the HMU protocol of the interwebs

Today, we had Chris Walquist of DRW come in and run his HTTP class again, I always level up my skills when jumping back into the history of the web, and he reminded us of UDP, which is Unreliable Data Protocol. (actually upon research, I learned that the actual acronym stands for User Datagram Protocol, but it’s still unreliable.) Basically, we are used to using TCP, which is like a face to face conversation. it begins when we meet, and ends when we leave. if there’s silence, it’s just one person waiting for the other person to talk. it’s a consistent, end-to-end transmission of data. when using UDP, you are able to say HMU, go about your day, and whenever someone pings you back, you get the info, even if they don’t ping you back with the info in the logical order you needed it. It’s an unordered, asyncrhonous, transmission, that has no read-receipt, the way face-to-face does.