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socketsudppacket-loss

UDP packet loss rate might increase on conditions?


Does UDP packet loss percentage might increase considering packet size? For example if I send 100'000 packets, in first try byte[] size is 30, but second 300. Could packet size play role in it's drop ability or packet loss percentage is not its size dependent?


Solution

  • The packet loss is depending on the size of the packet. This has several reasons.

    • IP packets can go up to 64k approximately, but they are fragmented up to the MTU of ethernet and if one of those packets gets lost , the whole IP packet is dropped. For larger packets if the traffic is high the probability is higher that the larger packet will be dropped. The MTU is around 1500 bytes.

    • There is more to it than just that. Internally a protocol stack is implemented using internal buffers that are a lot smaller than the mtu, this can vary from 300 bytes and larger. But the point is that these buffers are also a limited resource. If the network device runs out of buffers, then the packet will be dropped as well.