What are SO_SNDBUF and SO_RCVBUF

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The “SO_” prefix is for “socket option”, so yes, these are per-socket settings for the per-socket buffers. There are usually system-wide defaults and maximum values.

SO_RCVBUF is simpler to understand: it is the size of the buffer the kernel allocates to hold the data arriving into the given socket during the time between it arrives over the network and when it is read by the program that owns this socket. With TCP, if data arrives and you aren’t reading it, the buffer will fill up, and the sender will be told to slow down (using TCP window adjustment mechanism). For UDP, once the buffer is full, new packets will just be discarded.

SO_SNDBUF, I think, only matters for TCP (in UDP, whatever you send goes directly out to the network). For TCP, you could fill the buffer either if the remote side isn’t reading (so that remote buffer becomes full, then TCP communicates this fact to your kernel, and your kernel stops sending data, instead accumulating it in the local buffer until it fills up). Or it could fill up if there is a network problem, and the kernel isn’t getting acknowledgements for the data it sends. It will then slow down sending data on the network until, eventually, the outgoing buffer fills up. If so, future write() calls to this socket by the application will block (or return EAGAIN if you’ve set the O_NONBLOCK option).

This all is best described in the Unix Network Programming book.

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