Thoughts on increasing MTUs on the internet

Thu Apr 12 15:05:54 UTC 2007

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:12:43 +0200
Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de> wrote:

> * Steven M. Bellovin:
> 
> > A few years ago, the IETF was considering various jumbogram options.
> > As best I recall, that was the official response from the relevant
> > IEEE folks: "no". They're concerned with backward compatibility.  
> 
> Gigabit ethernet has already broken backwards compatibility and is
> essentially point-to-point, so the old compatibility concerns no
> longer apply.  Jumbo frame opt-in could even be controlled with a
> protocol above layer 2.
> 
I'm neither attacking nor defending the idea; I'm merely reporting.

I'll also note that the IETF is very unlikely to challenge IEEE on
this.  There's an informal agreement on who owns which standards.  The
IETF resents attempts at modifications to its standards by other
standards bodies; by the same token, it tries to avoid doing that to
others.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb