What are Metacard's UDP (datagram) Limits

Dar Scott dsc at swcp.com
Tue Apr 30 01:30:01 EDT 2002


On Monday, April 29, 2002, at 10:37 PM, Scott Raney wrote:

>> Is this this way because of some underlying API (like maybe a limit in
>> BerkeleySockets, or some such API that Meta is using).
>
> The UDP proptocol specification only guarantees up to a maximum size
> of 576 bytes.  Try to send anything larger than that and it might work
> on some systems but not others.

I believe this is the IP Packet limit.  It is intended to allow a 
data size of 512 bytes under worse-case IP header conditions.  In 
that case, the limit for UDP data is 504 bytes.

My experience is primarily in controlled situations so I don't run 
across this, but I think for Internet applications, one might best 
follow Scott's advice.

Dar Scott





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