Question

when I call socket.Receive(Buffer), is there a way where the call will block until a certain number of bytes are read? What is the typical way to make a receive loop if not?

Answer 1

You would typically need to use the overload which accepts an offset and count, and manually loop (checking the return value) until you have enough. For example:

void ReadExact(Socket socket, byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) {
    int read;
    while(count > 0 && (read = socket.Receive(
       buffer, offset, count, flags)) > 0)
    {
        offset += read;
        count -= read;
    }
    if(count > 0) throw new EndOfStreamException();
}

This might also be a bit easier if you wrap the socket in a NetworkStream.