In a message written on Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 08:40:22PM +0200, Petri Helenius wrote:
If you're paying for 40 byte packets anyway, there is no incentive to ever go beyond 1500
With a 20 byte IP header: A 40 byte packet is 50% data. A 1500 byte packet is 98.7% data. A 9000 byte packet is 99.7% data. Anyone who pays by the bit should like large packets better than small packets, as you pay for less "overhead" bandwidth. Note that a 1500 byte IP in IP packet becomes 1520, and then gets fragmented to 1500 and a 40 byte packet (20 data, 20 header). That's only 97.3% efficient, where as a single 1520 byte packet, if it could be carried, is 98.7% efficient. Obviously talking in smaller numbers, but to a lot of VPN vendors 1.4% improvement in bandwidth usage, bus usage, or avoiding the path through the device that fragments a packet in the first place is a big win. -- 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