This article says that the limit on the size of data being sent with an UnreliableRemoteEvent is 900 bytes. But I did some tests in my game place and in new place using buffers and found some strange behaviour what made me confused.
When using my networking system the actual limit on the size of data being sent size is 3873 bytes, which is 4x times more than 900 bytes. Look at the screenshots:
The size of the data being sent in this case is 3855 bytes, and the event is sent successfully.
All my network system does is convert the data into one large buffer and literally nothing else. I have already created a topic about this problem, and it may seem useful to you, but I have tried to provide all the basic information here, so that you do not need to jump from one topic to another.
And then I tested UnrealiableRemoteEvent in the new place and it’s behaviour is really strange because it can send even buffer which contains 10,000 bytes in it. That is 11x times more than the limit specified in the provided article. Here’s empty place I used for my tests: IncorrectLimit.rbxl (53,7 КБ)
I’m not sure if the UnrellableRemoteEvent should work that way, but if it does, then the documentation should certainly contain information about the dynamic size of data being sent limit, because in other cases it leads to a misunderstanding of how it works and what are real limits when using this Instance.
Buffers compress so you’re not actually sending more than 900 bytes.
EDIT: And in your tests you repeat the same number over and over again, which is very trivial to compress. So it can be compressed to the number and the amount of times it repeats. Which takes up exponentially less space than your original data.
Well, but then how can I get real size of buffer I’m sending?
As I know buffers just take some bits and use it for data writing & reading, but don’t compress at all or am I wrong?
I replaced number with math.random and it seems to be working like it is supposed to do and you’re right, but I still don’t understand how to know if your buffer size is exactly more than 900 bytes. Yes, it doesn’t really matter because UnrealiableRemoteEvent is made to be not reliable, but this still can confuse some developers, because when reading this, it seems like #buffer.tostring(b) and buffer.len(b) return exactly the same amount of bytes as the buffer size has when using remotes.
Anyway I’m sorry for making topic that is not really related to a bug, but more to my bad knowledge of buffers.
Don’t worry about it, there’s really no shame in not knowing, and I don’t think it’s super common information. Buffers compress when used with data stores, memory stores, any kind of networking like messaging service or remotes, and json. I believe it’s base64 encoding and zstd compression.
I’m pretty sure you can get the size if you json encode it and check the size of the result, as it should apply the same things to it as the remote events do behind the scene.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and to clarify so it’s clear. The buffer is compressed when sent, or stored in one of those services. That’s why the buffer functions fine for you locally and on the other end. It’s Roblox in the middle that does the compression, and decompresses for you on the receiving end.
Okay, thank you for the information! I didn’t know about the existence of the encoding, but now it makes a lot more sense why there’s difference in the size of data being sent limit
