[17227] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: PC Bozo's World bites again (CNN, too)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matthew Marlowe)
Wed May 27 23:51:59 1998
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 20:00:06 -0400
From: Matthew Marlowe <mmarlowe@methodfive.com>
To: Vadim Antonov <avg@pluris.com>
CC: nanog@merit.edu
This is hardly an operational issue.
That said, I think CNN messed up their explanation rather
than giving wrong advice.
Some of the original RFCs for SLIP and PPP, as well as
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.
The key was that you didn't want small high-priority packets
to be waiting in a queue while larger full-size mtu packets
were being sent.
Matt
Vadim Antonov wrote:
>
> Check http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9805/26/net.access.idg/index.html
>
> Those bozos are suggesting to reduce MTU from 1500 to 576
> to "improve performance", so packets "won't fragment in
> backbones"! The bright idea to fix CTS/RTS setting didn't
> come along in their brilliant minds.
>
> Here goes the average packet size. Down the drain...
>
> Now what do we do to control the damage?
>
> I also think it's a good time to measure the gullibilty of
> the general public by measuring packet size distribution :)
>
> --vadim
