[GD-General] UDP practical limits

[Colin F. <cp...@ea...>]

2004 April 12th
Monday

(1) What size limit on UDP packets is imposed by the
    UDP specification?

(2) What size limit on UDP packets is imposed by the 
    operating system (Windows, Linux, ...), and how
    can I query the OS for these limits?

(3) What is the practical limit of UDP packets going across the
    wild Internet, through dozens of routers with various 
    policies?

  (I know UDP is "unreliable", but I'd like to push UDP
  packet size as high as possible without significantly
  increasing the risk of UDP packets being quietly
  dropped along the route to their destinations.)

My ignorant guesses would be the following:

(1) Less than limit on payload part of single Ethernet
    frame: (1526 Bytes - 26 Bytes) = 1500 Bytes (roughly)
(2) Same as (1)
(3) Same as (1)?  Or perhaps much less (realistically speaking)?


--- Colin

cp...@ea...