MTUs - Was: Strange public traceroutes return private RFC1918 addresses

Thu Feb 5 20:04:00 UTC 2004

Ok, I know that this is getting away from the original thread, but I've 
always wondered this...

Why is the MTU on Ethernet 1500 bytes? I have looked through various 
docs (eg IEEE Std 802.x) and can find where maxUntaggedFrameSize is 
listed as 1518 octets, but there is no mention of why this was chosen. 
I know where the minimum frame size comes from (CSMA/CD and propagation 
times, etc), but the maximum frame size number sounds fairly arbitrary.

-- Warren.
On Feb 4, 2004, at 5:46 PM, Hani Mustafa wrote:

>
> How does a 50Mbyte MTU sound like?
>
> http://www.psc.edu/~mathis/MTU/
>
> ~Hani Mustafa
>
>
"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, 
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