The transport plugin send() API supports a gather-send concept, where the send() call can take several discontiguous buffers, assemble and send them in a single message. This enables RTI Connext to send a message from parts obtained from different sources without first having to copy the parts into a single contiguous buffer.

However, most transports that support a gather-send concept have an upper limit on the number of buffers that can be gathered and sent. Setting this value will prevent RTI Connext from trying to gather too many buffers into a send call for the transport plugin.

RTI Connext requires all transport-plugin implementations to support a gather-send of least a minimum number of buffers. This minimum number is defined to be NDDS_TRANSPORT_PROPERTY_GATHER_SEND_BUFFER_COUNT_MIN.

If the underlying transport does not support a gather-send concept directly, then the transport plugin itself must copy the separate buffers passed into the send() call into a single buffer for sending or otherwise send each buffer individually. However this is done by the transport plugin, the receive_rEA() call of the destination application should assemble, if needed, all of the pieces of the message into a single buffer before the message is passed to the RTI Connext layer.