PC Bozo's World bites again (CNN, too)

Thu May 28 00:00:06 UTC 1998

This is hardly an operational issue.  

That said, I think CNN messed up their explanation rather
than giving wrong advice.

Some of the original RFCs for SLIP and PPP, as well as
Stevens in TCP/IP Illustrated Volume I, pointed out
that lower mtu's on dialup lines could significantly
improve latency for interactive traffic while having
only a small efficiency loss for data intensive traffic.

The key was that you didn't want small high-priority packets
to be waiting in a queue while larger full-size mtu packets
were being sent.

Matt

Vadim Antonov wrote:
> 
> Check http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9805/26/net.access.idg/index.html
> 
> Those bozos are suggesting to reduce MTU from 1500 to 576
> to "improve performance", so packets "won't fragment in
> backbones"!  The bright idea to fix CTS/RTS setting didn't
> come along in their brilliant minds.
> 
> Here goes the average packet size.  Down the drain...
> 
> Now what do we do to control the damage?
> 
> I also think it's a good time to measure the gullibilty of
> the general public by measuring packet size distribution :)
> 
> --vadim