The recvfrom function reads incoming data on both connected and unconnected sockets and captures the address from which the data was sent. This function is typically used with connectionless sockets. The local address of the socket must be known. For server applications, this is usually done explicitly through bind.

The WSARecvFrom function is used primarily on a connectionless socket specified by s. The socket's local address must be known. For server applications, this is usually done explicitly through bind. Explicit binding is discouraged for client applications.

If no error occurs, recv returns the number of bytes received and the buffer pointed to by the buf parameter will contain this data received. If the connection has been gracefully closed, the return value is zero. Otherwise, a value of SOCKET_ERROR is returned, and a specific error code can be retrieved by calling WSAGetLastError.