Is there a potential data loss with UDP?

[ddrillic]

We are forced to use UDP (and not TCP) for one client and we wonder how much data loss we might expect with UDP.

Any thoughts?

[ddrillic]

Our Sales Engineer said -

-- The best practice (not just for Splunk, really for the whole industry) is to put your UDP receiver as close as possible to the sender. Like, on the same switch if you can help it. This will minimize the lost packets that are indeed inevitable with UDP.

The other thing you should look into is whether UDP is really required. Most appliances / switches / firewalls / routers these days have an alternative way to send data. Usually an API, TCP bound syslog, a form of reliable/resilient UDP etc. Literally anything is better than basic UDP.

[dkeck · Accepted solution]

HI,

this tuning tips might help you to lower the potential data loss.

https://wiki.splunk.com/Community:UDPInputs

[ddrillic]

Thank you @dkeck!

[nswondem]

By definition, UDP is not reliable. Try the tuning but remember that on the network layer UDP is not going to try. No handshake.