When a receiver detects an IP packet where either of the following is true:
* "more fragments" flag set
* "fragment offset" field is non-zero
then the receiver knows the packet is a fragment. The receiver then stores the data with the identification field, fragment offset, and the more fragments flag. When the receiver receives a fragment with the more fragments flag set to 0 then it knows the length of the original data payload since the fragment offset multiplied by 8 (bytes) plus the data length is equivalent to the original data payload size.
Using the example above, when the receiver receives fragment 4 the fragment offset (495 or 3960 bytes) and the data length (540 bytes) added together yield 4500 — the original data length.
Once it has all the fragments then it can reassemble the data in proper order (by using the fragment offsets) and pass it up the stack for further processing.