[p2p-hackers] MTU in the real world

[Justin Cormack]

On 1 Jun 2005, at 11:56, John Casey wrote:

> OK. so we can also surmize from this that if we want to send a large
> chunk of data that we are better off using TCP ?? and to only use UDP
> for small messages ??

The best (perhaps only sensible) situation for using UDP is where  
your messages match UDP ones, ie they are small (say 1k payload plus  
some headers) and it doesnt matter if some are lost (ie you dont even  
need retry - eg if using error correcting codes or whatever). If you  
want to use UDP, design your protocol around this (or vice versa).  
Otherwise you will just be reinventing TCP in UDP.

j