see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4#Fragmentation_and_reassembly
"To make IPv4 more tolerant of different networks the concept of fragmentation was added so that, if necessary, a device could break up the data into smaller pieces. This is necessary when the maximum transmission unit (MTU) is smaller than the packet size." This means that one packet leaving the sender may result in multiple packets arriving at the destination. This won't happen often since most OS'es have the DF (Don't Fragment) flag on. But I would definitely recommend you to use a delimiter (or a length header) instead. Maarten
