Thoughts on increasing MTUs on the internet

Thu Apr 12 10:02:41 UTC 2007

:-> "Iljitsch" == Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch at muada.com> writes:

    > Dear NANOGers,

    > It irks me that today, the effective MTU of the internet is 1500
    > bytes, while more and more equipment can handle bigger packets.

    > What do you guys think about a mechanism that allows hosts and
    > routers on a subnet to automatically discover the MTU they can use
    > towards other systems on the same subnet, so that:

    > 1. It's no longer necessary to limit the subnet MTU to that of the
    > least capable system

    > 2. It's no longer necessary to manage 1500 byte+ MTUs manually

    > Any additional issues that such a mechanism would have to address?

wouldn't that work only if the switch in the middle of your neat
office lan is a real switch (i.e. not flooding oversize packets to
hosts that can't handle them, possibly crashing their NIC drivers) and
it's itself capable of larger MTUs?

Pf

-- 

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 Pierfrancesco Caci | Network & System Administrator - INOC-DBA: 6762*PFC
 p.caci at seabone.net | Telecom Italia Sparkle - http://etabeta.noc.seabone.net/
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