What is the primary advantage of TCP over UDP?

The primary advantage of TCP over UDP is guaranteed packet delivery. TCP, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol, is a connection-oriented protocol, meaning it establishes a connection before data transmission begins. This ensures that all packets sent are tracked and acknowledged by the receiving end. If packets are lost during transmission, TCP recognizes this and will resend them, thus providing a reliable data transfer mechanism.

In contrast, UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is connectionless and does not guarantee that packets will arrive in order or at all. This means that while UDP may be faster due to its minimal overhead (it lacks features such as handshaking or error correction), it cannot ensure the same level of reliability that TCP offers.

This reliability aspect is critical for applications where data integrity is paramount, such as in file transfers or communication protocols where every byte of data matters, making the guaranteed packet delivery provided by TCP a significant advantage over UDP.