Re: PC Bozo's World bites again (CNN, too)

[Michael Dillon <michael () memra com>]

On Wed, 27 May 1998, Matthew Marlowe wrote:

> That said, I think CNN messed up their explanation rather
> than giving wrong advice.

I don't think so. They even said in their article that the technical
details are based upon this URL
http://www.sns-access.com/%7Enetpro/maxmtu.htm
and this guy says stuff like:

    And, it turns out, depending on how your ISP and other routers
    encountered on the Internet handle your TCP/IP requests, that a MaxMTU
    setting of 576, often referred to as the "Internet Standard", will in
    many cases avoid the fragmentation of packets of data and the slow
    transfer speeds which result.

> Stevens in TCP/IP Illustrated Volume I, pointed out
> that lower mtu's on dialup lines could significantly
> improve latency for interactive traffic while having
> only a small efficiency loss for data intensive traffic.

Most people are changing the MTU to speed up web browsing which is data
intensive, not interactive. I think Karl's explanation of broken Windows
TCP/IP stacks is more likely the root cause of the problem.

But has anyone ever done a proper test of this with sniffers at both the
client end of the network and the webserver end of the network?

--
Michael Dillon                 -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Communications Inc.      -               E-mail: michael () memra com
http://www.memra.com           -  *check out the new name & new website*