Which network protocol provides connectionless, packet-oriented communication between applications?

The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol Suite, the set of network protocols used for the Internet. With UDP, computer applications can send messages, in this case referred to as datagrams, to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) network without requiring prior communications to set up special transmission channels or data paths.

Compared to TCP, UDP is a simpler message-based connectionless protocol.