[camgunz]

You generally only use this for data where only the latest update matters. So if you get "Packet 18" "Packet 30" "Packet 19", you take 18, then 30, then ignore 19. The canonical example is an object's position; usually if you know what something's position is at 30 then information about where it was at 19 is so out of date it's useless.

The gain here is that you typically get the latest information as fast as possible. The downsides, of course, are that there's a pretty steep decline on connections that are even a little high latency or lossy. UDP drops packets even on wired LAN, for example. Practically all games use this method, and they all have lots of smoothing and prediction tech to make things seem like you're getting constant position updates -- which you almost certainly aren't.

You can also use this for data that doesn't matter -- although if it doesn't matter you should question why you're sending it in the first place.