nanog mailing list archives

RE: jumbo frames


From: "Richard A. Steenbergen" <ras () e-gerbil net>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 16:15:11 -0400 (EDT)


On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:47:09PM -0700, Tony Hain wrote:

I understand all those points; I was reacting to the comment that the
only jumbo frames were between the routers, so the only ones coming in
would be 1500. Look at John's notes from 4/25 8:10pm & 4/26 9:40am.
There is no way I know of for a larger frame by itself to increase the
speed of a packet. What was missing was the subsequent comment about
tunneling those packets (thus increasing the size beyond 1500) across
the GE links to the distribution router. Avoiding fragmentation
clearly has performance gains, but fragmentation is unnecessary if the
packet size remains the same from end to end. The original scenario
was simply standard-size feeders into a router, with jumbo frame GE
between the core routers, then standard-size distribution on the other
end. The claim was that jumbo frames in the middle made it go faster.
If this is true I want to know how.

It is also possible that he has packets entering and leaving his network
by SONET, ATM, FDDI, or anything else which is not Ethernet. By supporting
jumbo frames on his GigE router links, he is potentially providing a path
with larger MTU support.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177  (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA  B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)



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