Which protocol’s packets cannot be matched with the status table due to being connectionless?

The correct answer is UDP, as it is a connectionless protocol. In networking, connectionless protocols like UDP (User Datagram Protocol) do not establish a connection before data transmission and do not maintain a connection state. This characteristic means that each UDP packet, or datagram, is sent independently and is not tracked or matched against a state table during its journey through the network.

When using UDP, packets can arrive out of sequence or even be lost due to the lack of a handshake process, and there is no expectation of delivery confirmation. Consequently, there is no session state to match against; each packet is treated as a standalone entity. This is in contrast to connection-oriented protocols, which maintain a connection state and can thus match packets with corresponding entries in a status table, allowing them to manage the connection actively.

In summary, because UDP operates without establishing a connection and does not require acknowledgment of receipt, its packets cannot be matched with any status table, making it a quintessential example of a connectionless protocol.