C# Why doesn't "Flush" force the bytes down the network stream?

Question

I have a project where I'm trying to send a serialized object to the server, then wait for an "OK" or "ERROR" message to come back.

I seem to be having a similar problem to th poster of : TcpClient send/close problem

The issue is that the only way I seem to be able to send the original object is to close the connection, but then (of course) I can't wait to see if the object was processed successfully by the server.

private void button4_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    RequestPacket req = new RequestPacket();

    /// ... Fill out request packet ...

    /// Connect to the SERVER to send the message...
    TcpClient Client = new TcpClient("localhost", 10287);
    using (NetworkStream ns = Client.GetStream())
    {
        XmlSerializer xml = new XmlSerializer(typeof(RequestPacket));
        xml.Serialize(ns, req);

        /// NOTE: This doesn't seem to do anything.... 
        ///       The server doesn't get the object I just serialized.
        ///       However, if I use ns.Close() it does... 
        ///          but then I can't get the response.
        ns.Flush();

        // Get the response. It should be "OK".
        ResponsePacket resp;

        XmlSerializer xml2 = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ResponsePacket));
        resp = (ResponsePacket)xml2.Deserialize(ns);


        /// ... EVALUATE RESPONSE ...
    }

    Client.Close()
}

UPDATE: In response to one commenter, I don't think the client can be at fault. It is simply waiting for the object, and the object never comes until I close the socket.... however, if I'm wrong, I'll GLADLY eat crow publicly. =) Here's the client:

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        // Read the port from the command line, use 10287 for default
        CMD cmd = new CMD(args);
        int port = 10287;

        if (cmd.ContainsKey("p")) port = Convert.ToInt32(cmd["p"]);

        TcpListener l = new TcpListener(port);
        l.Start();

        while (true)
        {
            // Wait for a socket connection.
            TcpClient c = l.AcceptTcpClient();
            
            Thread T = new Thread(ProcessSocket);

            T.Start(c);
        }
    }


    static void ProcessSocket(object c)
    {
        TcpClient C = (TcpClient)c;

        try
        {
            RequestPacket rp;
            //// Handle the request here.
            using (NetworkStream ns = C.GetStream())
            {
                XmlSerializer xml = new XmlSerializer(typeof(RequestPacket));
                rp = (RequestPacket)xml.Deserialize(ns);
            }

            ProcessPacket(rp);
        }
        catch
        {
            // not much to do except ignore it and go on.
        }
    }

Yeah.... it's that simple.

Answer 1

Uh oh, you can blame Nagle's algorithm. It has nothing to do with C# though, it is a default behavior for TCP/IP stack. Enable NoDelay socket option using SetSocketOption method. But be careful, disabling Nagle's algorithm will downgrade the throughput.

I'm also not sure about that stream you are using on top of the socket, as I am not a C# developer at all, but try to drop its instance so it does write for sure :-)