Jumbo Frames in 10GbE?

[gwinn@xxxxxxxxxx (Joe Gwinn)]

At 4:24 PM 99/6/17, Booth, Brad wrote:
>Just a small point.  One of the objectives that passed with greater than
>75% in Coeur d'Alene was to "preserve minimum and maximum FrameSize of
>current 802.3 Std."

I don't know that the issue is going to stay decided all that long, based
on the recent article "Jumbo Frames gather support" (Jeff Caruso, Network
World, 14 June 1999, page 6), which states that IETF has published a
working document proposing that ethernet frames be made larger than the
current 1,500-byte maximum, the basic rationale being to reduce the packet
rate and thus load on packet-handling components of the system.  In short,
this is a system issue, and cannot really be decided solely at the MAC
level.

If jumbo frames are to come, 10GbE would be a logical place to start.

The issue will ultimately be decided by an IEEE Ballot Group, not a
Plenary.  If the market is really going to bigger packets, as this article
implies, it will be hard to resist.

Joe Gwinn



The above is in response to the following:

>        >Issues 3 - Bit Error Rate
>        >The assumption will be that this is 10-12. If someone wishes to
>challenge
>        >this they should bring a presentation to the next meeting providing
>        detailed reasoning why this needs to change.
>
>        It strikes me that the issue of larger maximum packet sizes will likely
>        come up, just as it did for GbE.  If 10GbE goes to 9 KB packets,
>the design
>        center BER would need to go to 10^-13 to maintain the same theoretical
>        packet loss rate.   I'm not sure how much effect this would have in
>        practice, as most gigabit links achieve much better than 10^-12,
>if they
>        work at all.  Anyway, these items are ripe for debate and decision.

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