Unfortunately, the MTU problem can be caused by the client's network admin as well as by the ISP; it's very difficult to explain what's wrong, for this admins, and MTU discovery is not the part of traditional IP approach. This means that black-hole detection whould be implemented anyway to prevent lost of connectivity which we have sometimes nopw when some MS-based server or crlient refuse to allow ip fragmentation. On Thu, 18 Nov 1999, Vern Paxson wrote:
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 14:40:01 PST From: Vern Paxson <vern@ee.lbl.gov> To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: should TCPs do MTU black hole detection?
The IETF's tcp-impl (TCP implementation) working group has a draft document discussing problems with path MTU discovery:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-tcpimpl-pmtud-02.txt
The main issue we're trying to decide is whether the draft should advocate "black hole detection". That is, when a TCP is doing PMTU discovery, but somewhere the necessary ICMPs are either not being generated or are being filtered out before the TCP receives them, the TCP notices that it's losing multiple packets of the same size, so it then tries sending smaller segments, even though it hasn't received a "Datagram Too Big" ICMP.
The plus of black hole detection is that it can work around a sometimes very hard to debug problem. The minus is that it masks problems that should instead be fixed.
To help resolve this issue, I'm wondering whether the ISP community has a clear preference for either yes-do-detection or no-we-want-the-problems-fixed. Comments appreciated.
Thanks,
Vern
Aleksei Roudnev, Network Operations Center, Relcom, Moscow (+7 095) 194-19-95 (Network Operations Center Hot Line),(+7 095) 230-41-41, N 13729 (pager) (+7 095) 196-72-12 (Support), (+7 095) 194-33-28 (Fax)