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[HSSG] Jumbo frames



All,
 
Joel's statement below can be grossly misinterpreted. He states that all system and silicon vendor supports jumbo frames. That may be true but I highly doubt it. However, what is not true is that all or the even the majority of the installed base of Ethernet gear supports jumbo frames. In addition, many products on the market today do not support jumbo frames (by products I mean both equipment and silicon). During the P802.3as Frame Expansion project (soon to complete), UNH IOL kindly tested hundreds of pieces of gear and combed through hundreds of reports to determine the maximum frame size supported by Ethernet gear (that had been submitted to UNH). While not exhaustive, the data indicated a wide range of maximums from 1515 (not a typo) through 2K, 4K, 5K, and 9K and beyond.
 
Within P802.3as, we discussed jumbo frames at various times. The following constitutes my recollection of the reasons against "standardizing jumbo frames" (not ordered):
 
1) Interoperability with legacy gear
2) Increasing frame size is a slippery slope. Why 9KB? Why not something larger, like 16KB or 64KB?
3) The network performance bottlenecks change over time. Each major component of the network/system goes through improvements and upgrades, which changes the requirements on other parts of the network/system.
4) QoS (frame delay, frame delay variation, etc.) impacts
 
Kevin Daines
Chair, P802.3as TF
 
 
 
Note from archive attached below:

Title:
All,

If I go to any search engine and input "
jumbo ethernet frames chips", I will see that every system and silicon vendor supports jumbo ethernet frames.

My question is not wether to support jumbos, because we all already do ... my question is should we finally spec it out?  I think we should, at a minimum, provision for it.

-joel