When are these shorter UDP datagrams sent?

The previous page shows the frequency of the size of the UDP datagam traffic from the server to the client (stoc). Here we look at when the small UDP datagrams are sent in both this direction and from the client to the server (ctos). The figure shows that the server (source) is sending small packets nearly continuously to the client. While the client is sending one of three different-sized packets to the server nearly continuously. Note that there are some smaller and larger packets sent in both directions at the start of the file transfer.

When the short UDP datagrams are sent — A plot of when the short datagrams are sent. The figure shows when the small UDP packets were sent (with the vertical axis showing the size of the datagram). The square light blue markers are for traffic from the server to the client (stoc) while the dark blue diamond makers show the traffic from the client to the server (ctos).

Even the source is regularly sending short datagrams!

Transcript

When are these shorter UDP datagrams sent? We can do a plot of time here's the transfer time along the X-axis, and we can see the band showing that they're really fairly regularly sent. The diamond shape boxes are sent from the client to the server. And we see that they are very regularly sent but looking at this information we might be able to vary our traffic and get a better sense of exactly what they are doing in their protocol.