Your source for the most up-to-date terms, definitions, and acronyms for and about internet service providers.
Search for an ISP term
runt
Last modified: Thursday, May 08, 2003
When used in reference to networks, a runt is a packet that is too small to traverse the network. Network protocols such as Ethernet often require that packets be a minimum number of bytes in order to travel the network. Runts are often the result of packet collisions along a busy network or can result from faulty hardware that is forming the packets or from corrupted data being sent across the network.
