All receive operations return only one packet. When the packet is smaller than the passed buffer only that much data is returned, when it is bigger the packet is truncated and the MSG_TRUNC flag is set. MSG_WAITALL is not supported.

IP options may be sent or received using the socket options described in ip(7). They are only processed by the kernel when the appropriate sysctl is enabled (but still passed to the user even when it is turned off). See ip(7).

When the MSG_DONTROUTE flag is set on sending the destination address must refer to a local interface address and the packet is only sent to that interface.

By default Linux UDP does path MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) discovery. This means the kernel will keep track of the MTU to a specific target IP address and return EMSGSIZE when a UDP packet write exceeds it. When this happens the application should decrease the packet size. Path MTU discovery can be also turned off using the IP_MTU_DISCOVER socket option or the ip_no_pmtu_disc sysctl, see ip(7) for details. When turned off UDP will fragment outgoing UDP packets that exceed the interface MTU. However disabling it is not recommended for performance and reliability reasons.

Address Format

UDP uses the IPv4 sockaddr_in address format described in ip(7).

Error Handling

All fatal errors will be passed to the user as an error return even when the socket is not connected. This includes asynchronous errors received from the network. You may get an error for an earlier packet that was sent on the same socket. This behavior differs from many other BSD socket implementations which don't pass any errors unless the socket is connected. Linux's behavior is mandated by RFC 1122.

For compatibility with legacy code in Linux 2.0 and 2.2 it was possible to set the SO_BSDCOMPAT SOL_SOCKET option to receive remote errors only when the socket has been connected (except for EPROTO and EMSGSIZE). Locally generated errors are always passed. Support for this socket option was removed in later kernels; see socket(7) for further information.

When the IP_RECVERR option is enabled all errors are stored in the socket error queue and can be received by recvmsg(2) with the MSG_ERRQUEUE flag set.

Socket Options

To set or get a UDP socket option, call getsockopt(2) to read or setsockopt(2) to write the option with the option level argument set to IPPROTO_UDP.

UDP_CORK (since Linux 2.5.44): If this option is enabled, then all data output on this socket is accumulated into a single datagram that is transmitted when the option is disabled. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

Ioctls

These ioctls can be accessed using ioctl(2). The correct syntax is:

int value;
error = ioctl(udp_socket, ioctl_type, &value);

FIONREAD (SIOCINQ): Gets a pointer to an integer as argument. Returns the size of the next pending datagram in the integer in bytes, or 0 when no datagram is pending.
TIOCOUTQ (SIOCOUTQ): Returns the number of data bytes in the local send queue. Only supported with Linux 2.4 and above.

In addition all ioctls documented in ip(7) and socket(7) are supported.

ERRORS

All errors documented for socket(7) or ip(7) may be returned by a send or receive on a UDP socket.

ECONNREFUSED No receiver was associated with the destination address. This might be caused by a previous packet sent over the socket.

VERSIONS

IP_RECVERR is a new feature in Linux 2.2.

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.05 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.