diff --git a/src/networking.c b/src/networking.c
index ec591245e..27006514d 100644
--- a/src/networking.c
+++ b/src/networking.c
@@ -927,6 +927,10 @@ int writeToClient(int fd, client *c, int handler_installed) {
                 listDelNode(c->reply,listFirst(c->reply));
                 c->sentlen = 0;
                 c->reply_bytes -= objlen;
+                /* If there are no longer objects in the list, we expect
+                 * the count of reply bytes to be exactly zero. */
+                if (listLength(c->reply) == 0)
+                    serverAssert(c->reply_bytes == 0);
             }
         }
         /* Note that we avoid to send more than NET_MAX_WRITES_PER_EVENT