*BSD News Article 29861


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From: axelstep@ifi.uio.no (Axel-Stephane C. Smørgrav)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: WHAT IS A DATAGRAM ?
Date: 28 Apr 1994 19:29:12 +0200
Organization: Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <2porp8$kp3@menja.ifi.uio.no>
References: <2pl91k$6ai@ceres.king.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: menja.ifi.uio.no


In article <2pl91k$6ai@ceres.king.ac.uk>, cs_a206@ceres.king.ac.uk (Richard Smart) writes:
> Hi!
> 
> Can someone tell me what a datagram is used for ? Is it a special ethernet
> packet ?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Richard Smart.
> -- 
>  ***********
> Richard Smart
>  ***********

A datagram is an uncomfirmed message. Delivery and sequencing are not
guaranteed. This means that if you send two messages, they will not
necessarily be delivered in the order in which they were sent, and in
fact you cannot be sure that the messages were actually ever
delivered.

If you are interested, read "Computer Networks" by A. Tanenbaum, more
specifically the chapters concerning the OSI Transport layer.

-ascs