BUG: Passing large quantities of data in .NET Remoting calls causes an unexpected exception to occur (322975)

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 SP1
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 SP2
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

This article was previously published under Q322975

SYMPTOMS

You can use .NET Remoting to allow instances of any type that can be serialized to be passed as method parameters between the client and the server applications. However, if the type instance that is passed is very large (tens of megabytes), the Remoting client consumes large amounts of virtual memory and then generates unexpected exceptions. The exceptions can be either OutOfMemoryException exception or SocketException exception. The commit charge as seen in Task Manager is also very high.

CAUSE

This is because of a bug in the .NET Remoting system.

RESOLUTION

To work around this problem, pass smaller amounts of data with each remoted call. You can also pass a Stream object as a method parameter. Stream objects inherit MarshalByRefObject. You can use the Stream object to retrieve data in smaller chunks.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

When the class below is hosted in a Remoting host, and the method is called by a Remoting client, the problem occurs. The following code fragment demonstrates the problem:

	public class MBRClass : MarshalByRefObject
	{
		public byte[] GetBigByteArray ()
		{
			byte[] byteArray = new byte[60000000] ;
			return byteArray ;
		}
	}

Modification Type:	Major	Last Reviewed:	2/28/2005
Keywords:	kbbug kbRemoting KB322975