MTUs - Was: Strange public traceroutes return private RFC1918 addresses
Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr.
larrysheldon at cox.net
Thu Feb 5 20:43:39 UTC 2004
Warren Kumari wrote:
>
> 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.
Because that was a conveniently large amount of very pricey memory
availble at the time?
Because that was the amount that could be blatted down a 500 meter
hose and get the "CD" part to work at some common clock rate?
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