On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:12:43 +0200 Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
* Steven M. Bellovin:
A few years ago, the IETF was considering various jumbogram options. As best I recall, that was the official response from the relevant IEEE folks: "no". They're concerned with backward compatibility.
Gigabit ethernet has already broken backwards compatibility and is essentially point-to-point, so the old compatibility concerns no longer apply. Jumbo frame opt-in could even be controlled with a protocol above layer 2.
I'm neither attacking nor defending the idea; I'm merely reporting. I'll also note that the IETF is very unlikely to challenge IEEE on this. There's an informal agreement on who owns which standards. The IETF resents attempts at modifications to its standards by other standards bodies; by the same token, it tries to avoid doing that to others. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb