Which statement best describes UDP in terms of reliability and overhead?

• A. UDP is connection-oriented and reliable.
• B. UDP includes built-in retransmission and sequencing guarantees.
• C. UDP is connectionless and faster but less reliable.
• D. UDP encrypts traffic by default.

Answer: (C)

UDP emphasizes speed and low overhead by not maintaining a connection or guaranteeing delivery. Because there’s no connection setup, no acknowledgments, and no automatic retransmission, datagrams are sent with minimal processing and timing constraints. This means delivery is best-effort: packets may arrive out of order, be duplicated, or be lost entirely. That trade-off—faster transmission with less reliability—is why UDP is described as connectionless and faster but less reliable.

The other statements don’t fit because UDP does not establish connections or provide built-in retransmission or sequencing guarantees, and encryption is not part of UDP itself (security would be added at a higher layer or with a separate protocol like DTLS or IPsec).