A communication packet is a single SQL statement sent to the MySQL server or a single row that is sent to the client. When a MySQL client or the mysqld server gets a packet bigger than max_allowed_packet bytes, it issues a Packet too large error and closes the connection.
Try setting max-allowed-packet parameter in the my.ini or my.cnf file to a larger value. In 3.23 the max allowed value is 16MB, while from 4.* on the physical memory of your machine limits its size.