20070705 - UDP Player Bandwidth

More useful info on player maximum peak bandwidth with UDP packets.

1. Overhead to send 1 UDP packet = 46 bytes.
2. 18 bytes is the ethernet header/footer.
3. 20 bytes is the IPV4 header.
4. 8 bytes is the UDP header.
5. Minimum/maximum ethernet packet size is 64/1518 bytes.
6. So UDP payload minimum/maximum is 18/1472 bytes.

Using 128 Kbps (16 KB/s) as a maximum upload rate (low end DSL connection), there is a trade off between high packet interactivity and payload (useful) bandwidth.

1. 64 byte packet = 18 byte payload = 256 packets/sec = 4608 bytes/sec
2. 80 byte packet = 34 byte payload = 204 packets/sec = 6936 bytes/sec
3. 96 byte packet = 50 byte payload = 170 packets/sec = 8500 bytes/sec
4. 128 byte packet = 82 byte payload = 128 packets/sec = 10496 bytes/sec