Overview… packet lengths
The packets of a stream can be either of fixed length, or can be varied from packet-to-packet by various distributions between a minimum and a maximum length:
An incrementing distribution produces these lengths: Min, Min+1, Min+2, …, Max-1, Max.
The butterfly distribution produces these lengths: Min, Max, Min+1. Max-1, Min+2, Max-2, …., (Min + Max) / 2.
Both the incrementing, butterfly, and random distributions produce an average packet length of (Min + Max) / 2, and the butterfly distribution has the smallest deviation from this average over any short sequence of packets.
There is also a mixed distribution which approximates typical traffic on the Internet. Packet lengths vary between 56 – 1518 bytes, with an average length of 464 bytes.
The packet length has an impact on the amount of bandwidth consumed by the stream.
When the transmission rate is specified as packets-per-second then the bandwidth consumption is essentially proportional to the packet length. When using an Mbps rate the coupling is weaker, only impacted by the overhead from the inter packet gap.
Therefore the packet lengths are also subject to capping by the XenaManager if you exceed the available bandwidth.