User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is best for what type of transmission?

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is particularly effective in scenarios where sending small amounts of data does not require guaranteed delivery. This characteristic is crucial in applications like live audio or video streaming, online gaming, and real-time communications, where speed and low latency are more important than ensuring that every single packet reaches its destination.

Since UDP operates without establishing a connection and does not implement error checking or recovery, it allows for faster transmission compared to connection-oriented protocols like TCP. This makes it ideal for applications that can tolerate some degree of data loss and would rather sacrifice reliability for speed. Consequently, UDP's lightweight nature is beneficial in situations that demand timely delivery of packets, even at the cost of losing some data.