[95963] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Thoughts on increasing MTUs on the internet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Thu Apr 12 11:12:57 2007
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:05:54 -0400
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>
Cc: Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com>,
NANOG list <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <87slb5n0kk.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
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
