By default UDP has one thread which reads from the DatagramSocket for unicast datagram packets and another one for reading packets from the MulticastSocket.

Because each thread deserializes the received packet into a Message or MessageBatch, if a lot of packets are received, this may slow things down.

The new attributes ucast_receiver_threads (default:1) and mcast_receiver_threads (default:1) in UDP can create multiple unicast- or multicast- receiver threads. Note that all threads of the same type compete for the lock on the DatagramSocket or MulticastSocket respectively, so setting these attributes to high values is probably detrimental as context switching will increase.