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Asked: 2026-06-14T12:11:51+00:00

I am reimplementing an old network layer library, but using boost asio this time.

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I am reimplementing an old network layer library, but using boost asio this time. Our software is tcpip dialoging with a 3rd party software. Several messages behave very well on both sides, but there is one case I misunderstand:

The 3rd party sends two messages (msg A and B) one after the other (real short timing) but I receive only a part of message A in tcp-packet 1, and the end of message A and the whole message B in tcp-packet 2. (I sniff with wireshark).

I had not thought of this case, I am wondering if it is common with tcp, and if my layer should be adaptative to that case – or should I say to the 3rd party to check what they do on their side so as I received both message in different packets.

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  1. Editorial Team

    Packets can be fragmented and arrive out-of-sequence. The TCP stack which receives them should buffer and reorder them, before presenting the data as an incoming stream to the application layer.

    My problem is with message B, that I don’t see because it’s after the end of message one in the same packet.

    You can’t rely on “messages” having a one-to-one mapping to “packets”: to the application, TCP (not UDP) looks like a “streaming” protocol.

    An application which sends via TCP needs another way to separate messages. Sometimes that’s done by marking the end of each message. For example SMTP marks the end-of-message as follows:

    The transmission of the body of the mail message is initiated with a
    DATA command after which it is transmitted verbatim line by line and
    is terminated with an end-of-data sequence. This sequence consists of
    a new-line (), a single full stop (period), followed by
    another new-line. Since a message body can contain a line with just a
    period as part of the text, the client sends two periods every time a
    line starts with a period; correspondingly, the server replaces every
    sequence of two periods at the beginning of a line with a single one.
    Such escaping method is called dot-stuffing.

    Alternatively, the protocol might specify a prefix at the start of each message, which will indicate the message-length in bytes.

    If you’re are coding the TCP stack, then you’ll have access to the TCP message header: the “Data offset” field tells you how long each message is.

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