I have a server that sends telemetry data of varying size to receivers, or as I'll call them, clients, via NetworkStream. I aim for maximum speed, so I want minimal delays. The frequency is uncontrolled, so I'd like to use an infinite loop in my clients, that uses NetworkStream.Read to read the data, process it, then repeat.
My problem is that sometimes, if two packets are sent very quickly, and a client has a slow internet connection, the two packets will be received as a continous stream, resulting unprocessable data. A half-solution I found (mostly to confirm that this is indeed the error) is to have a small delay after/before each transmission, using System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100), but not only I find Sleep a botchy solution, it's inconsistent, as it also slows down clients with a good connection, and the problem may persist with an even worse connection.
What I'd like to do is to have the server send a gap between each transmission, providing a separation regardless of internet speed, as NetworkStream.Read should finish after the current continous stream ends. I don't understand deeply the working of a NetworkStream, and have no idea what a few bytes of empty stream look like or how it could be implemented. Any ideas?
You don't specifically mention the ProtocolType you're using on your NetworkStream but TCP is bound to fail your requirements. Intermediate routers/switches have no way to know your intent is to separate packets by time and will not respect that desire. Furthermore, TCP, being stream oriented, delivers packets in order, and it has error correction against dropped packets and corrupt packets. On any occurrence of one or the other it will hold all further packets until the error packet is retransmitted - and then you'll probably get them all in a bunch.
Use UDP and implement throttling on the receiving (i.e., client) side - throwing out data if you're falling behind.