Nicolas Williams writes:
> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 01:25:11PM -0400, James Carlson wrote:
> > To be more specific -- it's a performance thing.  There are apparently
> > a few drivers for which the largest allowable configured MTU is _not_
> > also the MTU that will result in the best application performance
> > ... for some given definition of what "application" we're talking
> > about and specifically what "performance" means in that context.  (I
> > suspect "application" means either NFS or iSCSI and "performance"
> > means only "throughput," but that's just a guess.)
> 
> That transports and applications could dynamically detect optimal
> message sizes in similar ways, provided that the protocols have
> something like do-not-fragment.  I.e., do PMTUD but also have an
> iSER/SRP/RDDP/whatever extension by which you can ask the peer to tell
> the sender what is an optimal size -- the combination of PMTU and peer's
> local optimal MTU will tell you what is the optimal PMTU.
> 
> (There's a variant of TCP PMTUD that does not depend on ICMP replies to
> do-not-fragment -- it probes the path MTU and responds to timeouts if
> the ICMP does not arrive.  Solaris does not implement it.)

That'd be really quite slick, and in my opinion having it happen
automatically is *FAR* superior to any kind of administrative gizmo.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <[email protected]>
Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive        71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677
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