Thoughts on increasing MTUs on the internet

Mikael Abrahamsson swmike at swm.pp.se
Fri Apr 13 15:27:03 UTC 2007


On Fri, 13 Apr 2007, Leigh Porter wrote:

> What would be good is if when a jumbogram capable path on the Internet 
> exists, jumbograms can be used.

Yes, and it would be good if PMTUD worked, and ECN, oh and large 
UDP-packets for DNS, and BCP38, and... and... and.

The internet is a very diverse and complicated beast and if end systems 
can properly detect PMTU by doing discovery of this, it might work. 
Requiring the core and distribution to change isn't going to happen 
overnight, so end systems first. Make sure they can properly detect PMTU 
by use of nothing more than "is this packet size getting thru" (ie no 
ICMP-NEED-TO-FRAG) or alike, then we might see partial adoption of larger 
MTU in some parts and if this becomes a major customer requirement then it 
might spread.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se



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