Is there an optimal byte size for sending data over a network?

Question

I assume 100 bytes is too small and can slow down larger file transfers with all of the writes, but something like 1MB seems like it may be too much. Does anyone have any sugge

Answer 1

I believe your problem is that you use blocking sockets and not non-blocking ones.

When you use blocking sockets and you send 1M of data the network stack can wait for all of the data to be placed in a buffer, if the buffers are full you'll be blocked and your progress bar will wait for the whole 1M to be accepted into the buffers, this may take a while and your progress bar will be jumpy.

If however you use non-blocking sockets, whatever buffer size you use will not block, and you will need to do the waiting yourself with select/poll/epoll/whatever-works-on-your-platform (select is the most portable though). In this way your progress bar will be updated fast and reflect the most accurate information.

Do note that at the sender the progress bar is partially broken any way since the kernel will buffer some data and you will reach 100% before the other side really received the data. The only way around this is if your protocol includes a reply on the amount of data received by the receiver.

As others said, second guessing the OS and the network is mostly futile, if you keep using blocking sockets pick a size that is large enough to include more data than a single packet so that you don't send too little data in a packet as this will reduce your throughput needlessly. I'd go with something like 4K to include at least two packets at a time.