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I need to know what the largest UDP packet I can send to another computer is without fragmentation.
This size is commonly known as the MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit). Supposedly, between 2 computers, will be many routers and modems that may have different MTUs.
I read that the TCP implementation in windows automatically finds the maximum MTU in a path.
I was also experimenting, and I found out that the maximum MTU from my computer to a server was 57712 bytes+header. Anything above that was discarded. My computer is on a LAN, isn't the MTU supposed to be around 1500 bytes?
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Every internet destination must be able to receive a datagram of 576 octets either in one piece or in fragments to be reassembled. [...] Every internet module must be able to forward a datagram of 68 octets without further fragmentation.
A UDP datagram is carried in a single IP packet and is hence limited to a maximum payload of 65,507 bytes for IPv4 and 65,527 bytes for IPv6. The transmission of large IP packets usually requires IP fragmentation.
UDP is the most common standard for VoIP but is limited in capability. The maximum MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) size of UDP we can receive un-fragmented is 1460 bytes. Most broadband routers are set to an MTU default of 1454 bytes, so its uncommon you can transmit more than our limits.
To begin, try a value within the range 50,000 to 150,000 packets per second. Select an initial value based on capacity of the receiving CPUs to handle NIC interrupts. To reduce average latency, try raising the value. If the number of packets overwhelms any receiver, try a lower value.
The following doesn't answer your question directly but you might find it interesting; it says that IP packets can be disassembled/reassembled, and therefore bigger than limit on the underling media (e.g. 1500-byte Ethernet): Resolve IP Fragmentation, MTU, MSS, and PMTUD Issues with GRE and IPSEC
I don't know about generating ICMP via an API on Windows: at one time such an API was proposed, and was controversial because people argued that would make it easy to write software that implements denial-of-service functionality by generating a flood of ICMP messages.
No, it looks like it is implemented: see for example Winsock Programmer's FAQ Examples: Ping: Raw Sockets Method.
So, to discover MTU, generate ping packets with the 'do not fragment' flag.
Maybe there's an easier API than this, I don't know; but I hope I've given you to understand the underlying protocol[s].
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