Re: [Sheflug] Quick poll - MTU/MRU

["Mark Broadbent" <nospam [at] shef.ac.uk>]

Hi All,

> On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Barrie Bremner wrote:
>
> > For those of you out there not using the Mother of All Fat Pipes to do
> > your browsing and apt-getting I'm interested to know what sort of MRU
> > and MTU's you have set up in for the internet interface (ppp0 I guess)
>
> PPP negotiates the MTU usually to 1500. It has been said by some that 576
> is a better size to use, but I tend to disagree.

On Demon the default MTU size (for dialup) is 576. I believe the reason is
that it doesn't clog your modem up with large packets of data (1500bytes
over a 33.6k modem would take ~0.5 seconds to move over the phone line) so
IIRC if you do lots of web browsing with multiple windows or you use
telnet/ssh a lot then it makes them overall more responsive (especially if
there were a large download in the background).

The general rule I work to is the faster the connection the larger you want
the MTU size (hence Ethernet is 1500bytes and generally modem connections
are 576bytes).

Having said that Demon allow you to change the MTU to whatever you like
anyhow! ;-)

Mark


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