nanog mailing list archives
PMTU and Broken Servers
From: Leo Bicknell <bicknell () ufp org>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 10:29:48 -0400
I've recently had the pleasure of troubleshooting a problem I don't normally have to deal with, and the results don't quite make sense to me. I'm hoping someone can enlighten me as to what is going on. A diagram: server---internet---fw---tunnelbox1----tunnelbox2----user The tunnel between the tunnelboxes is a lower (1480) MTU. Originally the user couldn't access some servers, turns out the firewall was filtering ICMP Can't Fragment messages, preventing PMTU from working in the server->user direction (tunnelbox1 would generate Can't Fragement, firewall would filter). That's been corrected. Going to a server I control I see good PMTU in both directions between the server and the user. However, there are still a number of web servers for popular sites that behave just like the firewall was still filtering Can't Fragments. The theory is that the servers are behind a firewall/load balancer that is filtering them on the server side -- but I find it slightly (emphasis on the slightly) that someone would turn on PMTU discovery, and then filter it out right in front of the boxes where they turned it on. Also, it seems to me most DSL users are behind PPPoE links with lower MTU, and should get hit by the same problem. The temporary hack is to have tunnelbox1 clear the DF bit on all incoming packets, which just causes the packets to get fragmented going down the tunnel. A minor performance hit, but it works. This is a new problem to me, but I'm sure people have run into it before. Are the servers really that broken (PMTU enabled, ICMP Can't Fragement filtered)? Does the head end box of DSL services generally do something to work around this (ie, clear the DF bit)? Am I just being an idiot and missing something obvious? -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell () ufp org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request () tmbg org, www.tmbg.org
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Current thread:
- PMTU and Broken Servers Leo Bicknell (May 08)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Stephen J. Wilcox (May 08)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Dalvenjah FoxFire (May 09)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers bdragon (May 10)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Curtis Maurand (May 12)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Stephen J. Wilcox (May 12)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Stephen Sprunk (May 12)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Niels Bakker (May 13)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Curtis Maurand (May 12)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Stephen J. Wilcox (May 12)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Curtis Maurand (May 12)
- Re: PMTU and Broken Servers Stephen J. Wilcox (May 12)